"...On February 25, 2005, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) perpetrated a suicide bombing attack on the sea-front Herbert Samuel promenade in Tel Aviv, murdering four Israeli citizens and wounding 50. The attack was directed by PIJ headquarters in Damascus. The PIJ is a radical Islamic terrorist organization actively conspiring to destroy the State of Israel and to replace it with an extremist Islamic Palestinian state. During the ongoing violent Palestinian-Israeli confrontation the PIJ has been responsible for several deadly suicide bombing attacks, the most conspicuous of which was perpetrated at the Maxim Restaurant on October 4, 2003, in which 21 people were murdered and about 60 wounded. The PIJ is almost completely dependent on two countries: Syria, which permits its leadership, under the direction of Dr. Ramadan Shalah, to operate from its territory and from Lebanon, from where it directs its anti-Israeli terrorist activities in the Palestinian Authority-administered territories; and Iran, its most important patron, which provides it with massive financial support (in fact almost all of its budget) and which uses is (and Hezbollah) as a lever to escalate terrorism in the PA-administered territories. In the past (2003) the PIJ also tried to end the cease fire (hudna) achieved by Israel and the Palestinians, and during the 1990s it tried to sabotage the Oslo peace process. The recent attack in Tel Aviv challenges Abu Mazen and the Palestinian Authority and poses obstacles for the current calm and the continued Israeli-Palestinian dialogue... "