Founded in 1979 by Palestinian students in Egypt who had split from the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood in the Gaza Strip. The founders were influenced by the Islamic revolution in Iran as well as the radicalization and militancy of Egyptian Islamic student organizations. They maintained close relations with radical Islamic Egyptian students, some of whom were involved in the assassination of president Sadat, and as a result, the Palestinian Islamic radicals were expelled from Egypt and returned to the Gaza Strip, where they formally began their activity as an Islamic Jihad organization. During the 1980s, several other groups of Palestinian Islamic Jihad were formed, but the faction which has survived is this one, the one that Professor Sami al-Arian was allegedly working with.