With Hamas constrained by a host of political and military factors, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the most prominent Palestinian terror group after Hamas, has upped its recruitment and propaganda efforts in the West Bank, analysts and former officials told The Times of Israel.

Filling a vacuum created by Hamas — which has faced grinding IDF pressure while its Gaza leadership deprioritizes the West Bank — Islamic Jihad has increasingly asserted itself in the northern West Bank, where the Palestinian Authority’s grasp is more tenuous than the rest of the territory.

With Islamic Jihad more closely supported by Iran than Hamas, more decentralized than Hamas and unencumbered by any pretense toward governance, any move the group makes toward West Bank dominance could prove more of an insidious challenge to Israel.

According to experts, the group will likely be harder to deter or decapitate, prolonging instability, further weakening the PA’s hold on the territory and raising difficult questions about the long-term effectiveness of Israel’s counterterrorism strategy, which may require a shift to more sustained military operations beyond the army’s already robust efforts in dangerous Palestinian urban settings.

The rise of PIJ, as the group is often referred to, could also give Iran a deeper foothold in the West Bank, analysts say.

Because Hamas has been constrained in the past by the need to maintain a veneer of legitimacy, balancing its terrorist activity with its political and governing goals, Tehran has historically been a more staunch backer of PIJ, which is fully dedicated to armed confrontation and has never claimed any mantle of being a legitimate political representative.

PIJ’s brand of “total, violent, uncompromising” resistance appeals to many young Palestinians, “especially when it’s also financially supported,” said David Koren, a former National Security Council official. “You can’t measure this electorally — they’re not running for parliament — but at the level of popular terror, they enjoy considerable sympathy.”

Effect of counterterrorism operations ‘waning’

Following the Hamas-led invasion and massacre on October 7, 2023, that sparked the war in Gaza, Israel took steps to ramp up anti-terror efforts in the West Bank, where Hamas had hoped to inspire copycat attacks.

These moves included heavy restrictions on Palestinian movement in the territory and assassinations of Hamas officials involved in West Bank terrorism.

In the northern West Bank, which has been a particular trouble spot for Israeli forces over the last decade due to the PA’s inability to tamp down terror activity, the army has also carried out large-scale counterterror operations, some of which lasted days or weeks and involve mass displacement of Palestinian civilians. The operations have typically centered around Nablus; Tulkarem, where a major raid was launched in early 2025; and Jenin and Tubas, which also saw large operations toward the end of the year.

But the effect of Israel’s counterterrorism measures “is waning, and these groups are resurging — especially Islamic Jihad,” said Joe Truzman, a research analyst at the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies who focuses on Palestinian terror groups.

PIJ was already showing signs of strength in the West Bank before October 7. The group led much of the uptick in violence and terrorism that began in the West Bank in the summer of 2021, said Truzman, adding that PIJ had more fighters on the ground in the northern West Bank at the time, though it remains difficult to pinpoint how many fighters belong to each terror group.

Israel has had some success in countering PIJ, but keeping the situation in the West Bank contained will require sustained focus given continued military activity elsewhere since October........

© The Times of Israel