Senior members of the Fatah movement's steering committee and high-ranking Palestinian Authority security officials agreed in a meeting late Thursday to help Israel apprehend the fugitive prisoners who broke out of Gilboa Prison this week, a PA official told the Lebanese paper Al-Akhbar.
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According to the paper, which is affiliated with Hezbollah, the PA is motivated to help Israel track down the fugitives in order to put an end to security tensions, which have spiked since the escape.
The paper reported that the current situation does not serve the interests of the PA, which wants to calm things down in order to complete its "economic peace" initiatives.
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The report also said that the PA had conditioned its agreement to help Israeli forces capture the escaped terrorists on a guarantee that the fugitives would not be killed, but returned to prison.
The report said that in a meeting on Thursday, PA security officials had warned representatives of the IDF Civil Administration that if the fugitives were killed, it would cause tensions in Judea and Samaria to "explode."
Al-Akhbar also claimed that Israel had agreed to a demand PA President Mahmoud Abbas made two weeks ago in a meeting with Defense Minister Benny Gantz to release a few Palestinian prisoners in a gesture intended to improve the PA's standing among Palestinians.
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