Palestinian arrested for Rahat stabbing says propaganda spurred him
17-year-old suspect residing illegally in Israel says he was influenced by Palestinian propaganda and entered Israel through security fence breaches.
Shlomit Ganon, 65, from Kibbutz Mishmar Hanegev, was lightly wounded in that attack. The suspect was arrested three days after the attack. He confessed to the act, reenacted the stabbing and led the investigators to the knife that he threw away. The prosecution is expected to indict him for attempted murder.
The suspect, a resident of Yatta, south of Hebron, with no previous criminal record, exploited breaches in the security fence to enter Israel. He did agricultural work with relatives in Rahat, where he lived with family. Several relatives were also arrested on suspicion of helping him enter Israel and helping him hide in the days after the attack.
During his interrogation, he said that he had been influenced by Palestinian propaganda against Israel and took part in riots and stone-throwing against Israelis near Yatta in recent months.
Shortly after the stabbing, he returned to the scene of the crime, and ran away again after noticing police forces. "He ran at first, not knowing where he was going," said an official source. "At some point he even returned to the scene, saw the commotion and continued to run away."
The suspect eventually returned to his residence in Rahat. Once a video of him showing him running away was posted online, he confessed to his brother that he committed the attack. They both fled to Hebron with the help of traffickers of undocumented immigrants, who did not know about their ties to the attack. Several days later, security forces arrested him at Yatta.
The stabbing occurred when Gonen and her family visited the market in Rahat. The investigation revealed that the attacker stabbed her after noticing that her family had gone into a store in the market and she was left alone.
