‘Suspicion growing’ that settler activist who died Saturday was killed in terror attack, say police, Shin Bet

The police and Shin Bet issue a joint statement saying that the “suspicion is growing” that Yehuda Sherman, the settler activist who died last Saturday close to the illegal West Bank outpost where he lived, was killed in a terror attack.

The circumstances of the incident in which Sherman died have remained unclear. Settler activists and far-right politicians immediately alleged that the incident was a terror attack, but the security services have taken several days to evaluate what happened.

The two agencies state that the Palestinian suspect who has been arrested and questioned over the incident “admitted to the acts attributed to him,” adding, however, that “the investigation is ongoing.”

A police spokesperson does not immediately clarify what specifically the suspect admitted to police.

Moreover, Palestinians say that such purported confessions are often made while under duress.

The suspect has also been barred from meeting with a lawyer since he was arrested on Saturday — a practice that Israel’s military court system allows against Palestinians.

“According to the findings of the investigative team… which includes the Shin Bet, investigators from the Judea and Samaria District Police, and the IDF, suspicion is growing that this was a deliberate attack on the deceased’s vehicle, motivated by nationalist motives,” the two agencies say in their joint statement.

Sherman, a resident of the illegal settlement outpost of Shuva Yisrael Farms in the northern West Bank, close to the settlement of Homesh, was killed on Saturday afternoon when the ATV he was traveling in was hit by a Palestinian vehicle.

According to his brother who was in the vehicle with Sherman at the time, the driver of the Palestinian vehicle had been waiting for them, and that when they passed him, he chased after them and rammed their ATV off a cliff edge.