The attack began with shots fired at a gas station in Kokhav Ya'ir, northeast of Tel Aviv near the border with the occupied West Bank, on Sunday morning.
An eyewitness told Haaretz he heard gunshots at the gas station and saw a man fall to the ground. Another witness described automatic fire.
"I can't remember anything like this happening here in 40 years," he told the Israeli newspaper.
Reports of gunfire then came from two nearby Israeli towns and Sal'it, an Israeli settlement in the West Bank, the AP news agency reports.
Concerns about coordinated attacks
The deceased was later identified as a 55-year-old man who was a reservist in the army, according to a statement from the military. The five injured people, two of whom had serious injuries, were taken to hospital.
Police initially feared that it was a series of coordinated attacks involving multiple perpetrators. However, it was later determined that there was a lone shooter and an accomplice who was believed to have acted as a driver.
The suspected shooter was a man in his 20s from the Arab-Israeli town of Taybeh, according to police, AP reports. The man was confronted and shot dead by police. The suspected accomplice was arrested later Sunday and is said to have tried to stab one of the officers with a glass bottle.
Concerns that it was a more extensive attack led authorities in several areas to order residents to stay home, while children in schools were kept indoors.
Calls for the death penalty
The Palestinian militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad praised the act and called it a response to Israeli crimes against Palestinians, Al Jazeera reports.
Israel's ultra-conservative Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has called for the death penalty for the perpetrators. In March, the Knesset voted in favor of a controversial bill to impose the death penalty on terrorists - a law that in practice applies to Palestinians but not Israelis.
"Whoever murders a Jew will see the gallows," Ben-Gvir wrote on X after the shooting.
