Gaza: Thousands rally for Islamic Jihad

Tens of thousands of Islamic Jihad loyalists held a rally in Gaza on Friday to commemorate the group's slain founder.

Holding plastic models of rockets and wearing masks and mock suicide bomber's vests, the members chanted "death to Israel" and "Muhammad's army will be back to wipe off the Hebrew state."

An Islamic Jihad leader, Nafez Azzam, called on the crowd Friday to reject negotiations with Israel and support violent resistance.

The group was founded in 1979 by Fathi Shikaki as an offshoot of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. Shikaki was gunned down in Malta in October 1995 by a man on a motorcycle in an attack widely attributed to Israel.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1256799051562&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull


Photos from the rally:

http://www.paltoday.com/arabic/News-61814.html

Dawoud Shihab, the spokesman of the movement has stressed that this rally has gained a great importance through the participants' rejection to the Zionist attack against the occupied Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa mosque, in addition to their call for an end to the division state in the Palestinian arena.

He added that the rally proved that our people support the resistance option through linking the anniversary of the Shikaki's assassination with the Jihadist uprising sparked by a group of Islamic Jihad movement's fighters twenty-two years ago.

He noted that the huge attendance in the festival proved that the movement is in the right direction, calling on the mass of the Palestinian people to to join its clear and obvious approach.

http://paltoday.com/english/news.php?id=35894


More pics:

http://www.paltoday.com/arabic/News-61827.html
http://www.paltoday.com/arabic/News-61808.html

:puke:

Color me surprised. :boring: