Mother of Barkan terrorist convicted for not acting to prevent attack
Ashraf Na’alowa, who killed 2 in October West Bank shooting, had told his mother Wafa he planned to become a ‘martyr,’ but she didn’t try to stop him or inform authorities
The mother of the Palestinian terrorist who murdered two Israelis at the Barkan Industrial Park in the northern West Bank in October was convicted in an Israeli military court on Thursday of failing to prevent the attack.
Wafa Na’alowa, the Samaria Military Court ruled, knew her son Ashraf was training with firearms for a terror attack against Israelis. Two weeks before the October 7 killings, the son even informed his mother of his intentions to become a “martyr,” and she shared the information with other family members — but at no point made an effort to stop him or inform Palestinian or Israeli security agencies, the court concluded.
“The mother’s testimony was tendentious, and her recounting of the events changed repeatedly,” Judge Dalia Kaufman wrote in the decision.
Given her knowledge of her son’s intentions in the days leading up to the attack, Wafa Na’alowa “cannot be released from a conviction,” the judge added.
Her sentencing hearing was set for May 25.
Ashraf Na’alowa was shot dead in a December 13 raid in Nablus by an elite Israeli counterterrorism unit after a two-month manhunt. The Shin Bet security service has said Na’alowa, from the West Bank village of Shuweika near Tulkarem, appeared to be planning a second terror attack at the time of his killing.
Na’alowa, an electrician who worked at a factory in the Barkan Industrial Park, shot and killed two co-workers, Kim Levengrond Yehezkel, 29, and Ziv Hajbi, 35, in the attack. Another Israeli woman was injured.
Na’alowa repeatedly eluded capture by Israeli security forces because he acted alone and stayed on the move during the manhunt. A number of his relatives and alleged accomplices have been detained and indicted.
Some days after his death, security forces partially demolished the terrorist’s home near Tulkarem. The structure itself was left intact while parts of its basement and first floor were destroyed by bulldozers. Sections of the building belonging to family members who were determined by Israeli security services to have played no role in the terror attack were left intact.
