Six Palestinians have escaped a prison in Northern Israel, the Gilboa prison, a high security Israeli prison, one of the most high-security facility early on Monday, making it an extremely rare prison break
The breakout took place hours before the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashana and marks an embarrassing security breach for the Israelis
“Overnight, we received a number of reports about suspicious figures in agricultural fields and from the prison service, which discovered very quickly that prisoners were missing from their cells and that six escaped,” says police spokesman, Eli Levy, Aljazeera reported.
Israeli forces have since begun a search for the Palestinians.
Sniffer dogs have been deployed in the search and checkpoints were set up around Gilboa. Various Israeli security forces including the army, the police and the Shin Bet internal security agency are involved in the manhunt.
Israeli forces screening the escape site
The Times of Israel reports that the men escaped through a tunnel that began underneath a sink and that they had help from the outside.
The prisoners included Zakariye Zubeidi, 46, a former Fatah party leader in the northern West Bank city of Jenin, as well as five Palestinian Islamic Jihad members serving life sentences for involvement in attacks on Israelis during the Palestinian Intifada in the early 2000s.
While the Israelis have denounced this escape, Palestinians celebrate the “heroic prison break”.
Qadura Fares, head of the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club, described the brazen escape as a victory against the Israeli security system.
“We are happy with this escape. We have called a lot for the necessity of liberating all Palestinian prisoners. If the prisoners can free themselves, this is a great thing,” Fares, who spent 18 years in prison, told Al Jazeera.
Israel and Palestine are currently involved in one of the world’s longest territorial conflict.