Celebrations in Gaza after six Palestinians escape high-security Israeli prison

A member of the Israeli security forces watches a Palestinian man cross through the Al-Jalama checkpoint, located north of the West Bank town of Jenin, on September 6, 2021. (AFP)
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Updated 07 September 2021
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Celebrations in Gaza after six Palestinians escape high-security Israeli prison

  • Observers described the escape of prisoners as ‘exactly similar to what is happening in the movies’

GAZA CITY/AMMAN: Happiness reigned in public squares in the Gaza Strip, which saw the distribution of sweets and rejoicing at what people described as “extracting freedom” following the success of six prisoners in escaping a heavily fortified Israeli prison.
While Palestinians in Gaza took to the streets spontaneously, the organization of many gatherings and distribution of sweets came from the Islamic Jihad, to which five of the six prisoners belong. The sixth inmate belongs to Fatah.
A member of Islamic Jihad’s political bureau, Walid Al-Qutati, said the process of escaping from Gilboa was very complicated and required experts to explain how the operation took place.
“The operation will constitute an epic and legend in the history of the Palestinian national struggle,” he added.
There were celebrations in the streets, with some banners that read: “The second great escape from the prisons of the Zionist enemy.” Others bore the names of the prisoners who had succeeded in “extracting their freedom.”
The prisoner issue is considered one of the complexes in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and official estimates indicate that more than a million Palestinians have been imprisoned since June 1967.
About 5,000 Palestinians are still languishing behind bars under conditions described by Palestinian organizations as “inhumane.”
Observers described the escape of prisoners as “exactly similar to what is happening in the movies,” given that Gilboa was described in Israel as “the safe prison” because of its tight procedures to prevent any escape attempt.
According to the Addameer Foundation for Prisoner Care and Human Rights, Gilboa is in the Beit She’an area of northern Israel. It was established under the supervision of Irish experts and opened in 2004.
Addameer added: “The prison is of a very high security nature, and is described as the most guarded prison, in which Israel holds Palestinian prisoners, accusing them of being responsible for carrying out offensive operations targeting Israelis.”
Military expert and former major general, Wassef Erekat, told Arab News: “The escape operation represents a victory for the Palestinian will. Rather, it is a miracle added to the achievements of the prisoners in the occupation prisons, who are inventing means to penetrate the security system that Israel boasts about.”
Erekat said the success of the six prisoners would encourage other inmates to think more about taking their freedom into their own hands in light of Israeli intransigence in terms of liberating them, whether through political negotiations or as part of an exchange deal.
Writer Ahmed Abu Zuhri did not rule out that Palestinian factions would “surprise the occupation” with similar operations, whether inside or outside prisons.
“The enemy realizes that there are six free time bombs on the loose, and the six prisoners may resort to surprising the enemy with commando operations instead of disappearing, as they realize that Israel will not stop searching for them and liquidating them,” he told Arab News.
Mahdi Abdulhadi, founder and chairman of the Jerusalem-based Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs, said that Palestinians met each other as martyrs, prisoners, or escapees.
“The resistance reflects a people who want a life with dignity and these six have shown what national resistance is all about,” he told Arab News. “There is widespread happiness and a feeling of the ability of Palestinians to challenge their jailers. This is the time of defeating the culture of fear and depending on self-reliance while Israel is trying to uphold the status quo policy.”
A retired Jordanian Air Force general, Maamoun Abu Nawwar, said the escape completed the action that had begun with the 11-day battle between Israel and the Gaza Strip. “This is an act of resistance by a people who are opposed to injustice,” he told Arab News.
Former Palestinian Cabinet Minister, Ziad Abu Zayyad said the escape of Palestinian war prisoners should remind everyone that as long as there were wars and armed conflict there would be “prisoner fighters” deprived of their freedom.
“Wars and occupation should come to their end. Palestinian prisoners will never be broken until their people achieve their right for peace, security, and freedom in their independent state of Palestine.”
Hazem Ayyad a columnist for Assabeel newspaper, said the success of the six inmates was a “major victory” for the Palestinian resistance and shattered the “supposedly air-tight” Israeli security model.
Ayyad said the escape came at a time when the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah was losing popularity and Hamas was involved in prisoner exchange negotiations. Israeli daily Haaretz said that the escape was a security and intelligence failure.
Adham Manasra, a broadcaster at Raya FM in Ramallah, said a former Gilboa inmate had told the radio show that restrictions were extremely harsh at the prison. “The caller said that escaping from Gilboa is like a miracle.”
The former prisoner had said inmates were checked three times a day and were not even allowed to take a metal spoon to their room.
Manasra told Arab News that people were happy, but that some worried the escape would lead to greater Israeli repression of prisoners and the collective punishment of Palestinians.


