Unprecedented Prison Break in Occupied Palestine; Details and Secrets

The world awoke to a “legendary operation” of the success of 6 Palestinian prisoners in escaping at dawn on September 6, 2021, from the Israeli Gilboa prison, the most fortified prison ever.

The operation sparked joy among supporters of the Palestinian cause and shock in “Israel,” where the prisoners are said to have dug a tunnel with “spoons” to free themselves, reaching the sunlight beyond their cell windows for the first time in many years, after they were confined to spend their entire lives within prison cells.

The Israeli Prison Service published pictures of the six prisoners, who are: Zakaria Zubeidi, the former leader of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, Monadel Yacoub Nafe’at, Muhammad Qasim Ardah, Yaqoub Mahmoud Qadri, Ayham Nayef Kamamji, Mahmoud Abdullah Ardah, the five of whom are from the Islamic Jihad Movement.

 

Initially, the details of the operation carried out by the prisoners from the city of Jenin began from Room 5, Wing No. 2 in Gilboa Prison. This wing is located near the prison fence.

Israeli estimates indicated that digging the tunnel took several years, and it was dug under the toilet sink, and they were able to exit through the tunnel leading out of the prison walls against agricultural land.

The first to discover the escape were farmers working in the area, who thought they were thieves before escaping, as the Israeli police were informed of this, according to the security account of the Occupation.

Israeli security officials said that the prisoners took advantage of the guards’ preoccupation with the Jewish New Year celebrations, and the presence of few forces in the prison, noting that the Prison Authority administration had recently received information about the possibility of a riot in a prison, but it seems that this information was intended to conceal the escape plan.

A security source described to the Hebrew Channel 12 what happened as a “very embarrassing incident” for the Prison Authority, and that preparations for it had been underway for a long time, with no intelligence information.

 

The operation constituted a massive shock to the security levels in “Israel,” as the Minister of Internal Security said: “The planning for the prisoners’ escape from Gilboa prison was meticulous, and we suspect that they received help from outside.”

The freed prisoner and expert in Israeli affairs, Saeed Bisharat, said: “The operation to escape from Gilboa prison in particular is closer to fantasy, as it is the most fortified Israeli prison and the most severe in terms of security measures, because it is the prison designated for the most dangerous Palestinian prisoners, who have carried out martyrdom operations and are condemned to life imprisonment.”

He added in an interview with Al-Estiklal, “I spent 6 years of my sentence in Gilboa, which is equipped with unusual 9-meter-long fences topped with sticky barrels that are impossible to climb, and under the prison floor there are layers that prevent drilling and is equipped with immediate monitoring techniques, and this is what makes the escape process from this prison legendary, due to its extreme fortification.”

Bisharat explained that “the Occupation mobilized all its army and ordered all officers and officials to cut off the Jewish holidays, as well as mobilizing the undercover forces and the police and deploying its forces on the borders of Jordan, Syria, and Gaza, and taking strict security and intelligence measures in the West Bank, where the Shin Bet units were deployed, the barriers were intensified, and helicopters and drones were dispatched to catch them.”

He continued: “It is certain that the prisoners have prepared a precise and integrated plan to escape from the prison, including how to get out of it and then leave the area, and it has been successfully completed, and what remains is their arrival to a safe destination where they are free, and I expect that they have studied the matter well and learned from previous escape experiences from the Occupation prisons.”

Basharat stressed that “the repercussions of the escape of ‘dangerous prisoners’ from this central prison will be severe on the political and security levels in the occupying country.”

He pointed out that this operation “may topple large heads on the security, military, and possibly political sides as well, bearing in mind that the current government is weak and over the past months has received strikes from Gaza that revealed its weakness and forced it to stop the punitive measures against the Strip that it imposed since Naftali Bennett assumed its presidency.”

Translation: Watch | Intense deployment of Zionist forces in the village of Sandala, located near the fading fence with Jenin.

 

Fears are growing in “Israel” that the successful escape operation will lead to security repercussions that pose a threat to the settlers in the West Bank and the surrounding settlements.

Following the escape, the head of the Police Operations Division, Avi Bitton, announced that “the security alert has been raised across the country,” saying: “We are not ruling out the possibility that they may try to attack.”

For his part, an expert in Israeli affairs, Saleh Al-Naami, said: “In addition to the humiliating security blow received by the occupying state, there is a wide security alert for fear that these prisoners will carry out commando operations.”

He continued, “or their return to planning operations and leading the resistance in the West Bank and re-igniting it in the face of the Occupation, especially since all the fugitive prisoners are from the perpetrators of operations and leaders of the resistance, who Israel calls ‘prisoners with blood on their hands,’” in reference to how dangerous they are, and their exclusion from any possible prisoner exchange deals.

Al-Naami added in an interview with Al-Estiklal that “the task of keeping the prisoners free will be very difficult, as Israel is in an unprecedented state of alert, in an attempt to tighten the noose around the fugitive prisoners and arrest them.”

He pointed out that “there is security cooperation that the Palestinian Authority does not deny, and leaks in the Hebrew media show that the Authority has already begun exchanging information about the six prisoners, especially since the talk is about a limited area of ​​the West Bank, specifically in the north, where the prisoners are likely to arrive.”

Al-Naami stressed the need to be wary of media leaks that are being broadcast on the Hebrew media now, which states that the prisoners headed to the borders of Jordan or the borders with Syria with the aim of misleading the prisoners and giving them the impression that the Occupation does not have information about their whereabouts to make them more relaxed about security procedures and movement, and thus facilitates their arrest, and therefore it is necessary to warn about these leaks.”

He continued, “The scenario of their fleeing to Jordan, as the Occupation is trying to promote, is difficult, considering that if they succeed in crossing the monitored borders, the security services in Jordan have close security and intelligence cooperation with the Occupation, and their presence there will not be less dangerous than their presence in the West Bank, as well as, access to Gaza in light of these security measures and the separation fence is also out of the question.”

Israeli journalist Elior Levy warned that if the six prisoners who managed to free themselves through a tunnel were killed, Gaza would respond with rockets.

 

Immediately after the news was announced, Palestinian social networking sites buzzed with “blessings” and the news of the operation was widely circulated in a festive manner through an Arabic hashtag that translates into (Freedom Tunnel), and on the ground, an atmosphere of joy prevailed in the streets and public squares in Palestine.

 

 

The Palestinians chanted the “Eid Takbeer” to celebrate the success of the prisoners’ escape, and Palestinians also distributed sweets in the public streets, rejoicing at the operation.

The Palestinian factions and military wings blessed the operation’s success and the Palestinian prisoners’ liberation from Gilboa prison. The Al-Qassam Brigades said: It blesses “the qualitative heroic act carried out by a group of heroic prisoners of war and fighters in Gilboa prison, who snatched their freedom with their own hands under the hearing and sight of the occupier, crossing the walls of injustice and aggression.”

A spokesman for Saraya Al-Quds, the military wing of the Islamic Jihad Movement, Abu Hamza, said: “We congratulate the operation to extract freedom, which was led by our prisoner leader Mahmoud Abdullah Ardah and his five brothers from Gilboa prison, and we consider this a new victory for the captive movement in the face of the enemy within the war of wills.”