2022 Bnei Brak Shootings

The Bnei Brak attack occurred during a period of concern about increasing violence ahead of Ramadan, following deadly attacks in Beersheba and Hadera.[6][9] Contemporary reporting described it as the third deadly attack in Israel within a week.[7] Together, the attacks in Beersheba, Hadera, and Bnei Brak killed 11 people.[6] The immediate context was therefore a succession of attacks in Israeli cities rather than an isolated shooting considered without reference to the preceding week.[6][10]

The gunman was identified as Diaa Hamarsheh, a Palestinian from Ya’bad, near Jenin, in the West Bank — known by its original, indigenous Jewish name of Judea and Samaria.[1] He was in Israel without a permit at the time of the attack.[7][9] Reports placed his age at either 26 or 27 and rendered his name in several ways, including Dia Hamarsha and Diaa Hamarsheh.[1][11] He had previously been imprisoned in Israel on offenses connected with weapons and terrorist activity.[1][12]

Before the attack, Hamarsheh had worked illegally at a construction site in Bnei Brak.[1] Other reporting described him as working with his father selling mobile telephones and tobacco after his release from prison.[13] An account of his social-media activity reproduced a post on his Facebook page reading, “Anyone who wants to meet Allah, Allah wants to meet him.”[13] Available descriptions of his earlier imprisonment differ in their dates, length, and characterization of the offenses.[7][14]

His use of an automatic firearm distinguished the attack from many earlier lone-actor attacks originating in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which had frequently involved knives or other sharp objects.[9] The weapon enabled him to fire at people at several locations as he moved through the streets before the final confrontation with police.[7][4]

The shootings began at approximately 8 p.m. on Tuesday, March 29, 2022.[7] Hamarsheh arrived in Bnei Brak by vehicle and emerged carrying a large rifle.[7] A later account described his vehicle as a gray Honda Civic driven from Ya’bad through another village and onward to Bnei Brak.[2] The car had been taken off the road and fitted with a yellow license plate belonging to another scrapped vehicle.[2] Another account said that he had crossed through a gap in the security fence before reaching Bnei Brak in a vehicle bearing Israeli license plates.[7]

At the beginning of the attack, Hamarsheh entered and left buildings on Jabotinsky Street.[13] He fired at a child riding a bicycle and at a passerby but missed both.[13] He then continued through nearby streets, firing at people near a grocery store and at a man in a car.[2][4] Reports located the shootings around Jabotinsky, HaShnayim, Bialik, and Herzl streets.[7][4]

Two Ukrainian nationals were shot near the grocery store.[2] They had been sitting near the shop when the gunman attacked.[2] Hamarsheh also killed Ya’akov Shalom as he drove nearby.[3] During the attack, the gunman shouted in Hebrew at a driver, “Stop, stop!” before firing at the car.[2] Police described the overall sequence as the killing of three people at one location, followed by movement to another scene and the killing of two more people, one of them a police officer.[7]

Avishai Yehezkel was outside walking with his young son when he was shot.[3] His brother later said at his funeral that Yehezkel had used his body to shield the child, who survived.[3] Another account likewise described Yehezkel holding and protecting his son during the shooting.[3] The encounter was part of the gunman’s movement through residential streets before officers reached him.[7][4]

A pair of officers on a police motorcycle reached the scene within minutes, identified the attacker, and engaged him.[4] One of the officers, Amir Khoury, was shot and critically wounded.[4] His partner then shot and killed Hamarsheh.[4] Khoury was taken to Rabin Medical Center–Beilinson Campus, where he died of his wounds.[1] Four victims had been declared dead at the scene; Khoury became the fifth fatality after his evacuation to hospital.[7]

The rifle malfunctioned during the attack, according to eyewitness and medic accounts.[4] A Magen David Adom paramedic described the gunman pointing the weapon at him and pulling the trigger three times without firing a shot.[4] The paramedic escaped and subsequently returned to help treat victims.[4] An initial investigation described numerous stoppages in the weapon and treated them as a reason the attack had not caused further deaths.[14]

Investigators initially described the firearm as a non-military M16 and examined whether it had been converted from an airsoft rifle.[14] A later account said that Hamarsheh had obtained the rifle in his village.[2] The police spokesperson credited the motorcycle officers’ intervention with preventing a more extensive attack.[4] Their confrontation with the gunman ended the sequence of shootings, although Khoury’s wounds proved fatal.[4]

