Israel is changing
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Israeli forces this weekend kidnapped two Palestinian civilians from the country’s most secure prison, making two special weeks when the prisoners became notorious heroes and cups used to escape Palestinian pride.
Israel relied on aerospace detection, a number of police forces and the help of a 9900-strong secret intelligence service, to detect surveillance images using artificial intelligence, to capture six prisoners who fled Gilboa asylum on September 6.
In contrast, Palestinian prisoners entered prisons in northern Israel using a spoon, a kettle handle and, according to one of their lawyers, leftover dishes. Five of them are members of the Iranian-backed Palestinian Islamic Jihad group, one of the most powerful groups in Palestine and the terrorists chosen by the US and Israel.
For many Israelites, it was the case of a prison warden, whose sports offenses turned out to be cyberbullying – one warden was asleep or watching TV, the prison phone number was not changed in the police logbook, and prison plans was posted online by the company that built it.
“It’s done,” Prime Minister Naphtali Bennett said after the six arrests, thanks to the military, Shin Bet and the Israeli police for their work. Referring to the failures that led to his escape, he said, “What has been damaged – it is possible to repair it.”
But for many Palestinians, their flight has been a rare opportunity to encourage domestic heroes and humiliate Israel immediately. About 4,650 Palestinians are being held in Israeli prisons for security reasons, human rights groups say.
“It was shocking to see six young men come out of the most secure prison in Israel with something as simple as a spoon – it made Israel look so small,” said Salina Daw, an 18-year-old Palestinian student in Haifa, a mixed Arab and Jewish city in Israel. .
In Jenin, a town in the West Bank where the last two men were last captured and they were in the army, their escape only adds to the story of Zakaria Zubeidi, the most famous of the six.
Zubeidi, 45, became a soldier after Israeli forces shot at his mother and brother, eventually climbing into the al-Aqsa militia. He was charged, but was not found guilty of sedition during the Second Intifada, or of the occupation of Palestine. After the 2007 pardon, he was pardoned, but was arrested in 2019 after Israel claimed to have shot at buses going to Jewish villages that he saw as illegal by most countries in the West Bank. His trial had not yet begun.
“What a great man he is – he lost his mother, brother, and his home twice, and I hope one day he will be released,” said Nazek Jarrah, a 54-year-old woman who sent her children to night demonstrations in support of the escaped prisoners. “What he did, only heroes can do.”
The fleeing sparked protests around the West Bank, with Palestinian grandmothers mocking Israeli soldiers with spoons.
At a barber shop not far from Zubeidi’s home in a refugee camp in Jenin, a group of young men complained that they had arrested him a few days after he fled. “I felt like the sky was crying,” said Abdallah, 18. “What he did was amazing, it gave us strength.”
Outside, in the crowded streets of the camp, 36-year-old Wael said he had spent years in prison where Zubeidi had fled (in defense of the “camp”, he said, a well-known idea of carrying Israeli troops in the 2002 Jenin War), and the escape sounded like a dream. “What more could another prisoner think?” he said. “Life in an Israeli prison is impossible, and all we can think about is freedom.”
Meanwhile, Israeli engineers are reviewing prison security. Prisons Service Commissioner Katy Perry says at least 300 escape attempts were thwarted last year. The fact that the six survivors were surrounded within two weeks indicates Israel’s access to and ability to work in their own settlements, researchers said. Islamic Jihad members at Gilboa Prison have twice tried to flee in 2014.
For the Palestinians, the joy of the escape was not marred by their imprisonment, said Zechariah’s brother Yahya, who had also spent years in Israeli prisons for crimes. “All Palestinians are the largest prison we are waiting for to be released,” he said. “Zakaria showed us what was going on and he was released from prison.”