Barkan terrorist before attack: 'Be happy without a reason'
Investigation into Alon recycling factory shooting reveals Ashraf Na'alwa wrote uplifting Facebook posts and filmed himself listening to music in Hebrew days before taking an M-16 assault rifle to his workplace and killing Kim Levengrond Yehezkel and Ziv Hagbi.
The 23 year old, from the village of Shweiki near Tulkarem worked at the Alon recycling factory for the past seven months, but on Sunday he came to work—a place considered a symbol of coexistence, equipped with an M-16 rifle and shot dead Kim Levengrond Yehezkel, 28, and Ziv Hagbi, 35.
"God, the great herald of good news, let me have what I wish for," read the message on the 23-year-old terrorist's Facebook page—which has since been deleted.
Another Facebook post published Friday, read: "Be happy without a reason." Last week, Na'alwa even filmed himself and his friends listening to songs in Hebrew.
For a second day in a row, the Border Police's counter terrorism special unit, Yamam, the elite Duvdevan unit, the counterterrorism Lotar unit, and the IDF Oketz canine unit, as well as Shin Bet forces, Central Command fighters and West Bank Brigade soldiers, are taking part in the manhunt for the terrorist.
A Palestinian security official told Ynet that the Palestinian forces assist in the search due to an IDF assessment that the perpetrator would option to surrender to the local security rather than the Israeli one.
“The assessment is that the terrorist will prefer to surrender himself to Palestinian security in order to escape possible death during an arrest attempt or out of belief that the Palestinian Authority would struggle to extradite him to Israel," stressed the source.
“There is full coordination between the security forces when it comes to the manhunt for the terrorist who carried out the Barkan attack.
The information collected at this stage is supposed to assist in tracing the terrorist’s movements from the moment of the incident to his current whereabouts,” he concluded.
The IDF Spokesperson's Unit said Monday that several residents of Shweiki, Na'alwa's village, were arrested.
After assessing the situation, the IDF decided to add at least two battalions to the search. IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eizenkot visited Sunday the recycling factory where the shooting attack took place.
In addition, IDF Spokesperson Brigadier General Ronen Manelis said despite the fact that the terrorist might have had additional motives for his crime, the incident is still being investigated by Shin Bet as a terror attack.
"The terrorist might have additional motives (which are not nationalistically-motivated), but that doesn't change the fact this is a terror attack," he added.
"The industrial area is a zone of coexistence where Palestinian with a work permit are employed alongside Israelis. We'll review this incident and decide how to proceed from here. Nevertheless, preserving the coexistence is one of the army's missions," the IDF Spokesperson's Unit went on to say in a statement.
He also noted that 3,300 Palestinian with a work permit are currently employed in Barkan as well as a similar amount of Israeli Jews.
Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman tweeted Sunday, "The IDF and the security forces are conducting a manhunt to capture the terrorist. It's only a matter of time until we apprehend him (and bring him to justice)."