Five people were killed: four civilians and police officer Amir Khoury.[7] The victims were identified as Amir Khoury, Ya’akov Shalom, Avishai Yehezkel, Victor Sorokopot, and Dimitri Mitrik.[11] The civilian victims included two residents of Bnei Brak and two Ukrainian nationals.[1][2] The fatalities therefore comprised three Israelis and two Ukrainians.[1]

Ya’akov Shalom, also identified as Yaakov Israel Shalom, was a Bnei Brak resident who was killed while driving.[3] He was reported to be 36 years old.[3][11] Contemporary accounts described him as a father, and hundreds attended funerals for him and Yehezkel after the attack.[3] His death occurred when the gunman fired at his vehicle during the movement between shooting locations.[3]

Avishai Yehezkel, also identified as Rabbi Avishai David Yehezkel, was a yeshiva student and Bnei Brak resident.[3] He was walking with his young son when the attacker opened fire, and the child survived after Yehezkel shielded him.[3] At the time of his death, Yehezkel’s wife was eight months pregnant.[6] His brother’s funeral account made his protection of his son a central part of the family’s description of his final moments.[3]

The two Ukrainian victims were identified as Victor Sorokopot and Dimitri Mitrik, with their names also rendered as Viktor, or Sasha, Sorokoput and Dmitri Mitrik.[2][11] One published victim list gave their ages as 38 and 23 respectively.[11] They were killed while sitting near a grocery shop in Bnei Brak.[2] Sorokoput had entered Israel with his wife as a tourist in September 2016, and his asylum application was rejected in June 2020.[2] Mitrik had entered Israel as a tourist in 2019.[2]

Amir Khoury was a 32-year-old Christian Arab police officer from Nof HaGalil who served in the Bnei Brak police station’s motorcycle unit.[5] His father had also served in the police.[5] Khoury and his partner responded to the shootings and confronted Hamarsheh, with Khoury sustaining the wounds from which he subsequently died in hospital.[5] His death made him both one of the responding officers and the fifth person killed in the attack.[5]

Published accounts also recorded injuries beyond the five fatalities, although their totals were not uniform.[15][16] One account listed six wounded, including three critically injured, while another listed ten wounded without identifying them or detailing their injuries.[15][16] The five-person fatality count, by contrast, appeared in contemporary victim listings and an official American statement.[11][17]

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett met senior defense and security officials after the attack.[1] He described Israel as facing “a wave of murderous Arab terrorism” and pledged that the security forces would fight terrorism.[7] Police Commissioner Yaakov Shabtai ordered the police to their highest alert level, a measure reported as not having been used since the May 2021 conflict known in Israel as Operation Guardian of the Walls.[7]

The policing measures included assigning thousands of officers to schools, transit hubs, and crowded locations.[7] Police activity shifted toward counterterrorism duties and visible patrols.[7] The aim of the deployment was reflected in plans for a more conspicuous police presence in public areas following the succession of attacks.[7][1] The Israel Defense Forces also announced reinforcements to the West Bank.[1]

Security forces carried out arrests overnight after the shootings.[8] An early report described five Palestinians detained on suspicion of involvement, including the gunman’s brother, and said that they were being questioned.[8] Another report described seven suspects arrested in Ya’bad and nearby Bir al-Basha: five in Ya’bad and two in Bir al-Basha.[14] That account identified the detainees as including Hamarsheh’s brother and uncle and said they were being questioned by the Shin Bet on suspicion of assisting him or knowing about his intentions.[14]

Investigators examined whether Hamarsheh had received help entering Israel and obtaining the firearm while apparently acting alone at the shooting scene.[14] A later account described a series of helpers but did not identify them.[2] An undocumented worker at a nearby construction site who had filmed the attack was also questioned.[2] He was cleared, and the filming was described as having been done out of curiosity rather than as participation in the attack.[2]

Troops entered Ya’bad on March 30 to survey Hamarsheh’s home ahead of demolition.[14] His brother and other security suspects were arrested during the overnight operation and transferred for questioning.[14] Subsequently, the head of the IDF Central Command signed an order to demolish the home after Israel’s High Court of Justice rejected an appeal by the family.[18] The surveying and legal proceedings formed a separate part of the response from the immediate police confrontation and investigation.[14][18]

Israel subsequently conducted an operation in Jenin and its surroundings to seize wanted individuals and try to prevent additional attacks.[9] The wider period of violence continued beyond March, including a mass shooting in Tel Aviv on April 7 and a stabbing attack in El’ad on May 5.[12] After 21 Israelis were killed in attacks from March to May, the IDF launched Operation Break the Wave, a counterterrorism campaign involving almost daily raids in the West Bank for the remainder of 2022.[12]

