Israel arrests 4 Palestinian fugitives
JERUSALEM – Israeli police on Saturday said they have arrested four of the six Palestinians who broke out of a maximum-security prison last week – including a famed militant leader whose exploits over the years have made him a well-known figure in Israel.
The arrests moved Israel closer to closing an embarrassing episode that exposed deep flaws in its prison system and turned the fugitive prisoners into Palestinian heroes. Late on Friday, Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip fired a rocket into Israel in an apparent sign of solidarity, drawing Israeli airstrikes in reprisal.
The four wanted men were caught in a pair of arrests in northern Israel.
Early on Saturday, police said they had caught two men, including Zakaria Zubeidi, hiding in a truck parking lot in the Arab town of Umm al-ghanam.
The Israeli Haaretz news site, quoting an unidentified defense official, said Zubeidi and fellow fugitive Mohammed Aradeh had been hiding outdoors for some time. The source said the two escapees appeared to have received no help following their escape and had no planned route on where to go.
Zubeidi was a militant leader during the second Palestinian uprising in the early 2000s.
While he has been linked to attacks on Israelis, he also was well known for giving frequent media interviews and for a friendship he once had with an Israeli woman. Zubeidi over the years had received amnesty and taken college courses and was active in a West Bank theater movement before his 2019 arrest on suspicions of involvement in attacks.
Photos released by police showed Zubeidi, handcuffed and wearing a white head band, being led away by two police officers.
In a statement, police said Israeli security forces have been working “around the clock” to catch the fugitives.
“All of the forces were deployed at full strength, searched in open areas, collected every piece of information until they succeeded in solving the puzzle to locate these two fugitives,” including Zubeidi, police said. The search for the final two prisoners was continuing.
Earlier, two other prisoners were arrested in Nazareth, an Arab city in northern Israel just west of Umm alghanam.
A video circulating on social media showed Israeli police shackling one of the prisoners, Yakub Kadari, into the backseat of a police vehicle and asking him for his name. The man, wearing jeans and a green T-shirt, calmly identifies himself as Kadari and answers “yes” when asked whether he is one of the escapees. Kadari was serving two life sentences for attempted murder and bomb planting.
According to Israeli media reports, local residents in both towns had turned in the prisoners.
The six Palestinians tunneled out of the Gilboa prison on Monday, setting off a furious manhunt across Israel and in the West Bank.
While Zubeidi was a member of the secular Fatah group, the others belonged to the Islamic Jihad militant group. All of the prisoners are from the nearby city of Jenin in the Israel-occupied West Bank.