TEL AVIV — Aiming to capitalize on the mass euphoria following a Palestinian prisoner escape from an Israeli prison last week, Hamas has said that it will demand the release of the men who have been rearrested, and that, after a weekend of renewed rocket fire exchanges with Israel, it remained committed to fighting.
Support our journalism. Subscribe today. ChevronRight
“An upcoming exchange deal will only take place with the liberation of these heroes,” said Abu Obeida, the spokesperson for Hamas’ militant arm, al-Qassam Brigades, on Saturday night. “If the heroes of the Freedom Tunnel have liberated themselves this time from underground, we promise them and our free prisoners that they will be liberated soon, God willing, from above ground.”
The video statement was released after rockets were fired from Gaza into Israel for the second consecutive night. Overnight Saturday, Israeli fighter jets and helicopters struck three Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip. An Israeli army statement said that Israel views the “Hamas terrorist organization as responsible for all terror activity emanating from the Gaza Strip.”
Advertisement
Story continues below advertisement
The cross-border rocket fire that was spurred by developments in the Israeli manhunt for the Palestinian prisoners threatens to shatter a fragile, four-month-old cease fire put in place following an 11-day conflict between Israel and Hamas in May. The operation left 13 dead in Israel and more than 250 people dead in the Gaza Strip.
On Saturday, Israeli police said they arrested four of the six Palestinian fugitives: two on Friday, near the northern Israeli city of Nazareth, and another two on Saturday, at a truck stop near the Arab town of Umm el-Ghanem; both tipped off by Arab-Israeli families in the area.
The men were classified as high-profile “security prisoners” for having orchestrated a string of suicide bombings and lethal shootings against Israeli soldiers and civilians during the second intifada, or mass Palestinian uprising.
Advertisement
Story continues below advertisement
They include Zakaria Zubeidi, a former child theater actor turned militant leader, who served as the Jenin chief of the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, a militant offshoot of the West Bank’s Fatah party. He escaped along with five members of Islamic Jihad, the Islamist militant group that is based in Gaza, by digging a tunnel underneath the walls of the Gilboa detention facility in northern Israel, several miles west of Zubeidi’s home in the Jenin refugee camp.
As of Sunday, the two other Palestinians remain at-large.
Israel’s Prison Service called the incident “a major security and intelligence failure.” Palestinians hailed it as “heroic.”
Over the weekend, photoshopped pictures of the four Palestinian men which made them look as if they were smiling broadly at the time of the arrest, have been circulating widely on social media.
Advertisement
Story continues below advertisement
One Palestinian news site, Shehab Agency, tweeted the doctored photos, superimposed on an image of al-Aqsa Mosque, a flash point for Israeli-Palestinian tensions, with the hashtag #freedom_tunnel.
In the past week, hundreds of Palestinians demonstrated in the streets in the support of the prisoners, holding up spoons, in reference to the tool that the men reportedly used to dig out of a hole in the shower area and into a dirt road. Riots, with Palestinian inmates setting fire to their cells, have also been breaking out in prisons in Israel. On Friday, as Hamas called for a “day of rage,” a Palestinian was fatally shot by Israeli police in Jerusalem’s Old City after reportedly attempting to stab the Israeli officers.
Israeli security forces remained on high alert and increased manpower near prisons, throughout the West Bank, and at the border near Jordan, which was first believed to be the Palestinian escapees’ preferred escape destination.
Advertisement
Story continues below advertisement
The escape of the six Palestinians “sent a clear message to all those calling for normalization and coexistence with the occupation, that the Palestinian cause is alive in the hearts of peoples,” said Nafez Azzam, a member of the political bureau of the Islamic Jihad, in a statement on Saturday. “The operation achieved its goals. The heroes crossed barriers and fortresses and struck the enemy's concept of its own security, and they wrested their freedom to bring the issue of prisoners back to the spotlight.”
Hazem Balousha in Gaza City contributed to this report.