A Journey Through the Life and Thought of the Martyr Dr. Fathi al-Shiqaqi
Speaking about the life and experience of the martyred doctor, Fathi al-Shiqaqi (Abu Ibrahim), founder of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad Movement, cannot be contained in a single seminar. The life of this exceptional man—fighter, great writer, and political leader—was marked by profound struggle, vibrant intellectual evolution, and unwavering commitment to the liberation of Palestine and its people, alongside his personal development. For these and other reasons, it is difficult to discuss him in detail today; we need more than one meeting.
At just 15, al-Shiqaqi attempted to found a revolutionary organization in Gaza—a testament to his early political engagement. At that time he was a Nasserist, beginning his struggle at a very young age, haunted by big questions, carrying the burdens of his people, and thinking of how his nation could be freed from occupation and colonialism. His guiding conviction remained the liberation of his homeland until his martyrdom in Malta on October 26, 1995.
And if we know that he was a doctor, a critic, a poet, and a political thinker—on top of his experiences in prison and his militant and humanist life—then certainly we need more than one encounter to understand more deeply this Palestinian, Arab, and Islamic figure of great depth, richness, and, sometimes, contradiction.
The life of Dr. al-Shiqaqi, this great national leader, was a continuous series of militant stages and intellectual battles that were not free from losses and rivalries, nor from political confrontations, especially in his constant search for the revolutionary alternative—that is, the path that leads to the liberation of Palestine. We are thus in front of a restless and cautious personality (in the positive sense), decisive and uncompromising on the other hand, whose vision and outlook on life, thought, and struggle developed together, without ever losing the central point: the liberation of Palestine.
For al-Shiqaqi, Palestine was the center of the universe, the center of struggle, the place of birth and of death. We will see that this idea dominated every detail of his movement, indeed governed his very existence. It was the decisive measure determining his agreement or disagreement with others.
There are some Islamic personalities and currents who say, for example: “The homeland is an unimportant idea—Malaysia or Indonesia is the same as Palestine. There is no such thing as a homeland.” These currents, like some communist and leftist currents, believed that the idea of homeland and land was transient or unimportant, and what mattered to them was establishing the global spread of religion and Islam, or the Caliphate, or worship, etc. This idea was utterly rejected by al-Shiqaqi. He continued to see that the aware Islamist, the revolutionary fighter, must first of all hold a national cause, especially in the Palestinian case, and must defend his land, his people, his honor, and his community. Defending the homeland was for him a primary priority.
The national or political entry point could shift or deepen, but without ever losing the compass and goal. He took as an example the Prophet’s ﷺ words about Mecca and his love for his village, when he said:
“By God, you are the best of God’s lands and the most beloved to me, and had your people not expelled me, I would not have left you.”
Thus, the national question is essential and decisive in understanding al-Shiqaqi’s personality and his militant life. It was both a personal and collective matter. For this reason, al-Shiqaqi wrote in his poetry:
O wound, open, O wound…
O my people, bring the salt,
So this wound may stay alive,
So dawn may break from the darkness of night.
I will not forgive you,
I will not forgive you.
My mother will curse me if I forgive,
Jerusalem will reject me if I forget.
Then he enumerates the letters of the homeland, saying:
The F will reject me, the L will reject me,
The S will reject me, the T will reject me,
The Y will reject me, the N will reject me,
All your letters will reject me, O Palestine.
All your letters will reject me, O my wronged homeland…
If I forgive, if I forget.
Birth and Development
Al-Shiqaqi was born into a poor refugee family in the Gaza Strip on January 4, 1951, three years after the Nakba. When we say “poor family,” some may think we mean general poverty, “ordinary poverty.” But al-Shiqaqi was born into a destitute family at the very bottom of the social ladder, a marginalized family without property or possessions. This meant that he entered the life of hardship, labor, and toil as a child and a young man, sharing the lives of workers and fishermen in Gaza, construction workers, and farmers in the West Bank.
This is an important matter, with a special sensitivity. It deepened his genuine belonging to the marginalized Palestinian working class, and awakened in him a class consciousness of a special kind. It defined his alignment with the oppressed and the poor, their interests, and the defense of their rights. We will also see this poured into his later poetry and literature, in his poems about workers and the poor. This is a fundamental matter in understanding the formation of his revolutionary consciousness, and his social, political, and cultural choices.
We will later examine how al-Shiqaqi imprinted his ideas and vision regarding what we can call the “national question” and his alignment with the refugees and the impoverished Palestinian popular classes, leaving his mark on the general direction of the movement he later founded: the Palestinian Islamic Jihad Movement. Al-Shiqaqi engaged in many political and intellectual battles with various currents on this very issue.
