Publication
Omar Shaban Ismail · Middle East Institute · 2022
A 2022 Middle East Institute analysis of Israel's Operation Breaking Dawn against Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Shaban examines the causes — converging Israeli, PIJ, and Egyptian interests at a politically charged moment — and the consequences: the demonstrated gap between Hamas and PIJ, the irrelevance of factional distinctions to Gaza's civilians, and the impossibility of managing Gaza's security environment through episodic military operations.
A 2022 Middle East Institute analysis of Israel's Operation Breaking Dawn against Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Shaban examines the causes — converging…
In August 2022, Israel launched a military operation against Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) in Gaza — codenamed "Breaking Dawn" — specifically targeting PIJ leadership and infrastructure. The operation was deliberately calibrated to exclude Hamas from both the targets and the political equation, representing a significant departure from Israel's previous approach of holding Hamas responsible for all armed activity in Gaza.
The causes of the escalation were rooted in a convergence of Israeli, PIJ, and Egyptian interests at a specific political moment. Israel was heading into its fifth election in three years, and a military operation against a designated terrorist organization — without risking a full-scale war with Hamas — offered electoral dividends. PIJ, for its part, had been emboldened by Israeli arrests of West Bank PIJ figures and was under pressure from its leadership in Damascus to demonstrate relevance. Egypt's role was complex: Cairo had been mediating intensively between Hamas and Israel, and the targeted operation against PIJ, which falls outside Egypt's mediation framework, tested the limits of Cairo's influence.
The consequences of the operation were significant. In the short term, it demonstrated that Israel could conduct precision operations in Gaza without triggering a wider war — a concept with implications for future Israeli military planning. It also revealed the growing divergence between Hamas and PIJ: Hamas did not join the fighting, effectively allowing Israel to eliminate PIJ operatives under its watch.
For Gaza's civilian population, the distinction between Hamas and PIJ operations was meaningless. Residential areas were hit, civilians were killed, and the sense of perpetual insecurity deepened. The operation underscored a fundamental pattern: Gaza's civilians bear the consequences of political and military calculations made by actors whose decision-making processes they have no influence over.
The longer-term consequence was a demonstration that Gaza's security environment could not be managed through episodic operations. Without a political process that addresses the underlying causes of militancy — blockade, unemployment, absence of political horizon — military operations merely reset the clock for the next round of violence.
Topic: Gaza Politics — Islamic Jihad · Hamas · Israeli escalation — Text © Middle East Institute — archived here with attribution to the source. — Original source