Gilboa Prison break
In August 2014, a similar escape attempt was foiled when an underground tunnel that prisoners had been digging was discovered by Israeli security forces.
Although it was initially suspected that some of them had been picked up by a waiting car, Israeli investigators later determined that they had no vehicles during the break and had traveled on foot.
[14][18] Based on interrogations of recaptured prisoners, Shin Bet determined that after escaping, the six men walked about 7 kilometers (4.3 miles) to the Israeli-Arab town of Na'ura, where they asked a few local residents to drive them to Jenin and were refused.
After hearing that a significant number of security forces were deployed along the border with the West Bank, they decided to split into three pairs and go into hiding in northern Israel.
[19] Except Zubeidi, the escaped prisoners were Islamic Jihad members, four of which were serving life sentences after being convicted of planning or carrying out attacks that killed Israelis, while the youngest prisoner had been held without charge for two years in administrative detention:[5][20][21] After learning of the escape, the Israel Police, including units of the Israel Border Police, began searching for the escaped prisoners in cooperation with the Shin Bet, the General Security Service.
Security officers in localities near Gilboa Prison were alerted on the escape, and about 200 roadblocks were set up on the roads, just hours before the Rosh Hashana holiday.
The police's Northern District commander said that there were no security advisories in place for residents of the area but urged them to exercise increased vigilance and report anything suspicious.
[26][27][28] Due to suspicion that the prisoners would attempt to flee to either Jordan or to the West Bank city of Jenin (all of the escapees were from the Jenin area), additional Israeli troops were deployed to the border with Jordan and the Seam Zone separating Israel and the West Bank.
They had been spotted rummaging through trash bins in an apparent search for something to eat, and had approached a woman to ask her for food.
[32][33][34][35] On the early morning of 11 September, a few hours after the first arrests, two more of the escapees, Zakaria Zubeidi and Mohammed Qassem Ardah, were arrested in northern Israel at a truck stop near the town of Shibli–Umm al-Ghanam after police were tipped off by a local Israeli-Arab man from a nearby village who had encountered them while riding a dune buggy in the area.
Military trackers subsequently traced their footprints to the truck stop parking lot where they were caught.
The operation was carried out by the IDF Haruv Reconnaissance Batalion and the Yamam special police unit.
In order to distract Palestinian militant factions, a larger force of troops was deployed elsewhere in the city to draw attention away from the location of the raid.
[41] Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett spoke to Omer Bar-Lev and "emphasised that this is a grave incident that requires an across-the-board effort by the security forces" to find the fugitives.
Islamic Jihad described the jailbreak as "heroic" and said it would "shock the Israeli defence system", while Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said it was a "great victory" that proves "the will and determination of our brave soldiers inside the prisons of the enemy cannot be defeated".
[42] Some Palestinian social media compared the break-out to that in the film the Shawshank Redemption,[43] while Gideon Levy, a personal friend of Zubeidi, drew an analogy with an event celebrated in Jewish history, the Acre Prison break organized by members of the underground movement Irgun.
Following the capture of two of the escapees on 10 September, there were renewed clashes in the West Bank, including live fire and molotov cocktail attacks against the Jalamah checkpoint.
[45][46] The Israeli government announced that a state commission of inquiry would be formed to look into the failures of the Israel Prison Service, headed by retired judge Menachem Finkelstein.
