Fathi Shaqaqi's brother Khalil, after teaching in several universities in the United States, Kuwait and Bahrain, moved after the Oslo Peace Accords to the West Bank and is founding director of the Nablus-based Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, established in 1993.
[3] The teachings of Qutb, who was executed by President of Egypt Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1966 for supposedly plotting an Islamist revolution, convinced Shkaki that the "corrupt and secular governments" of the Arab world had to be replaced by Islamic societies politically, socially and culturally.
[6] As a university student in Egypt, Shiqaqi was inspired by the triumph of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, which saw the last Pahlavi Shah Mohammed Reza deposed in a popular uprising that culminated in the establishment of an Islamic Republic with long-exiled Ayatollah Khomeini as its spiritual figurehead.
The Palestinian Islamic Jihad, of which Shiqaqi was a founding member, remains ideologically and militarily aligned with Iran, its largest supplier of weapons and aid.
[6][15] Shaqaqi learned Hebrew while imprisoned in Israel, and kept a Hebrew dictionary on the bookshelf at his office in the Palestinian Yarmouk Camp on the outskirts of Damascus, which was decorated with a model of Al-Aqsa mosque, a lithograph of Hani Abed and framed photographs of suicide bombers[6] Able to speak "flawless English,"[8] Shaqaqi stated to Fisk that "Before I am a politician and the leader of Islamic Jihad, I am a human being and a poet..."[6] He was well read in the literature of Shakespeare, Dante, T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, E. M. Forster and other Western writers,[3][6] quoting Hamlet in length during his interview with Fisk.
[6] While in Lebanon the PIJ built up a very close relationship with the Shia Islamist group Hezbollah led by Hassan Nasrallah, and received military training from the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.
[18] He was a key player in setting up the National Alliance in January 1994, a coalition of eight PLO groups, Islamic Jihad and Hamas rejecting the Oslo process.
"[6] Shaqaqi was shot five times on 26 October 1995 in front of the Diplomat Hotel in Sliema, Malta by a hit team said to be composed of two Mossad agents.
[26] Islamic Jihad sources in Gaza confirmed that Shiqaqi had been traveling from Libya to his home in Damascus and made a stopover in Malta.
In the Telegraph version by Gordon Thomas, two men, Gil and Ran, arrived in Malta on a late-afternoon flight, after receiving new passports provided by fellow agents in Rome and Athens (sayan), and checked into the Diplomat Hotel where Shaqaqi was residing.
Another local sayan who owned a car rental agency provided Ran with a Yamaha motorcycle, which he told hotel staff he planned to use for touring the island.
At the same time, a freighter from Haifa radioed the Maltese harbour authorities that it had developed engine trouble and would need to anchor off the island for repairs.
The two kidon operatives then drove up on the motorcycle and pulled up while Shaqaqi was walking along the waterfront and one of them, Gil, shot him six times in the head, a 'kidon signature'.
[25] Ronen Bergman writes that Shaqaqi was out shopping, and was shot twice in the forehead and twice in the back of the head, with a semi-automatic pistol fitted with a silencer and a device to catch the spent cartridges, and that the motorbike had been stolen the day before.
[5][28] The assassination of Shaqaqi, who was regarded as a highly charismatic and capable leader, and the subsequent crackdown on the PIJ by Israel and the Palestinian National Authority led to a significant weakening of the organization.
[11] Following the Arab Spring the group has enjoyed a revival in its military and political strength with increased Syrian and Iranian support, and in some Gaza precincts, Shaqaqi's picture is more prominent than that of the Hamas prime minister.