A suicide note was left with a friend by 23-year-old Ashraf Walid Suleiman Na’alwa three days before he set out to slaughter people with whom he apparently worked in the Barkan Industrial Zone in Samaria.
The friend to whom he gave the suicide note worked at the same factory with the terrorist, according to a report broadcast Sunday on Hadashot News.
But the friend didn’t report the suicide note or his friend’s intentions to authorities, and on Sunday, Israeli security forces arrested him.
They’re now trying to determine whether in fact this attack might have been prevented, had they known about the note the day after he received it.
The terrorist, who held an Israeli government work permit, worked at the factory for seven months as an electrician but for the past several weeks he was a no-show at the job.
He is a resident of the Palestinian Authority village of Shuweika. He is still at large and considered armed and dangerous.
He escaped on a motorcycle immediately after he tied up and shot to death – at close range – 29-year-old Kim Levengrond Yehezkel of Rosh Ha’Ayin and 35-year-old Ziv Hajbani of Rishon Lezion, and then shot and seriously wounded a third Israeli. The 54-year-old woman was taken to Beilinson Medical Center in Petach Tikvah, where she is listed in stable but serious condition.
A wide-ranging manhunt is underway to search for Na’alwa, who is believed to still be carrying the homemade Carlo Gustav submachine he used in the attack.
IDF elite Duvdevan, Lotar and Oketz units are involved in the manhunt, as are the Border Guard Police counter terror Yamam unit and Shin Bet intelligence agents. All of them entered Shuweika on Sunday afternoon to hunt for Na’alwa.
Checkpoints around Samaria have been closed, and roadblocks have been set up as well. Additional IDF troops are being sent into Judea and Samaria in the wake of the attack, the second such lethal terrorist event in less than a month.
Both Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad praised the attack, with Hamas saying in a statement that “it comes as a natural response to the Israeli occupation’s crimes at the expense of the Palestinian people.”
Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas has been silent.
But the family of Na’alwa will likely receive a generous advance payment from the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority government, sooner rather than later, as part of the PA’s ‘pay to slay’ policy that continues to be passionately defended by Abbas, even most recently from the podium of the United Nations General Assembly.