A Samaria village where most residents carry American passports chose as its mayor a man imprisoned for helping a Palestinian-American terrorist escape after murdering a 19-year-old yeshiva student, electing him by a large majority while he was still behind Israeli bars.
Lafi Shalabi, known as Abu Rifat, won the village leadership election on October 30, 2021, by a large majority, running from behind bars. Supporters hailed him as a “hero who fights for his homeland,” and one local official described the vote as a “message to the occupation.” Because he was still imprisoned, Shalabi was installed as the village’s honorary head until his release, with Naif Shalabi serving as acting mayor in the meantime.
Shalabi had been arrested months earlier on suspicion of helping his relative, Muntasir Shalabi, evade Israeli security forces after a deadly shooting attack. In November 2021, weeks after his election, an Israeli military court sentenced him to 10 months in prison as an accomplice. He has recently completed his term as mayor.
The attack he aided took place on May 2, 2021. Muntasir Shalabi, a 44-year-old Turmus Ayya resident who holds American citizenship, opened fire from his car on students waiting at a bus stop at Tapuach Junction in Samaria. Yehuda Guetta, a student at the yeshiva in Itamar, was killed. Two of his friends, Benaya Peretz and Amichai Hala, were wounded. The shooter’s car was later found burned near the village of Akraba, and he was captured days later after a manhunt.
In January 2022, an IDF military court sentenced Muntasir Shalabi to two life sentences and ordered him to pay the Guetta family one million shekels. Yehuda’s father, Elisha Guetta, had asked that the terrorist receive the death penalty. Attorney Chayim Bleicher of the Honenu legal aid organization, who represented the family, said, “We hope that the cursed terrorist will end his life inside prison as the sentence mandates.” Bleicher warned that punishment of the shooter alone was insufficient. “The war on terrorism cannot end with criminal punishment alone,” he said, calling on the government to take harsh steps against the environments that support terrorism.
Months later, the village answered that call by electing his accomplice as its leader.
“The Value Placed on Violence”
The Regavim Movement, which monitors Arab activity in Judea and Samaria, highlighted Shalabi’s election in a diplomatic brief on Turmus Ayya released this year. “The outgoing mayor of Turmus Ayya, Lafi Shalabi, was elected while serving time in an Israeli prison for involvement in a terrorist attack,” the report states, calling the election “another indication of the value placed on violence and anti-Israel terrorism by the residents of the village.”
According to the report, written by Naomi Linder Kahn of Regavim’s International Division with research by Moran Tal of its Arabic OSINT Division, the village “makes no secret of its direct, intensive affiliation with Fatah, and with ‘the armed resistance.'” Regavim estimates that 80 to 90 percent of Turmus Ayya’s roughly 3,000 permanent winter residents hold US citizenship or permanent residency, the highest documented concentration of US citizens anywhere outside American sovereign territory.
That concentration gives the village outsized influence in Washington. Incidents involving Turmus Ayya residents trigger congressional inquiries, Department of Justice reviews and extensive American media coverage, and Regavim’s report argues that a network of pro-Palestinian organizations in the United States has used that mechanism to shape US policy toward Israel. “Despite their American citizenship and fantastically privileged standard of living, the villagers of Turmus Ayya make no secret of their support for Fatah and for anti-Israel terrorism,” the report states.
The report documents how the village honors those killed while attacking Israelis. In April 2026, Turmus Ayya dedicated a park in memory of Amer Rabee, a 14-year-old US citizen killed by IDF forces one year earlier while, according to Regavim, carrying out a stone-throwing attack on Israeli motorists. Ahead of the ceremony, the village council requested IDF protection from “violent settlers.” Residents of neighboring Israeli communities warned the IDF that the village’s social media channels were calling on participants to attack Israeli drivers after the event. Israeli vehicles were pelted with stones on Route 60 immediately after the ceremony ended, and Arabic channels then urged residents to disable security cameras and erase footage to help the attackers evade the IDF. Initial media reports blamed the stone-throwing on Israeli hilltop youth.
Regavim also profiles Imad Daboob, a Turmus Ayya native living in the United States who served time in an Israeli prison for terrorism during the First Intifada and, according to the report, “continues to take pride in this part of his resume.” Daboob is now a senior Fatah-affiliated activist in the Palestinian-American community. At an event he organized in Memphis, Tennessee, guests danced to songs celebrating the 1965 Eilabun Tunnel attack on Israel’s National Water Carrier, Fatah’s founding terror operation, and to lyrics declaring, “O machine gun 500, O machine gun 500, adorn the hilltops for me.”
The Village the World Defends
Turmus Ayya has repeatedly drawn international attention as a victim of settler attacks. In September, US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee visited the village and described Israelis he filmed as threatening settlers, a claim that collapsed when the “settler” turned out to be Amishav Melet, the driver of a Jewish security patrol, as Israel365 News reported.
On Monday, dozens of Arab rioters attacked a Regavim fact-finding tour at the entrance to Turmus Ayya, hurling rocks and attempting to block the vehicles with cars. A rock shattered a windshield, and content creator Cindy Seni was lightly injured. “It was horrifying to be attacked by a group of terrorists for the mere fact that we were there,” said former Jerusalem deputy mayor Fleur Hassan-Nahoum, who was on the tour. Holding up one of the rocks, she said, “This kills. It’s not just throwing stones; this kills.”
The residents of Turmus Ayya hold American passports and present themselves to the world as a peaceful community under siege. In 2021, they were given a choice of who would lead their village. They chose the man who helped Yehuda Guetta’s murderer escape, and they made the choice while he was in an Israeli prison for doing it.
