The Recent Palestinian Prison Break Brings Back Bad Memories of a Previous One

Sept. 10 2021

On Monday, six convicted terrorists escaped from Israel’s Gilboa prison, triggering both public displays of euphoria and outbursts of violence in the West Bank and Gaza. Yaakov Lappin draws some unsettling historical parallels:

In May 1987, six senior Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) security prisoners escaped from an Israeli prison in the Gaza Strip. In October of that year, a gun battle between Israeli security forces and five of the escaped prisoners erupted in Gaza’s Shejaiya neighborhood district. The cell’s members were killed, and an Israeli Shin Bet member, Victor Arajwan, was also killed in the firefight. The PIJ to this day considers the incident to be a catalyst for the start of the first intifada.

In Monday’s escape, five out of the six prisoners are PIJ terrorists convicted of taking part in deadly attacks on Israelis, while the sixth, Zakaria Zubeidi, is the former commander of the Fatah-aligned al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade in Jenin. All six are from the West Bank city of Jenin, which lies just across the Green Line from Gilboa prison.

Lappin cites the opinion of David Hacham, who served as an Arab-affairs adviser to seven Israeli defense ministers, and is deeply concerned about the fallout:

“This is a serious failure on the part of the Israeli prison system. But [the failure] projects onto the entire Israeli defense establishment,” said Hacham.

“This is the reoccurring theme in how Palestinians are describing the event,” he continued. “People I speak with in Ramallah are calling it a ‘heroic Palestinian operation,’ which has exposed Israeli security forces [as weak or incompetent]. Three of the terrorists were designated high-risk escape candidates. Zubeidi was a central figure from the second intifada. The group includes two PIJ members who are brothers. All of these were in a single cell.”

Read more at JNS

More about: First intifada, Islamic Jihad, Palestinian terror, Second Intifada

Egypt Is Trapped by the Gaza Dilemma It Helped to Create

Feb. 14 2025

Recent satellite imagery has shown a buildup of Egyptian tanks near the Israeli border, in violation of Egypt-Israel agreements going back to the 1970s. It’s possible Cairo wants to prevent Palestinians from entering the Sinai from Gaza, or perhaps it wants to send a message to the U.S. that it will take all measures necessary to keep that from happening. But there is also a chance, however small, that it could be preparing for something more dangerous. David Wurmser examines President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi’s predicament:

Egypt’s abysmal behavior in allowing its common border with Gaza to be used for the dangerous smuggling of weapons, money, and materiel to Hamas built the problem that exploded on October 7. Hamas could arm only to the level that Egypt enabled it. Once exposed, rather than help Israel fix the problem it enabled, Egypt manufactured tensions with Israel to divert attention from its own culpability.

Now that the Trump administration is threatening to remove the population of Gaza, President Sisi is reaping the consequences of a problem he and his predecessors helped to sow. That, writes Wurmser, leaves him with a dilemma:

On one hand, Egypt fears for its regime’s survival if it accepts Trump’s plan. It would position Cairo as a participant in a second disaster, or nakba. It knows from its own history; King Farouk was overthrown in 1952 in part for his failure to prevent the first nakba in 1948. Any leader who fails to stop a second nakba, let alone participates in it, risks losing legitimacy and being seen as weak. The perception of buckling on the Palestine issue also resulted in the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat’s assassination in 1981. President Sisi risks being seen by his own population as too weak to stand up to Israel or the United States, as not upholding his manliness.

In a worst-case scenario, Wurmser argues, Sisi might decide that he’d rather fight a disastrous war with Israel and blow up his relationship with Washington than display that kind of weakness.

Read more at The Editors

More about: Egypt, Gaza War 2023