Security forces search for last 2 fugitives, warn they are desperate, dangerous
‘They have nothing to lose,’ police official warns; commissioner says he’ll hold off celebrating until all back in custody; at least one escapee likely in West Bank
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Security forces continued to search on Saturday for the last two escaped Palestinian prisoners who remained on the run, after the capture of four inmates who broke out of prison earlier this week.
Authorities believed that at least one of the remaining fugitives fled to the northern West Bank, where all six of the prisoners hail from.
“The estimation is that one has succeeded to get to the West Bank. The other one could be on either side of the Green Line,” Public Security Minister Omer Barlev said in an interview on Channel 12.
“We will catch them,” he added.
The two escapees still on the run are Iham Kamamji and Munadil Nafiyat, both of whom are members of the Islamic Jihad terror group.
Kamamji was serving a life sentence at the time of Monday’s escape, for killing an 18-year-old Israeli in 2006, a murder he reportedly expressed pride in.
Nafayat has not been charged with a crime other than being a member of the Islamic Jihad, and was being held under Israel’s practice of administrative detention, which allows it to imprison suspects without filing charges.
Security officials were increasingly concerned that Kamamji or Nafiyat could try to carry out an attack following the arrests of the other fugitives over the weekend.
“They have nothing to lose,” an unnamed senior official was quoted saying by the Walla news site.
دعواتكم للابطال الاسيرين " ايهم كممجي ومناضل نفيعات " الذي لم يتم العثور عليهم حتى اللحظة #نفق_الحرية
الله يسهل طريقكم pic.twitter.com/F5umrS3iBr— ALI Shtayeh (@alihshtayeh) September 11, 2021
Police Commissioner Kobi Shabtai echoed those concerns while visiting a joint command center set up to help coordinate the search efforts on Saturday.
“We must maintain alertness… these are people in a situation of despair and are liable to do extreme things,” he said.
Shabtai also called to hold off on celebrating the arrests until the remaining fugitives are caught.
“We’re just getting started and we can celebrate in the end, after we have the sixth [prisoner],” Shabtai said.
Security forces were conducting searches near Kfar Yehoshua on Saturday afternoon, some 30 kilometers (18 miles) from Gilboa Prison.
תשומת לב עכשיו בכפר יהושוע. כוחות וסריקות. pic.twitter.com/QpOaodJEff
— Or Heller אור הלר (@OrHeller) September 11, 2021
Meanwhile, Palestinian media reports said Israeli forces conducted searches in the town of Zububa, northwest of Jenin, adjacent to the border fence between the West Bank and Israel.
https://twitter.com/AqsaTVChannel/status/1436634161507405828?s=20
There were no immediate reports of anyone detained in Kfar Yehoshua or the Palestinian town.
On Friday night, searches were also reportedly conducted in Muqeible, an
Arab Israeli town adjacent to the northern West Bank border.
Four of the six escapees, including notorious terror commander Zakaria Zubeidi, were caught by security forces on Friday night and early Saturday morning.
Yaqoub Qadiri and Mahmoud al-Arida, the latter reported to be the mastermind of the jailbreak, were arrested in the northern town of Nazareth on Friday night.
Al-Arida, considered a senior Islamic Jihad member, was jailed for life for terrorist activity, including attacks in which soldiers were killed. Qadiri, also an Islamic Jihad member, was also serving life terms for acts of terrorism including the murder of an Israeli in 2004. Both men were reportedly involved in a 2014 attempt to break out of Gilboa.
Zubeidi and Mohammed al-Arida, the younger brother of the reported mastermind of the jailbreak, were recaptured by Israeli counter-terror police officers near the northern town of Shibli–Umm al-Ghanam at around 5 a.m. on Saturday.
Zubeidi, a notorious commander in Fatah’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade terror group, was in prison while on trial for two dozen crimes, including attempted murder.
The younger al-Arida, also an Islamic Jihad member was arrested in 2002 on terror offenses and sentenced to life in prison.
For Palestinians, the fugitives have been widely regarded as “heroes” who succeeded in freeing themselves from multiple life sentences.
Violent protests broke out at a number of locations in the West Bank after the announcement of the first two arrests on Friday evening.
Israel Defense Forces geared up for further protests on Saturday, after Palestinian groups in the West Bank called for mass protests in solidarity with the re-arrested prisoners.
The six escaped from Gilboa Prison in the pre-dawn hours of Monday morning, making their way out through their cell’s drainage system and an empty space underneath the prison.
Israeli forces have scrambled to find the inmates, all of them highly dangerous. In recent days, Israeli troops have arrested several of the fugitives’ family members, including five who were arrested in villages near the northern West Bank city of Jenin in the predawn hours of Friday morning, according to Palestinian media.
The escape exposed a series of failures at the prison, and Public Security Minister Omer Barlev said on Thursday that he had decided to form a government commission to probe the incident.
Among the apparent lapses were failure to learn lessons from previous escape attempts and several operational blunders, including unmanned watchtowers and sleeping guards.
Aaron Boxerman and agencies contributed to this report.
The Times of Israel Community.