al-Quds Brigades
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The al-Quds Brigades is the armed wing of the Palestinian Islamist organization Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).
Especially active in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the al-Quds Brigades are reportedly receiving orders from the PIJ leadership in Damascus, Syria.
Since the beginning of the al-Aqsa Intifada, in September 2000, the al-Quds Brigades have been responsible for many attacks directed at Israeli civilians as well as the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) which have claimed the lives of 124 people, according to the MIPT Terrorism Knowledge Base. The group has carried out numerous shooting attacks and bombings, including suicide bombings.
The al-Quds Brigades were very active in the West Bank, especially in the town of Jenin, but extensive operations against its infrastructures carried out by the IDF resulted in severe losses to the group, and it appeared significatively weakened by 2004 in that region.[citation needed]
In the Gaza Strip, the al-Quds Brigades continued to gain strength during the al-Aqsa Intifada, despite IDF strikes which killed many of its fighters and commanders. The identities of the current leaders of the group are kept secret due to security concerns. The al-Quds Brigades, although significantly smaller that their Hamas counterpart, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, follow the same structural model and copy their pattern of attacks.
At the beginning of 2005, the al-Quds Brigades refused to join a truce negotiated between Israel and the Palestinian National Authority (PNA). As a result, the group's members continued to plan and carry out attacks that killed several Israelis. As of the middle of 2005, Israel identified the al-Quds Brigades as the main threat they face from a security point of view, considering the general restraint of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades.[citation needed]
On March 1, 2006, Abu al-Walid al-Dahdouh, a commander of the group's military wing, the al-Quds Brigades, was targeted and killed by a bomb or missile as he drove past the Palestinian finance ministry.
On August 30, 2006 the leader of the al-Quds Brigades, Hussam Jaradat, was killed in an Israeli assassination attempt. He was shot in a Jenin refugee camp by the IDF.