It can be said that the period he lived in Palestine before moving to study in Egypt, and before his imprisonment and subsequent expulsion, allowed him to move and work across all of occupied Palestine. He experienced work and activity in most areas of occupied Palestine, studied in the West Bank, was arrested and interrogated in prisons, placed under house arrest, and thus came to know his homeland and people closely, not solely through study. He came to know the geography of the homeland, its dialects, villages, cities, and camps. He saw the religious, intellectual, and political diversity of the Palestinian people. In all this, he saw the beauty of the Palestinian people as a source of strength, while also deepening his knowledge of their local particularities.
The First Phase
Like most Palestinian youth and people of that time, al-Shiqaqi was “Nasserist in spirit”, and saw Jamal Abdel Nasser as a sincere Arab leader striving for Arab unity and the liberation of Palestine. Then came the defeat of 1967, a great shock, but one that spurred him to review, to search for new options and the revolutionary alternative.
Part of the Palestinian youth moved from the Ba’ath Party, Nasserism, the Arab Nationalist Movement, and the Muslim Brotherhood to the new national currents then emerging, such as Fatah and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and other “fedayeen organizations.” Some went in an Islamic direction, among them al-Shiqaqi, who chose to study Islamic thought and join the Islamic current. The option available at the time was the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, especially during his medical studies.
Again, al-Shiqaqi felt that the existential question for him, Palestine’s liberation, was pressing and urgent. He was constantly debating his brothers in the Brotherhood and jihadist Salafi currents, asking about the role of Islamists in liberating Palestine, confronting the regimes, waging armed struggle, and reinforcing Palestinian steadfastness. Gradually he found himself at odds with the Brotherhood.
When we talk about the revolutionary alternative in al-Shiqaqi’s thought, it was not necessarily what we would call revolutionary, but what he saw as such. He would soon discover the limits of each, and then search again. He sought a revolutionary alternative that led him to Palestine. If he did not find Palestine at the center, he stopped, reflected, reviewed, and moved to a new stage. He never hesitated to alter his path when needed or to practice self-criticism.
He was influenced by Islamist writings, especially from Syria, which argued that the 1948 defeat was the defeat of liberal forces and Western imported thought, while the 1967 defeat was the defeat of Arab nationalism—also Western imported thought. Thus, the only solution was the Islamic one, rooted in a civilizational framework closer to the people, expressing their identity, culture, and specificity. For al-Shiqaqi, there was no contradiction between the national and the Islamic, but rather a full harmony.
The Islamic Revolution of 1979
The victory of the Iranian popular revolution was an important turning point in al-Shiqaqi’s thought. It was the same year Egypt signed the Camp David agreement. Naturally, he was influenced by the Iranian revolution, wrote about it, and welcomed its victory and the overthrow of the Shah, as did all revolutionary currents of different orientations. His first book was on the revolution, entitled “Khomeini: The Solution and the Alternative.”
It should be noted that after the departure of the Palestinian resistance from Beirut in 1982, there were massive campaigns pressuring Palestinian youth to go and fight in Afghanistan: campaigns driven by the U.S., Saudi Arabia, and Pakistani intelligence. At that difficult time, the centrality of Palestine in al-Shiqaqi’s thought drove him into a harsh battle against this coalition. He was one of the most prominent figures opposing this direction, telling Palestinian youth that jihad must be in Palestine, not elsewhere.
Al-Shiqaqi was present in difficult moments, not in easy ones. Reading the history of Islamic Jihad, we see its roots in this nucleus: orienting the compass toward fighting in the right place (Palestine). In the last five years of his life, he engaged more with other schools of thought, including Marxism, Arab nationalism, and Islamism. Sometimes he corrected Marxists on Marx’s concepts, perhaps reading Marx better than they did. He worked hard on himself intellectually, politically, and culturally, becoming encyclopedically knowledgeable.
The First Intifada
The Islamic Jihad Movement played a central and decisive role in igniting the streets and pouring fuel on the fire of the First Intifada in 1987. There were clear milestones of the movement’s role, which grew stronger after six of its prisoners escaped from Gaza Central Prison, and through a number of notable armed operations and its presence in the streets.
The enemy arrested al-Shiqaqi, then regretted deporting him outside his homeland. From exile, he was able to move, meet with dozens of national and Arab forces, especially Hezbollah and Palestinian factions, laying down the foundations of Islamic Jihad abroad and pushing it toward greater presence in the fields of resistance inside occupied Palestine.
