Mohammed Harouf, an Arab resident of Shechem in Samaria, was convicted Sunday of murdering Michal Halimi, an Israeli woman with whom he was having an affair, for nationalistic reasons.
Harouf will serve a life sentence for the murder, which is now considered an act of terror. As part of a plea bargain arrangement, the original indictment was amended to include that the murder was motivated by political reasons as opposed to personal reasons.
Harouf confessed to strangling and beating Halimi, then covering and leaving her body in Holon and getting away in her car. Halimi’s body was discovered in the sand dunes near Holon on July 24. Halimi was a married resident from the Jewish settlement of Adam. It is unclear whether Halimi was pregnancy was a product of her marriage.
As the perpetrator of a nationalistic crime against Israelis, Harouf’s family now becomes eligible to receive stipends paid to terrorists by the Palestinian Authority.