The saga of the escaped terrorists from Gilboa prison came to an end on Sunday in the best way possible. The two terrorists who had remained on the run surrendered without a fight, and Israel closed the unfortunate chapter successfully, albeit with two glaring asterisks.
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The first asterisk is the immediate security situation. Things on the ground are still volatile in the wake of the affair. No issue unites the Palestinian street more than the security prisoners, and there are more than a few parties interested in leveraging the escape to ignite violence, riots and terrorist attacks.
In the first days following the prison break, tensions spiked on the two Palestinian fronts – Judea and Samaria and Gaza. Judea and Samaria saw an uptick in the number of attempted attacks, the vast majority of which were foiled. The situation on the ground is still combustible, as evidenced by the IDF's decision not to thin out the forces deployed there in recent weeks, rather remain on heightened alert over the Sukkot holiday due to fears of additional attacks.
Gaza, too, became more tempestuous in the aftermath of the jailbreak. Palestinian Islamic Jihad launched several rockets at Israel, until it was sternly advised to temper its zeal. Egypt is deeply involved in these efforts to calm matters, which shifted into another gear with the summit between Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi in Cairo. Yet still, the fundamental problems in Gaza remain unresolved, which means the current lull is merely temporary and that the armed groups in Gaza will find an excuse to renew their rocket attacks as soon as possible. Hence, the IDF is still on high alert in the south as well.
The second asterisk pertains to the Israel Prisons Service. The gap exposed between Israel's two security arms is unprecedented. One arm is particularly robust: In capturing the terrorists on Sunday, the Shin Bet, IDF, and the Yamam, the Israel Police's elite counter-terrorism unit, exhibited surgical capabilities that few militaries in the world can hope to match, operationally and in terms of the intelligence required. Since Operation Defensive Shield in 2002, these capabilities have been refined into an art form, allowing Israel's security forces to detain terrorists on a nightly basis and prevent countless attacks.
The second arm, however, is particularly weak. The IPS exhibited complaisance, incompetence, amateurism, and any other negative superlative one might consider. The very fact that the entire chain of command involved in the fiasco hasn't voluntarily resigned yet indicates just how unprofessional and rotten the organization has become. We can only hope that the Finkelstein commission will do its job and lay a foundation for fixing the severe defects exposed by the escape.
What's most troubling is the intelligence lapse in the IPS. Among its more notorious shortcomings is that security prisoners have been the most active orchestrators of terrorist attacks, including but not limited to attacks aimed at securing their own release. If the prisons service's intelligence was unaware of a tunnel being dug for almost a year, we can only wonder what it knows, if anything, about other plans that might be in the works inside its facilities.
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We can assume the IPS will now try cleaning up the mess inside its prisons, and among the prisoners. It would do well not to act impulsively, rather according to a distinct directive that institutionalizes clear rules about the security prisoners' entitlements and conditions of their incarceration. Any other course of action could ignite this sensitive issue again and give the prisoners an unnecessary victory.
Regardless, the escape is perceived on the Palestinian street as a win over Israel. Similar to Operation Guardian of the Walls, the narrative is clear and works in favor of the weaker side. The final outcome – all six prisoners were captured and returned to jail – is less important. It was enough to see the captured terrorists' photoshopped smiling faces, disseminated on social media by Hamas, to understand the massive shot in the arm this affair has been to the Palestinian struggle – courtesy of the IPS and its failures.
