Palestinian leaders are scrambling to pretend that this was a "victory."
As we've noted, everything they say is through the lens of the honor/shame culture. In order to claim this as a victory, they must position this as if the escapees brought them honor and the Israelis shame.
The official Palestinian Wafa news agency quotes an official as to the many reasons this was a wonderful episode:
- "The prisoners won the moment they came out of a tunnel they prepared with the handles of the frying pans, with their nails, with their patience, their will, with their courage that approaches the limit of the miraculous, they defeated the security and military system and its endless arrogance. "- "The prisoners also won when they united all the Palestinian people in the West Bank, Gaza and the territories of 1948, and in the diaspora as well. Everyone without exception felt that these were his children, brothers or neighbors. Everyone was with them moment by moment counting for them the hours of freedom."-"The prisoners were victorious when people forgot, for a moment, which organizations they belong to, and they became Palestinians only. No one thought about their political or party affiliation."- "The prisoners were morally victorious, when they refused to resort to Arab families in the 48 lands so as not to expose them to accountability and abuse, and they triumphed when they touched the soil composed of the remains of their ancestors over thousands of years."- "The prisoners were victorious when they defeated the war machine, its eyes, its planes, its dogs, and its intelligence, and they were able to reach Jenin, despite the massive deployment of army forces at every meeting point between the West Bank and the 1948 territories."-"The captives won when they preferred to surrender themselves in order to preserve the lives of the people who sheltered them in their home. They were not willing to sacrifice people."
Some of these are laughable - the Arabs of Israel helped turn them in, and the Palestinians are spinning it as if they didn't seek their help to begin with. If the terrorists in Jenin had started a firefight and their hosts had been killed, the same statement would have claimed that as a victory.
When Palestinians claim victory over Israel, they always lower the bar of "victory" to be practically on the ground. Ironically, this makes Israel seem even more powerful: they create a straw man of an invincible Israel that never makes mistakes, and then they say - look, Israel screwed up, and therefore we won!
Hamas was even more explicit in what we've mentioned before, that the Palestinian celebrations weren't for the very temporary "freedom" of terrorists, but in Israeli humiliation, saying that the capture of the last two terrorists doesn't make up for the claim that they "made the enemy a puppet that everyone laughs at."
In the end, the last thing that Palestinians want to admit is the shame that their escapees could not remain free, they could not rely on other Arabs to protect them, they couldn't find a place to sleep securely, and that they will now be in prison even longer than they would have been previously. They have such a low opinion of themselves that they need to pretend to be victorious no matter what the facts are just to shore up their nonexistent self esteem.