The Madrid Conference and the Oslo Accords
After Oslo, the “Alliance of Ten Factions” was formed. Islamic Jihad’s position, expressed by al-Shiqaqi, was distinct and decisive. When addressing the masses directly, or writing, he would say with confidence and clarity: “We are living a crisis of the national, democratic, Islamic alternative.” He insisted these factions must acknowledge a real crisis within them.
He believed that to be a genuine alternative, they had to completely break with the defeated current that went to Oslo and established “self-rule” under the auspices of the occupation. He stressed that it was very difficult to achieve national unity with this current.
Al-Shiqaqi noted that some factions said they opposed Oslo because Arafat gave up 78% of Palestine. He replied: the enemy will give you nothing, not even 1%. He wants to take Palestine, the Arab world, and more, and will not give you anything. He said: I tell you, this Authority will only be a tool in the hands of the occupation. It will repress our people, for it is a security authority that cannot become a state.
He sharply criticized the Palestinian opposition, saying there can be no revolutionary alternative if it is subject to the dominance of one current or faction. For him, the revolutionary alternative must go beyond “opposition” and be national, revolutionary, and democratic, cutting fully with the classes that achieved privileges through coordination with the enemy. This alternative had to confront those classes, not seek “compromise” or serve them.
He considered some Palestinian reformist currents presenting themselves as “alternatives” but actually seeking reconciliation with the defeated current, therefore failed to present a true revolutionary alternative. He added that there was what he called the “worst alternative,” more dangerous than Arafat’s current and Oslo, because it entrenched defeat in deeper ways.
Al-Shiqaqi warned that if no clear stance was taken, the Authority would absorb factions into its structure, some being digested through elections or other false slogans, leading to the fragmentation of the revolutionary ranks, and that it might take a whole generation to correct matters.
He affirmed in many articles and speeches that the issue for us is the complete liberation of Palestine, not improving negotiation terms for the Oslo current. He said clearly: “What is required is not to strengthen this current, but to weaken it in favor of the revolutionary alternative.”
He added that if a primary current exists inside the ten factions or in the resistance, it should take its natural place in leadership. But he also said: “There is no obedience to a leading organization that departs from the collectively agreed-upon program.” This came in reference to the relationship between Hamas and the other factions that were part of the alliance.
Al-Shiqaqi saw that after Madrid, the rules of the game had changed. He said: “Now that Madrid has taken place, the alternative has become necessary—a matter of life or death.” He shared this view with Dr. George Habash, agreeing that the sectors benefiting from Oslo would not give up their privileges without a real, possibly violent and dangerous struggle. Here emerged a clear convergence between the radical left and Islamic Jihad, though progress was repeatedly hindered by setbacks.
Today, three decades after al-Shiqaqi’s martyrdom, we find that all the warnings he gave have fully come true. Almost everything he predicted has become a tangible reality, bringing us back to the central question: where is the revolutionary alternative?
In Conclusion
Al-Shiqaqi saw the national, Arab, Islamic, and international dimensions with great clarity, but did not have enough time, because of his assassination, to develop and deepen this thought further. In fact, this further points to why the Zionist entity targeted him for assassination.
He was not simply predicting the future; he possessed a deep anticipatory vision rooted in a clear understanding of the enemy and the nature of the struggle. In difficult times of nations’ lives, revolutionary voices and movements sometimes emerge that may not be “left-wing” in the traditional sense, but are revolutionary in vision and behavior. It is necessary to rethink the all-too-frequent limitations of the concept of revolution to a narrow left-nationalist framework, even in our Palestinian history.
For example, Sheikh Izz al-Din al-Qassam and his comrades went out to fight colonialism and the Zionists, while some communists and leftists sat in cafés debating philosophies detached from their people’s reality, much like the philosophers of Rome discussing “the sex of angels” while Rome burned around them. How similar yesterday is to today.
Armed resistance is not the only condition for victory, but it is the essential condition. The revolutionary alternative must be comprehensive, including revolutionary violence as one tool, and, at the same time, not relying on it alone. Revolutions have not triumphed solely by violence, and never by abandoning it. Al-Shiqaqi studied these experiences deeply and saw the need for a comprehensive cultural, political, and social vision. He found in the revolutionary Islamic vision an encompassing framework, making it the basis for building the military wing of Islamic Jihad, capable of turning ideas into a practical program. He also realized the need to build a broad revolutionary national front with independent options, relying not on others but on its own strength, capable of leading the Palestinian train toward liberation and return.
A Journey Through the Life and Thought of the Martyr Fathi al-Shiqaqi
By Khaled Barakat
(Based on the seminar “The Revolutionary Alternative in the Thought of the Martyr Fathi al-Shiqaqi” in October 2022)
