Ramallah -
At two in the morning on Sunday, the "Great Escape" that was carried out by 6 Palestinian prisoners from Gilboa prison, the most fortified among 28 Israeli prisons, ended.
Two weeks after the chase, Israeli special forces arrested the two fugitives, Munadil Nafe'at and Ayham Kammaji, from their home in Jenin, in the northern West Bank.
With this process, Israel completed the arrest of the group that made a breakthrough that shook its security system, by escaping through a tunnel dug with primitive tools over the course of a year.
Their temporary liberation met with Palestinian and Arab echoes, and with broad international solidarity with thousands of Palestinian prisoners in occupation prisons.
The head of the Palestinian Prisoners Club, Qaddoura Fares, says that this "end" was expected and "although re-arrest is not an inevitable fate", the escapees realize that it is one of the possible scenarios during preparation, during the escape or after it, especially since the previous operations, some of which were revealed and some of the participants were martyred. , while others managed to cross the borders into Arab countries.
Fares heads this club, which provides human rights and media advocacy services to Palestinian prisoners, and was previously imprisoned in Israeli prisons for about 15 years, in the eighties and nineties.
This man experienced planning and executing one of the most famous escapes of Palestinian prisoners from the Nafha desert prison in 1987, when Khalil al-Ra’i, Shawqi Abu Nasira and Kamal Abd al-Nabi succeeded in escaping, taking advantage of a loophole in the guarding procedures during construction work in the prison, and they actually arrived in Gaza before their case was revealed, later , while trying to smuggle them to Egypt.
We asked Fares, in an exclusive interview with Al-Jazeera Net, about the operation, which Israel considered a major security failure for the latest guard systems, especially in the Gilboa prison, which it calls "Al-Khazna" because of its strong fortification.
Fares was arrested for 15 years in Israeli prisons and witnessed the escape of prisoners from Nafha prison in 1987 (Al-Jazeera)
What breakthrough did Gilboa's escape make?
Israel considers itself the most advanced in the techniques used in guarding prisons and tightening the grip on prisoners, and the most experienced due to its long experience in the face of many previous escape attempts.
So I thought it closed all possible loopholes to these processes.
When she built new prisons, she designed them in such a way that the probability of any prisoner succeeding in freeing himself was zero.
Therefore, this operation was a "shock" for its entire security system.
The escape was not during movement from one prison to another, or on the way to the court or clinic, but by penetrating fortified walls, watching surveillance cameras and the eyes of the warders.
Therefore, Israel mobilized all its force to re-arrest them as part of a process to restore the dignity of its security system, to raise the morale of Israeli society and to restore its confidence in the army, police, and intelligence.
The most important achievement of this operation is the "erosion of the Israeli deterrence force", which caused widespread controversy, and "was the most severe blow" according to the same Israeli estimates.
In terms of the design of the operation, the escape in the past was faster and less planning and difficult. As for Gilboa, the tunnel digging continued for a year, according to the prisoners’ statements, and the prison in which it took place is considered the most fortified, and the distance between the outer wall and the prisoners’ rooms is long.
As the prisoners were nominated, they did not have a plan after their escape, and the security reality was threatening their lives.
Why did they flee?
And on what did they count?
As for the captives, they are predisposed to adventure. They do not submit their plans to logical calculations. Otherwise, we will not witness any heroics of escape and so on.
This is not a project that has a feasibility study, and most of their thinking was to break the prison restrictions and get out at any cost.
This is not a desperate move due to oppression inside the prison, but rather the choice of those who are in harmony with the instinct of the person who is arrested and refuses prison, talking to himself about liberation every day.
They realize that the occupation is superior in security and technology, but when there are reasons for the success of any step towards their freedom, they accept it.
Will the operation bring about a transformation in the reality of the prisoners inside the prisons, and in their case outside them?
Yes, because the escape of prisoners has raised big questions about the capabilities of the occupation to control inside and outside the prisons.
It also reconsidered issues we thought had become part of the past, such as the dream of freedom.
And we understood that the ability is possible if there is the will, and that nothing is impossible.
