Mother of Barkan terrorist gets 18-month sentence for failure to stop terror attack

The mother of a Palestinian terrorist who murdered two Israelis in the West Bank last year was sentenced on Tuesday to 18 months in prison and ordered to pay NIS 40,000 ($11,400) in damages to the victims’ families, for failing to stop her son from committing the attack.

Wafa Na’alowa had been convicted by the Samaria Military Court in May.

Since Na’alowa has already been jailed since October of last year, she is expected to be released in May 2020.

The right-wing advocacy and legal aid organization Honenu, which is working with the victims’ families, criticized the sentence as too light, and called on the military prosecution to appeal and seek double or triple the jail time for Na’alowa.

Na’alowa’s son Ashraf, an electrician who worked at a factory in the Barkan Industrial Park in the northern West Bank, shot and killed two co-workers, Kim Levengrond Yehezkel, 29, and Ziv Hajbi, 35, in the October 7, 2018 attack. Another Israeli woman was injured.

The court found that Na’alowa knew her son was training with firearms to carry out an attack, and he informed her of his intention to become a “martyr.” However, she made no effort to stop him.

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 Ashraf Na’alowa, from the West Bank village of Shuweika near Tulkarem, appeared to have been planning a second terror attack at the time of his killing.

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.

Source: TOI