Earlier, on Friday night, passersby in the Israeli town of Nazareth became suspicious when they saw two men foraging in dustbins for food. They notified the police and security forces, already present in the area following a tip-off, closed in on the suspects. They were immediately identified as the brothers Mahmoud and Mohamed al-Arida, members of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and part of the group of six convicted terrorists, all from Jenin, who broke out of Gilboa security jail five days ago.
DEBKAfile’s security sources reported at the time that the massively boosted military, police, and intelligence forces, enlisted for the manhunt, had reconstructed the separate escape routes taken by the other four fugitives still at large and may be closing in on them. Soldiers and police officers had been on high alert since the jailbreak early Monday, braced ready to deal with eruptions of Palestinian rioting in the West Bank and Jerusalem. Units were also assigned to prisons in case of outbreaks..
All the terrorist organizations had held up the escapees as heroes whose feat must inspire the Palestinians to stage a “day of rage” against Israel’s failing strength. The image of the first two captured “heroes,” exhausted, rummaging for food and captured, after five days of freedom hardly fit that image.
Friday night, minutes after news of the capture of two of their members, Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip fired a rocket into Israel. It apparently exploded harmlessly on open ground in the Eshkol Council area.
