Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) leader Ziyad Nakhalah at a press conference in Tehran. Photo: Reuters/Majid Asgaripour

As 13 of the Israeli hostages seized by Hamas during its Oct. 7 pogrom arrived in Egypt on Friday, the head of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) terrorist organization taunted the Jewish state in a televised address, saying it had been forced into the Qatari-brokered ceasefire deal by its supposed military failures.

“Had it not been for the losses on the battlefield, the Zionist regime would not have agreed to the ceasefire agreement and the exchange of prisoners,” PIJ secretary-general Ziyad Nakhalah said in the broadcast, according to reports in the official media of the Iranian regime, the terror group’s main sponsor.

He warned that Palestinian terrorist groups would “force the Zionist enemy to exchange all the prisoners on a wider scale.”

Nakhalah appeared to pour cold water on the prospect of further releases of the more than 240 hostages captured during last month’s pogrom. “The rest of the enemy’s prisoners including officers and soldiers will not be released without the release of the rest of our prisoners, and this issue is related to the end of the war and aggression,” he said.

“The enemy’s goals of ending the resistance and crushing it are still in place, so we must continue the battle to neutralize the enemy’s goals. The Zionist enemy will continue its aggression more brutally,” Nakhalah emphasized.

Nakhalah was first elected to head PIJ in 2018, four years after he was officially designated as a terrorist by the US State Department. He was reelected to the helm of the terror organization in February this year.

PIJ terrorists participated with Hamas in the Oct. 7 atrocities, which resulted in the murder of more than 1,200 people, mass rapes, and kidnappings. While PIJ disagrees with Hamas on aspects of their confrontation with Israel, the two groups coordinate on military attacks and are both rooted in the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood organization.

In the immediate aftermath of the Oct. 7 pogrom, Nakhalah received a phone call from Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, who congratulated him on the “brilliant and impressive victories of the Palestinian resistance.”

“You really made the Islamic community happy with this innovative and victorious operation,” Raisi said. “The Zionist regime is declining while the resistance front is conquering the peaks of victory.”