Tens of thousands of Palestinians flee West Bank refugee camps

Updated 18 February 2025
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Tens of thousands of Palestinians flee West Bank refugee camps

  • The camps, built for descendants of Palestinian refugees who fled or were driven from their homes in the 1948 war around the creation of the state of Israel, have long been major centers for armed militant groups

JERUSALEM: Tens of thousands of Palestinians living in refugee camps in the occupied West Bank have left their homes as a weeks-long Israeli offensive has demolished houses and torn up vital infrastructure in the heavily built up townships, Palestinian authorities said.
Israeli forces began their operation in the refugee camp in the northern West Bank city of Jenin on Jan. 21, deploying hundreds of troops and bulldozers that demolished houses and dug up roads, driving almost all of the camp’s residents out.
“We don’t know what’s going on in the camp but there is continuous demolition and roads being dug up,” said Mohammed Al-Sabbagh, head of the Jenin camp services committee.

An Israeli army excavator demolishes a residential building in the Tulkarem camp for Palestinian refugees during an ongoing Israeli military operation in the occupied West Bank on February 18, 2025. (AFP)

The operation, which Israel says is aimed at thwarting Iranian-backed militant groups in the West Bank, has since been extended to other camps, notably the Tulkarm refugee camp and the nearby Nur Shams camp, both of which have also been devastated. The camps, built for descendants of Palestinian refugees who fled or were driven from their homes in the 1948 war around the creation of the state of Israel, have long been major centers for armed militant groups. They have been raided repeatedly by the Israeli military but the current operation, which began as a ceasefire was agreed in Gaza, has been on an unusually large scale. According to figures from the Palestinian Authority, around 17,000 people have now left Jenin refugee camp, leaving the site almost completely deserted, while in Nur Shams 6,000 people, or about two thirds of the total, have left, with another 10,000 leaving from Tulkarm camp.
“The ones who are left are trapped,” said Nihad Al-Shawish, head of the Nur Shams camp services committee. “The Civil Defense, the Red Crescent and the Palestinian security forces brought them some food yesterday but the army is still bulldozing and destroying the camp.” The Israeli raids have demolished dozens of houses and torn up large stretches of roadway as well as cutting off water and power, but the military has denied forcing residents to leave their homes.
“People obviously have the possibility to move or go where they want, if they will. But if they don’t, they’re allowed to stay,” Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani told reporters.
The operation began as Israel moved to banish the main UN Palestinian relief organization UNRWA from its headquarters in East Jerusalem and cut it off from any contact with Israeli officials.
The ban, which took effect at the end of January, has hit UNRWA’s work in the West Bank and Gaza, where it provides aid for millions of Palestinians in the refugee camps.
Israel has accused UNRWA of cooperating with Hamas and said some UNRWA workers even took part in the Hamas-led attack on communities in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 that set off the 15-month war in Gaza.

 


More than one million Syrians return to their homes: UN

People walk past shops in Homs on February 10, 2025. (AFP)
Updated 19 February 2025
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More than one million Syrians return to their homes: UN

  • “Since the fall of the regime in Syria we estimate that 280,000 Syrian refugees and more than 800,000 people displaced inside the country have returned to their homes,” Filippo Grandi, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees

GENEVA: More than one million people have returned to their homes in Syria after the overthrow of Bashar Assad, including 280,000 refugees who came back from abroad, the UN said on Tuesday.
Assad was toppled in December in a rebel offensive, putting an end to his family’s decades-long grip on power in the Middle Eastern country and bookmarking a civil war that broke out in 2011, with the brutal repression of anti-government protests.
Syria’s war has killed more than half a million people and displaced millions from their homes.
The Islamist-led rebels whose offensive ousted Assad have sought to assure the international community that they have broken with their past and will respect the rights of minorities.
“Since the fall of the regime in Syria we estimate that 280,000 Syrian refugees and more than 800,000 people displaced inside the country have returned to their homes,” Filippo Grandi, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, wrote on the X social media platform.
“Early recovery efforts must be bolder and faster, though, otherwise people will leave again: this is now urgent!” he said.
At a meeting in Paris in mid-February, some 20 countries, including Arab nations, Turkiye, Britain, France, Germany, Canada and Japan agreed at the close of a conference in Paris to “work together to ensure the success of the transition in a process led by Syria.”
The meeting’s final statement also pledged support for Syria’s new authorities in the fight against “all forms of terrorism and extremism.”
 

 


Israeli military says it struck weapons belonging to former Syrian administration in southern Syria

Updated 19 February 2025
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Israeli military says it struck weapons belonging to former Syrian administration in southern Syria

CAIRO: The Israeli military said on Tuesday that it struck weapons which it said belonged to the former Syrian administration in southern Syria.

