U.S.-born West Bank settler admits to role in attacks against Palestinians, Jews

Yaakov Teitel admitted to planting pipe bomb that wounded left-wing professor Ze’ev Sternhell last year

With the recent lifting of a gag order, details of attacks by a Jewish settler against both Palestinians and Jews are being widely reported. Yaakov Teitel, 37, who was arrested last month, “is alleged to have killed two Palestinians.

The resident of the West Bank settlement of Shvut Rachel also allegedly assembled a package bomb that seriously injured the son of a messianist Jew and set up a pipe bomb near the home of left-wing professor Ze’ev Sternhell,” according to JTA today.

JTA reports:

A Florida native, Teitel made aliyah in 2000, though he moved back and forth between Israel and the United States for the past 20 years, according to Ha’aretz. The father of four, he is a resident of the Shvut Rachel outpost in the northern West Bank.

Police said Teitel has confessed to the 1997 murders of a Palestinian cab driver and a Palestinian shepherd, planting several explosive devices in 2006 and 2007, sending the parcel bomb to the messianic family in Ariel last year and planting the pipe bomb near the Sternhell home in September 2008.

He also has supported, through leaflets and posters, a shooting attack last summer on a gay and lesbian teen club in Tel Aviv that left two dead. Shin Bet officials, however, told Israeli media that they do not believe Teitel was the shooter.

Haaretz reported that Teitel’s wife, Rivka, was interrogated by the police, but she elected to remain silent. The Israeli newspaper noted that Teitel “had been involved in the past with the extreme right wing, but he says he carried out his attacks alone and no one else knew about them, according to investigators. The Shin Bet security service and police are still examining this claim, but have so far not discovered accomplices.”