RAMALLAH (Dispatches) – Zionist troops have detained dozens of Palestinians in recent days in a campaign of mass arrests in response to an embarrassing high-security prison escape earlier this month.
According to figures from the PLO’s Negotiations Affairs Department and the Palestinian prisoners’ organization Addameer, more than 100 Palestinians have been arrested since six high-profile Palestinian prisoners escaped from Gilboa prison in northern parts of the occupied territories on September 6.
“We have documented an average of 14 arrests per day in the occupied West Bank since the men escaped,” Milena Ansari from Addameer told Al Jazeera. “This does not include the Palestinians arrested within Israel.”
All six men who tunneled out of the prison are now back in the Zionist regime’s custody after the final two Palestinians surrendered to troops in Jenin city early on Sunday.
Amid the manhunt for the missing men, Zionist troops carried out retaliatory raids against family members of the escapees in the Jenin area, which was already restive, arresting and interrogating them before releasing some.
The arrests and raids have also focused on Ramallah, Al-Khalil, Nablus and surrounding villages.
The Zionist regime’s war ministry said early on Sunday that Iham Kamamji and Munadil Nafiyat, both members of the Islamic Jihad resistance movement, were apprehended in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin.
It said the two Palestinians “were caught alive”, surrendering without resistance after troops encircled the building where they were hiding.
Fouad Kamamji, Iham’s father, told the Associated Press that his son had called him when the Zionist troops surrounded the house and said he would surrender “in order not to endanger the house owners.”
In the predawn hours of September 6, Zakaria Zubeidi, a former commander of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade in Jenin and five Islamic Jihad members tunneled their way out through their cell’s drainage system and escaped from Gilboa prison.
Four of the Islamic Jihad members were serving life sentences.
Hamas has warned the Zionist regime of serious consequences amid reports that the regime has launched repressive measures against Palestinian prisoners in the wake of the recent escape.
The movement has said the Palestinian nation and resistance fighters will not remain silent in the face of ongoing violations, and that Zionist prison officials will pay a heavy price for their continued torture of Palestinian inmates.