A man in a car opened fire at several locations in Israel on the morning of the attack, killing one person and wounding five others before security forces shot him dead near Kokhav Yair. Magen David Adom said the dead man was about 35 and had died of gunshot wounds.
The wounded included two people in serious condition and three in moderate condition, all with penetrating injuries to their bodies. Police later said they had recovered the weapon and the car used in the attack after a brief chase, and that a second suspect was arrested later in the day after making statements suggesting involvement and trying to attack officers.
The killing set off a fast-moving security response that reached into the west bank area near the scene. Israeli forces closed two checkpoints at the entrances to Tulkarem and set up temporary checkpoints at the entrance to nearby Qalqilya, a move that underscored how quickly one shooting can spread across a crowded security map.
Police chief Danny Levy said the attacker was an Israeli Arab with a criminal record, a detail that sharpened the political line around the case as officials moved to frame it as an act of terror. Netanyahu told his cabinet that “a terrorist went out, reached Kokhav Yair, and unfortunately managed, before being eliminated, to murder an Israeli citizen and injure others,” while Itamar Ben-Gvir said the law on the death penalty for terrorists also applies to Israeli Arabs and added that if the suspect had been captured, he would have demanded that he be executed.
Kokhav Yair sits near the occupied West Bank, where a broader Israeli security crackdown has often followed attacks inside Israel. About a fifth of Israelis are Arab citizens who often identify as and with Palestinians, a background that hangs over every attack described in those terms and helps explain why the suspect’s identity became part of the public argument as soon as police named it.
For now, the one fact that is not in dispute is the damage: one man dead, five wounded, two suspects in custody or dead, and checkpoints sealed off as investigators try to reconstruct why the gunfire began at all.
