JERUSALEM: Israeli authorities remained short on answers Tuesday over how six Palestinian prisoners’ escape from a high-security jail went unnoticed and where they could have gone, with a vast manhunt still underway.
The group’s early-morning flight, through a hole made below a sink in a Gilboa prison cell to a tiny tunnel exit discovered by guards and police early Monday morning, sounds almost like a plotline from Israeli-Palestinian conflict drama “Fauda.”
In fact, it has made the escapees “heroes” to many Palestinians, with celebrations in the Jenin area of the occupied West Bank.
But the full weight of Israel’s security arsenal has been deployed to catch them, including aerial drones, checkpoints on roads and an army mission to Jenin, where many of the men locked up for their roles in attacks on the Jewish state grew up.
The search continued as the country was celebrating Rosh Hashana (the Jewish new year) on Tuesday, more than 24 hours after the “Great Escape” hailed by some Palestinian newspapers.
“We have made no progress at present,” said a spokesman for police in northern Israel, where the Gilboa prison has stood since its construction during the Second Intifada or uprising against Israel.
“But all branches of the security forces have been mobilized to find the prisoners, whether it’s the army, the Shin Bet (internal security service), the police, border guards, and their special units,” the spokesman added.
An Israeli injunction is in effect against publishing details of the investigation, even as local media report on the scramble to recover from the embarrassing slip-up and prevent any possible attack by the fugitives.
There are many possible destinations for the band, from their nearby West Bank home to the shelter of the Gaza Strip, ruled by Islamist group Hamas and a refuge for the Islamic Jihad group to which five of the six belong.
They could even have tried to cross the border to another country altogether.
It was “very probable” that the men crossed into Jordan, whose frontier lies only around 20 kilometers (12 miles) from the prison, a police source told Israeli daily Haaretz Tuesday.
The paper also reported that a car may have picked up some or all of the escapees three kilometers from the prison on Monday.
Another branch of the probe is focusing on how the escape succeeded without the prison guards noticing a thing.
Public broadcaster Kan reported that the men were visible on surveillance cameras as they wriggled out of the tunnel exit — but no-one was monitoring the screens at the time.
One guard in charge of that sector of the prison may even have been asleep on duty, Kan added.
Meanwhile a journalist for the Maariv newspaper said that constructing the tunnel could have taken the inmates as long as five months, according to elements from the investigation.
Questions plague Israeli security forces after jailbreak
https://arab.news/9zdfb
Questions plague Israeli security forces after jailbreak
- It has made the escapees "heroes" to many Palestinians, with celebrations in the Jenin area of the occupied West Bank
- The full weight of Israel's security arsenal has been deployed to catch them
Israeli measures in West Bank seek to ‘assassinate Palestinian state’: Saudi UN envoy
- Kingdom ‘strongly condemns decision to convert lands to state property,’ Abdulaziz Alwasil tells Security Council
- ‘There’s no doubt that these violations undermine efforts to achieve peace and stability in the region’
NEW YORK: Saudi Arabia on Wednesday strongly condemned Israel’s “unlawful coercive measures” in the occupied West Bank, telling the UN Security Council that the actions amount to an attempt to “assassinate the Palestinian state” and undermine prospects for peace.
Speaking at a ministerial-level council meeting chaired by British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper, Saudi Arabia’s UN Ambassador Abdulaziz Alwasil said Riyadh rejects Israeli moves to expand settlements, seize land and alter the status of the Occupied Territories.
Israeli authorities “continue to gravely violate the rights of the Palestinian people” in the West Bank, he said.
“We meet today, more than two years after the Israeli aggression against the Gaza Strip, and at a moment where we also witness a new chapter of suffering and violations committed by the Israeli occupation,” Alwasil added.
Recent coercive measures aimed at imposing “Israeli dominance over the West Bank, expanding settlement activity, escalating settlers terrorism, practicing forced displacement against the Palestinian people and seizing their land … reflects Israel’s persistence in its attempt to assassinate the Palestinian state,” he said.
Israel’s adherence to a ceasefire agreement and halting its “illegal policies and seizure of land” have become “urgent matters that can’t be further delayed,” Alwasil added, calling for an end to “ongoing violations associated with annexation of lands belonging to unarmed Palestinians in the West Bank.”
Alwasil said 85 states have denounced the measures, and Saudi Arabia “strongly condemns the decision of the Israeli occupying authorities to convert lands in the West Bank to what it calls state property as part of schemes that aim to impose a new legal and administrative reality in the occupied West Bank.”
He added: “There’s no doubt that these violations undermine efforts to achieve peace and stability in the region.”
Alwasil reiterated that “Israel has no sovereignty” over the Occupied Territories, and expressed Riyadh’s “absolute rejection of these illegal measures which constitute a grave violation of international law, particularly Security Council resolution 2334.”
He added that “these actions are an aggression on the inherent right of the brotherly Palestinian people to establish their independent state on the June 4, 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital,” and that the measures aim to “alter the demographic composition and the character and the status” of the Occupied Territories.
He cited the 2024 advisory opinion by the International Court of Justice, saying it is “clear and explicit” in affirming that “Israel’s policies and practices in the occupied Palestinian territory and its continued presence there is considered unlawful.”
He added: “It stressed that Israeli occupation must end and that it is invalid to annex occupied Palestinian territories.”
Alwasil also condemned the seizure and demolition of a compound belonging to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East in East Jerusalem and the cutting of electricity to its facilities, including schools and health centers.
“This is an unprecedented violation of international humanitarian law aimed at undermining the status of Palestinian refugees” in the Occupied Territories, he said.
With the advent of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, he called for protecting humanitarian organizations and ensuring that they can carry out their duties “without hindrance.”
He said: “We strongly condemn practices that target humanitarian workers throughout the Palestinian territories. UNRWA isn’t a terrorist organization, and such claims are unacceptable.”
Alwasil added: “The international community must come together to provide protection for UNRWA under international humanitarian law.”
He said that in response to an invitation from US President Donald Trump, Saudi Arabia will “participate constructively and actively” in an inaugural meeting of the Board of Peace scheduled for Thursday in Washington, DC.
“We value the efforts of President Trump and his administration and the attention that they have devoted to ending the war and achieving peace in the Gaza Strip,” Alwasil added.
The Kingdom has signed the instrument of accession to the Board of Peace “in support of its efforts as a transitional body in accordance with a comprehensive plan to end the conflict in Gaza that was adopted by the Security Council by virtue of resolution 2803,” he said.
“This track aims to establish a permanent ceasefire, support the reconstruction of Gaza, and push forth a just and lasting peace based on the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination and the establishment of their independent state.”
Alwasil called for opening crossings to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza and enabling “Palestinian and international committees to administer” the enclave “with no conditions to ensure the management of the daily affairs” of its population while preserving “the institutional and geographic linkages between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in a manner that would guarantee the unity of Palestinian land.”
Riyadh rejects “any attempt to divide or undermine the integrity of Palestinian lands,” he said. “The only path to achieving a just and comprehensive peace requires establishing a permanent ceasefire, preventing displacement and annexation, ensuring Israel’s full withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, and supporting the reconstruction.”