What happened in the "Freedom Tunnel" is a miracle if we take into account the possibilities of the occupation, in front of the depleted capabilities of the prisoners.
It is expected that Israel will try to use it as a pretext to escalate its attack on them.
Historically, they invoked security to justify their repression.
The prisoners sensed this scheme, so they threatened to go on a mass hunger strike to confront the occupation's attempt to impose a new oppressive reality among them.
We know that the prison administration's attempts will not stop. We recall that the former Israeli Minister of Internal Security, Gilad Erdan, formed a security committee a few years ago and it is still active, with the aim of "making prisoners' lives difficult."
But the resilience of the captive movement, and the popular support for their cause, remains a decisive factor in protecting them.
Palestinians hold pictures of the six prisoners who escaped from Gilboa prison on the sixth of September (Reuters)
What is your assessment of the Palestinian popular interaction that accompanied the escape?
Was it up to the event?
The popular interaction was on the rise, and if the prisoners had gone on a hunger strike, we would have found wider popular support and participation.
All indications were of an imminent explosion in all of Palestine.
This may be one of the main reasons that prompted the occupation to retract its sanctions in record time, as it sensed that the battle would not remain confined to prison walls and would have major security and political repercussions.
Through this process, the prisoners were able to force their cause on the Palestinian political agenda.
What is required now to free them and not leave them for many years in the cells?
Is there a strategy?
If the prisoners' issue is given the status it deserves, and put on a priority scale, they will not spend more years in prison.
And what we learned from this process is that the suffering of the prisoners can be invested in presenting the Palestinian cause to the world through the gateway of people who have faces, stories, dreams and suffering and who want to live in freedom.
This helps in liberating them and in moving the Palestinian cause more than talking about politics in dry language.
Despite this, it cannot be said that Palestinian politics has an actual strategy to liberate them, because working to implement any strategy needs acceptance from all forces and factions, and this is not available politically, although the issue of prisoners is still uniting the Palestinians in general, and it can be invested in order to always strengthen internal unity. .
We saw how the last year witnessed political disputes over many Palestinian files, but when the "Gilboa escape" occurred, the Palestinians returned and united behind the prisoners in daily movements in the West Bank, Gaza and the interior, and in media tools that work in harmony to support them.
The issue of the prisoners is able to unite the Palestinians, and this is one of the biggest lessons that the recent escape of prisoners delivered among their people, because although they are not from one faction, they were able, with unity and will, to liberate themselves.
The resistance in Gaza linked the completion of an upcoming exchange deal with Israel to the release of these re-arrested prisoners.
How soon is this possible?
The resistance in Gaza has publicly pledged to release them, and it is more aware than all of us of its ability to achieve this, and it knows the sensitivity of this file at the national and humanitarian level, and if it had not had the price that it could pay for them, it would not have made this promise.
The circumstance is now very ripe for the completion of the prisoner exchange process by handing over the resistance of the Israeli soldiers it has captured in Gaza since 2014, in exchange for the release of Palestinian prisoners in the prisons of the occupation.
Because the completion of the exchange has become part of the process of changing the environment and the prevailing climate in the region, especially with linking it to the siege imposed on Gaza, its reconstruction, and the infusion of life into it, which also because of its siege threatens Israeli security, as the occupation realizes that it cannot provide security for its settlers, especially in the settlements. surrounding Gaza, without Gaza living in peace.
Also, because of the position of the families of the captured soldiers in Gaza, which pressured the Israeli government towards returning their sons, the issue of the prisoners was placed in the middle of the road towards a solution, and it became an obstacle, and the completion of an exchange deal became required to break the impasse on several sides.
Solidarity activities with Palestinian prisoners re-arrested after their escape (Al-Jazeera)
What are the lessons that the Palestinians learned from the Gilboa operation?
The Palestinians, especially the new generations of them, realized that nothing is impossible now.
If the six prisoners who were able, willingly and with simple tools, to liberate themselves, are a sample of the Palestinian people, and the security system in Gilboa Prison is the State of Israel, then the Palestinian people (it was they who won).
Although Israel is a nuclear state and has a strong economy, this can be defeated with good planning, strong determination, and unity in the field.