Israel: Security Novices in Penal Institutions...?

"I just saw here about three or so masked men carrying bags quickly crossing the road opposite the prison…"

"They were wearing mud-colored clothes and ran from the area of the prison to an open area. I said [to myself] that I must report this."

Israeli taxi driver

 

"We're not talking about a tunnel which was dug, exactly. There's a failure in the building, which is on top of a base of poles."

"There is a space underneath -- and apparently the prisoners used it."

Arik Yaakov, local police chief, Beit She'an, northern Israel

In this photo provided by Israel's Prisons Service, Israeli security personnel inspect a cell after six Palestinians escaped through a tunnel the Gilboa prison in north Israel, on Monday, September 6, 2021. (Israeli Prisons Service via AP)

 

An unbelievable litany of insecure measures at a high-security institution for seriously criminal prisoners with blood on their hands. Starting perhaps, with ensuring that hardcore terrorists don't get too depressed and lonely by being incarcerated singly in one-person prison cells. Allowing them, as ideological colleagues, to live together in a cell cluster, sharing amenities between them. And then, acceding to a request from an arch-terrorist known as an escape artist to be permitted to join the group.

Moving on to the prison design; a prison on stilts, with a measurable gap between ground level and the prison housing Palestinian terrorists known to have committed gravely deadly assaults against Jewish Israelis for the sin of being both Jews and Israelis; the state and the people living on their ancient Judaean heritage geography which disaffected Arab settlers call theirs and theirs alone after having adopted the identification of 'Palestinians' which since the Roman Empire renamed it thus was exclusively Judean.

Four of the inmates in this penal institution with a reputation of being a high-security jail popularly referred to as 'The Safe', were serving life sentences in recognition of deadly terrorist attacks they committed. One of their company was a former commander of Fatah's terrorist wing. Zakaria Zubeidi, a skilled escapist, was privileged on request, to share the escapees' cellgroup, out of a polite Israeli wish to accommodate prisoners. 

 

When Palestinians want to express their discontent they go on hunger strikes, certain to engage the attentive Western press in their skilled and subtle discriminatory 'shaming' of the Jewish state, in sympathy with the 'plight' of Palestinians, immeasurably aiding in their public relations campaigns. Israel, sensitive to displays of Western criticism over its self-protective security measures imposed by deadly Palestinian assaults, shrinks in the glare of public opinion and invariably relents.

According to Israeli officials, in this escape, so embarrassing to authorities and so threatening to Israelis that known criminal terrorists are again on the loose to continue their atrocities against Jews, the escapees had spent time furtively digging a tunnel under the cells' sink connecting to a series of passageways under the Gilboa prison. The most secure prison in the country. Built on stilts. A rusty spoon was the sole tool used to dig the tunnel, purportedly over the course of a month.

 

The Gilboa prison in northern Israel, on September 6, 2021. (Flash90)

 

The prison guard on the watchtower directly over the area in question who might have, had he been doing his duty, rather than snoozing -- as he was -- might have seen the escapees and instantly reported the security breach, leading to their immediate recapture. Another strike; lax vigilance. No one in the prison was remotely aware of the digging activities. No routine inspections, presumably; the spoon out of sight when not in use, behind a poster. 

One explanation is that the prisoners tunnelled their way through the drainage system, emerging from a hole which weeds concealed outside the southern wall of the prison. A smuggled cellphone is theorized to have been in their possession, giving them contact with colleagues in the outside world. Some of the escapees are known to have been picked up by a waiting vehicle; others dispersed elsewhere. Some to the West Bank town of Jenin, others headed to Jordan.

The Palestinian population is jubilant; yet another celebration where sweets are handed out and shouts of joy ring out at once again foiling the Israeli adversary. For them there is much to celebrate; the 'resistance' is alive and well, and its prosecutors have been once again bedeviled. On the other hand, the escapees had a great hand up from the state so busy with defending itself it was unable to identify its own weak points, such as an architectural schematic available online to the escape planners. Details, mere inconvenient details...

A detailed plan of Gilboa Prison available online (via Twitter)

As misadventures go, this one was quite simply inexcusably amateur; amusing if it were not so serious. That old recommendation when things go wrong, of ordering heads to roll, seems rather apt here. It would seem the deputy police commander had been contacted by two witnesses to report prison inmates at large. He immediately passed that information to the Gilboa Prison authorities. It took over an hour before a response by prison authorities, who initially reported three prisoners unaccounted for.

 

Quite beyond mere incompetence; perhaps more in the nature of malcompetence. But there's more; early in the year a system meant to block the use of smuggled cellphones by inmates had been installed. Installed and 'forgotten'. Never activated, and left that way it was theorized, for fear that jamming calls would offend the Palestinians and protests and hunger strikes might ensue, inflaming Palestinians to revolt and Western allies of Israel to once again criticize it for 'human rights infractions'. 

 

The prison authorities were moved to action, however. They moved all prisoners to single cell accommodation to ensure no additional group events at breakouts using novel, unsuspected angles to achieve their goal might potentially occur. Some prisoners were transferred out for lack of adequate room, to take up quarters in other prisons. The authorities at Gilboa Prison, under direct glare of bad publicity finally taking action, some action, any action. 

A Palestinian man flashes a poster of the six Palestinians who escaped from an Israeli prison, as people celebrate in the Jenin refugee camp in the northern West Bank, on September 6, 2021. (Jaafar Ashitiyeh/AFP)