The immediate aftermath also included hostile crowd behavior at the attack scene.[1] Crowds were reported chanting anti-Arab slogans and attempting to overturn a car they suspected belonged to the shooter.[1] These incidents occurred alongside the emergency response and the official decisions to increase security deployments.[1]

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken condemned the attack in a statement dated March 29, 2022, acknowledging the five deaths and expressing condolences to the victims’ families.[17] His statement linked the shootings chronologically with the recent attacks in Hadera and Beersheba.[17] “Israelis—like all people around the world—should be able to live in peace and without fear,” he said.[17]

Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas issued a statement condemning the killing of Israeli and Palestinian civilians.[1] Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad spokesmen praised the attack.[13] Hamas also criticized Abbas’s condemnation.[13] The expressions of praise were separate from a claim of responsibility: an immediate report said no Palestinian group had claimed responsibility and that Hamas had praised the shootings without claiming to have carried them out.[8]

Knesset member Mansour Abbas condemned the shootings in a March 29 statement as “a terrible and deplorable crime of terror” against innocent civilians.[19] He expressed condolences to the families and wished the wounded a full recovery.[19] His statement emphasized that the victims of such violence could come from different communities: “The streets of Israel’s cities are full of Arab and Jewish citizens, and those who engage in a despicable killing spree do not distinguish and do not differentiate between blood and blood.”[19]

The Bnei Brak shootings became part of accounts of the spring 2022 terrorist wave in Israel, initially grouped with Beersheba and Hadera and subsequently with the April attack in Tel Aviv.[6][12] The four attacks in Beersheba, Hadera, Bnei Brak, and Tel Aviv had a combined death toll of 14.[11] The broader annual account placed Bnei Brak within the series of attacks on Israeli civilians extending from late March to early May and connected that period with the launch of Operation Break the Wave.[12]

The attack’s place in the sequence is distinct from the question of whether the perpetrators of the different incidents were operationally connected.[9][10] Analysis of the March attacks identified a pattern of inspiration and imitation but no proof that the attacks were connected.[10] Another assessment treated inspiration from the preceding attacks as probable on the basis of timing.[9] These interpretations concerned the relationship among attacks rather than evidence that the same organization had directed all of them.[9][10]

The automatic weapon used in Bnei Brak was highlighted in comparative analysis of lone-actor terrorism.[9] Many previous attacks by individuals from the West Bank and East Jerusalem had involved knives or similar sharp objects; Hamarsheh instead used a firearm to attack people at successive locations.[9] Investigation of the rifle’s repeated stoppages and the motorcycle officers’ rapid intervention also formed part of explanations for why the shooting did not continue or cause a larger death toll.[4][14]

The response of Khoury and his partner, together with Yehezkel’s protection of his son, featured prominently in accounts of the attack and its victims.[3][5] Khoury was a Christian Arab officer serving in the city’s motorcycle unit, while Yehezkel was a local yeshiva student walking with his child.[3][5] Their actions were described through the police reconstruction and the family testimony given at Yehezkel’s funeral.[3][4]

In commentary on the wider wave, the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs argued that shootings and stabbings in cities within pre-1967 Israel had undermined many Israelis’ sense of security.[20] The same commentary emphasized rapid responses that stopped the assailants, while noting that in two of the three incidents it discussed the quick response came by chance or from civilians; it did not identify Bnei Brak as one of those two incidents.[20] Its observations about Islamic State affiliation among some perpetrators concerned the wider wave and did not establish such an affiliation for Hamarsheh.[20]

Hamarsheh’s organizational affiliation was not established consistently in the available accounts.[14][10] Reports variously connected him with the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, Fatah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, or Hamas.[14][10] The U.S. annual terrorism report described him as unaffiliated with a terrorist organization, in contrast to reports linking him to Palestinian factions.[12][14] A claim that he belonged to a group did not, by itself, establish that the group had organized or directed the shootings.[8][12]

Accounts also differed over his earlier prison term, describing sentences of six months or about two and a half years and assigning different dates and offenses.[7][14] These differences concern his background rather than the central sequence of the attack.[7][14] A motorbike-based description of the shooting appeared in one account, while a later investigative account described his arrival by car and subsequent movement through Bnei Brak.[2][21]