By Alon Levavi
The recapture of last two escaped Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists in a pre-dawn raid by Israeli security forces in Jenin on September 19 will go some way to restoring deterrence after they and four others dug their way out of the high-security Gilboa Prison almost two weeks earlier. But their capture does not cancel out the massive failure that enabled their escape in the first place.
The fact that Israel’s most secure prison, built after the Second Intifada, was the scene of a tunnel breakout, without any prior intelligence obtained by prison authorities and without any attempt made to stop the prisoners’ flight, represents an unprecedented and even surreal failure in the recent history of the Israel Prisons Service.
On the other hand, the rapid and silent Jenin arrest operation that ended successfully without a single soldier – or escaped terrorist – suffering a scratch, is testament to the determination and skill of all of the security forces involved.
The Jenin operation came after the center of gravity of the pursuit shifted toward the intelligence sphere. Initially, the operation focused on the deployment of thousands of police officers and soldiers, but at a certain stage, spreading out such large forces on the ground was no longer useful. This is when the lead role went to the Shin Bet domestic intelligence agency, which activated its varied intelligence sources and technology to home in on the dangerous fugitives.
From the moment that the intelligence indication came in, security forces - the Shin Bet and its operational arm, the Israel Police’s elite Counter-Terrorism Unit, together with the IDF, and the Israel Police began planning a sophisticated operation.
It is safe to assume that from that point onward, the messaging the authorities were putting out were not always a full reflection of what was taking place on the ground – this in order to avoid giving away sensitive information and harming the operation.
The escaped terrorists and their collaborators were monitoring Israeli media. Security forces planned a deceptive decoy maneuver. It seems safe to assume that large forces were sent to one section of Jenin – a city that contains neighborhoods that are filled with gunmen – and conducted a ‘loud operation’ to attract attention, while a separate force went to the location where the Shin Bet knew the two escaped prisoners were hiding to carry out the real, and quiet, escape operation.
The Israel Police’s Counter-Terrorism Unit is the go-to address for the most extreme security missions. Police have invested much in this elite unit, in terms of training, developing its fighters, investing in their facilities, and providing them operational technologies.
How the pursuit was managed
Prior to the recapture of the escaped terrorists, the various security branches joined forces in a unique manner to manage the largest-scale pursuit Israel has seen in years.
The Israel Police’s Northern District, which is still recovering from its own trauma dating back to the deadly Mount Meron stampede in April, took center stage in this pursuit. The first objective was to prevent the terrorists from escaping to nearby Jordan or crossing the Green Line into the Jenin area of the northern West Bank.
All of the security organizations joined up with the Israel Police, bringing their capabilities to the pursuit. The Israel Prisons Service’s area of responsibility stops at prison walls, and anything beyond that in Israeli territory falls under police jurisdiction. The IDF led the search in Judea and Samaria with its forces, while the Shin Bet was injecting intelligence into all of the organizations’ efforts, and receiving intelligence from them.
The police force threw everything it had into the pursuit – helicopters, drones, night-vision, scouts, officers on horseback, canine units, the bomb squad, and its Counter-Terror Unit.
The Northern District’s personnel is simply not big enough to cover such a large area, and it had to receive back up from other police entities, such as Traffic Police, Border Police, and other districts.
The initial objective: To flood the ground with as many flashing blue lights and forces as possible, to make the terrorists hunker down in their location and stop them from crossing any borders. This made the terrorists aware that large forces were nearby looking for them at all times, and would stop most of them from advancing far.
Since the escaped prisoners had no phones, it was not possible to track them technologically, making the mission far more challenging.
In the end though, most of the terrorists were caught alone, unarmed, unharmed, hungry and thirsty. The photos of their captures are of major significance for public perception in Israel and among the Palestinians. The fact that law-abiding Arab Israeli citizens called the police to report suspicious movements also had significant effect on the narratives surrounding the escape.
Ultimately, despite their daring and sophistication in the early stages of the escape plan, the fact that the terrorists were found in poor condition was a twist in the plot, demonstrating no planning for the second stage of their flight , and harming the Palestinian euphoria that accompanied the escape.
The Israel Prisons Service: A time for review and rebuilding
The Israel Prisons Service is currently facing one of the most significant leadership tests in its in history. The organization’s resilience is now being put to the test. It did not have the time to review the series of failures that allowed the escapes, and fix the problems – as it was busy dealing with prison riots, and the after-effects of its initiative to end the organizational separation of Palestinian Islamic Jihad prisoners in their own cells. It has been in ongoing crisis management mode.
To its credit, the Israel Prisons Service has not blinked as it pushes ahead with the break-up of terror factions inside prison wards, despite protests by the terror factions and threats of hunger strikes.
As it does this, the service is at the center of a government commission of inquiry, and a criminal investigation being run by the Israel Police into the escape. The police is investigating the Israel Prisons Service even as the two organizations worked shoulder to shoulder to recapture the prisoners – an extraordinary dissonance that the two organizations have had to learn to live with.
The Israel Prisons Service has absorbed an obvious shock following the escape. As an organization that is usually in the shadow of larger security organizations – ones that do not deal with the volcanos known as prisons, the current challenge forms an enormous test.
Yet it is also an opportunity for the service to seize on the situation and to begin to prioritize issues that it struggled to focus on until now, such as new security technologies, personnel development, and building better infrastructure. Many of Israel’s prisons date back to the British mandate of the 1920s and 1930s, and the escape crisis is a real opportunity to reexamine prison facilities and to start properly addressing the weak links within them.
Organizations are measured by their ability to cope with crises. In order to do that, they must build organizational resilience ahead of time. It is up to the organization’s leaders to build this resilience, which will be tested by its ability to rapidly exit this crisis, and to do so in a manner that leaves the service stronger.
Major General Alon Levavi served as a combat helicopter pilot in the Israel Air Force and later served for 34 years in the Israeli National police (INP). Read full bio here.