 


Algiers slams French minister’s visit to W. Sahara

Updated 18 February 2025
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Algiers slams French minister’s visit to W. Sahara

  • France’s stance on Western Sahara has been ambiguous in recent years, often straining its ties with Morocco

ALGIERS: Algeria on Tuesday denounced a visit by French Culture Minister Rachida Dati to Western Sahara, after Paris recognized Moroccan sovereignty over the disputed territory, as “objectionable on multiple levels.”
The vast desert territory is a former Spanish colony largely controlled by Morocco but claimed for decades by the Algeria-backed Polisario Front.
Dati, who described her visit as “historic,” launched with Moroccan Culture Minister Mohamed Mehdi Bensaid a French cultural mission in the territory’s main city, Laayoune.
An Algerian foreign ministry statement posted on social media Tuesday said the visit “reflects blatant disregard for international legality by a permanent member of the UN Security Council.”
“This visit reinforces Morocco’s fait accompli in Western Sahara, a territory where the decolonization process remains incomplete and the right to self-determination unfulfilled,” it said.
Dati’s trip, a first for a French official, “reflects the detestable image of a former colonial power in solidarity with a new one,” the statement added.
The United Nations considers Western Sahara to be a “non-self-governing territory” and has had a peacekeeping mission there since 1991, whose stated aim is to organize a referendum on the territory’s future.
But Rabat has repeatedly rejected any vote in which independence is an option, instead proposing autonomy under Morocco.
France’s stance on Western Sahara has been ambiguous in recent years, often straining its ties with Morocco.
But in July, French President Emmanuel Macron said Rabat’s autonomy plan was the “only basis” to resolve the Western Sahara dispute.
Algeria has backed the separatist Polisario Front and cut diplomatic relations with Rabat in 2021 — the year after Morocco normalized ties with Israel under a deal that awarded it US recognition of its annexation of the Western Sahara.
In October, the UN Security Council called for parties to “resume negotiations” to reach a “lasting and mutually acceptable solution” to the Western Sahara dispute.
In November 2020, the Polisario Front said it was ending a 29-year ceasefire with Morocco after Moroccan troops were deployed to the far south of the territory to remove independence supporters blocking the only road to Mauritania.
The Polisario Front claims the route is illegal, arguing that it did not exist when the ceasefire was established in 1991.
 

 


Kurdistan region’s pipeline restart ready to go, foreign minister says

Updated 18 February 2025
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Kurdistan region’s pipeline restart ready to go, foreign minister says

  • Baghdad has periodically withheld the Kurdistan region’s share of the federal budget to try to stop it from exporting oil independently

BAGHDAD: A major pipeline connecting Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan region to Turkiye is ready to reopen and resume exports, the Kurdish foreign minister said on Tuesday, potentially ending a dispute between Baghdad and Irbil that led to the closure of the pipeline in 2023.
Foreign Minister Safeen Dizayee declined to say when the pipeline would reopen but said it would mark a turning point in relations between Kurdistan and Baghdad.
Iraq’s oil minister said on Monday the Iraq-Turkiye pipeline (ITP) will resume next week.
“All arrangements that were set on the table have been agreed to, with the aim to prepare for re-exports. There shouldn’t be any hiccups. The legal aspects have been met, the technical aspects are in place,” Dizayee told Reuters by phone. “The button just has to be pushed to increase production and then re-export.”
The oil flows were halted by Turkiye in March 2023 after the International Chamber of Commerce ordered Ankara to pay Baghdad damages of $1.5 billion for unauthorized pipeline exports by the Kurdistan Regional Government between 2014 and 2018.
Negotiations to restart the pipeline have been ongoing, with US officials participating in some of the talks.
Resuming oil exports will boost the Kurdistan region’s budget, Dizayee said.
“This means Kurdistan will benefit from the federal budget and hopefully this will end the saga of (civil servants’) salaries coming or not coming, received in dribs and drabs,” Dizayee said.
Baghdad has periodically withheld the Kurdistan region’s share of the federal budget to try to stop it from exporting oil independently.
Oil producers in the Kurdistan region have had to wind down production without an export route. It will likely take some time for them to restart their oil wells and for the pipeline to use its full capacity. Before it was shut down, it transported around 450,000 barrels per day.
“They’ve invested a lot. It was a risk they took and it must pay off. They [the companies] need assurances that their investment will not be down the drain,” Dizayee said. “Compensation is something that needs to be discussed.”
An international consultancy will be brought in to do an assessment of the cost of production, expenses, cost recovery and the production sharing agreements, he said.