Palestinian surrenders to PA after confessing on Facebook to Friday stabbing

A Palestinian man who used Facebook to confess to stabbing an Israeli outside a supermarket in the West Bank handed himself in to the Palestinian Authority on Saturday morning, a PA security source said.

He is currently being held by the PA’s Preventive Security Services, Israel’s Ynet news website reported.

Bara’a Issa, a resident of the Jerusalem area and an activist in the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, the military wing of Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah movement, posted his video confession online on Friday evening, hours after stabbing and badly injuring an Israeli man in his 40s outside a supermarket in an industrial park north of Jerusalem.

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The doctors at Shaare Zedek hospital in Jerusalem who are treating Issa’s victim for stab wounds to the upper body have reported an improvement, Ynet said Saturday morning, and he is now classed as being in moderate condition.

In the video, which shows a Fatah flag hanging on the wall behind him, Issa says he carried out the attack without direction or pressure from any external party. He says he undertook the stabbing in order to protect the Al-Aqsa Mosque in the Old City of Jerusalem, for the sake of the Palestinian people, and to defend what he called the “occupied land of Palestine.”

He also reads out the number on what appears to be an ID card given by Israel to its citizens and permanent residents. At the end of the video, he looks into the camera and salutes.

Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.