American, Israeli Jewish Terrorist Detained

Teitel told police he was "God's emissary in Israel" and came to kill Palestinians.

Israeli police say Yaakov Teitel, 37, confessed to murdering two Palestinians and planting a bomb that seriously injured a boy from a Messianic Jewish family in Ariel.

The American-born is a resident of the Shvut Rachel Jewish settlement in the occupied West bank and works as a settlement guard.

He was arrested on October 7 in a neighborhood of Al-Quds (occupied East Jerusalem) inhabited by Ultra-Jewish settlers.

His detention remained secret under a three-week gag order until last weekend.

Israeli authorities found an arsenal of weapons, including a sniper rifle, an M15 machine gun, an M16 automatic rifle and a Glock pistol, as well as a bomb-making factory in his home.

He had six rifles and three pistols, which he smuggled into Israel from the United States in a shipping container.

Teitel maintained a room in his home where he experimented with explosive charges.

The police said he became proficient at making bombs.

God's Emissary 

Teitel was born in Florida and lived in Israel for extended periods in the 1990s.

He told police investigators he was "God's emissary in Israel" and that he came to Israel in 1997 to kill Palestinians.

He confessed that in July 1997 he shot and killed Sameer Bleesy, a Palestinian cab driver from Al-Quds.

A few months later, he shot and killed Issa Mustafa, from Yatta town near the West Bank town of Al-Khalil (Hebron).

Teitel said that in both murders he used a gun he had smuggled aboard his British Airways flight to Israel.

Shortly after the second murder, he returned to the US and remained there for three years.

When he returned to Israel in 2000 police questioned him at length in connection with the two Palestinian killings.

Teitel was released without charge and his gun license was not revoked.

According to the Shin Bet, he planted an explosive charge in front of the home of a Palestinian family in the village of Sajur, near Ramallah, in March 2003.

A year later Teitel placed bottles of poison-laced juice in a Palestinian village near the settlement of Eli.

In April 2007, he planted an explosive in an Arab area near Beit Shemesh settlement.

Teitel was branded a Jewish "terrorist" in the Israeli media.

If convicted, he will join a hall of infamy of killer Jewish settlers including Baruch Goldstein who massacred 29 Palestinian worshippers inside Al-Khalil Mosque in 1994.

Another Jewish settler from Teitel's Shvut Rachel settlement was arrested in 2005 for the murder of five Palestinians.