GAZA STRIP (Dispatches) –
Islamic Jihad resistance movement in Palestine has warned the Zionist regime not to harm the six Palestinian escapees or those prisoners still held in its jails and their families, local media have reported.
“Harming the prisoners is a red line, and the occupation must consider carefully what we say and understand that we are ready and able to protect our prisoners by all means,” a spokesman for the movement military wing, Al-Quds Brigades, told journalists in Jenin.
The escapees, five of whom are Islamic Jihad members, are “heroes,” he added. “They took their freedom despite the will of their jailers.”
All members of the military wings of the Palestinian factions in Jenin, the spokesman said, are ready to defend the city in case of any incursion by the regime searching for the escaped prisoners.
Al-Quds Brigades pointed out that the response to any aggression against the prisoners “will be faster than Israel expects.”
The prisoners escaped the Gilbao Prison in the northern part of the occupied territories through an underground tunnel. The facility has earned notoriety as the Zionist regime’s version of the Guantanamo prison.
Despite conducting a thorough search for an entire day, the Zionist regime’s troops failed so far to find any clues about the escapees’ current whereabouts.
Zionist troops are arresting relatives of prisoners on the run. Addameer, the Palestinian prisoner support and human rights association, said on Wednesday at least seven family members of the escapees were detained by Zionist troops throughout the occupied West Bank, though some were held only briefly.
The Palestinian Wafa news agency said the regime had begun taking out the embarrassment on other Palestinian inmates through a number of measures.
It has transferred more than a dozen prisoners from Gilbao’s second ward to another prison and stopped allowing prisoners’ access to television. The regime has also taken five of the Islamic Jihad’s leaders to Gilbao’s interrogation center, and begun rummaging every nook and cranny throughout the prison.
The resistance group said it was monitoring the situation at Israeli prisons, warning the occupying regime against taking “retaliatory measures” against the prisoners.
The movement said it would not leave its prisoners alone and noted that whatever “Israeli terrorist action” against them was to be met with its due response.
“The Israeli regime should know this that violations targeting the prisoners are our redline,” it said, adding, “We are prepared to and capable of defending our prisoners and have several options at our disposal to do so.”
The Zionist regime keeps Palestinian prisoners in deplorable conditions lacking proper hygienic standards.
More than 7,000 Palestinian prisoners are currently held in some 17 the occupying regime’s jails, with dozens of them serving multiple life sentences. Zionist troops have arrested more than 17,000 minors since 2000.