ALBAWABA- The son of Israel’s ambassador to the United States was critically injured on Wednesday in a car-ramming attack targeting Israeli forces at a military checkpoint near Beit Ur, west of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, according to Israeli and regional reports.
Israeli media, including Channel 14, published footage from the immediate aftermath of the attack. The injured man was identified as Neria Leiter, a reserve soldier and the son of Israeli Ambassador to Washington Yechiel Leiter. Leiter was taken to a Jerusalem hospital in critical condition. His father later said in a statement that his son “needs a miracle” and called for prayers.
According to Israeli authorities, the Palestinian driver rammed his vehicle into Israeli forces near the checkpoint before being shot and killed at the scene. Palestinian authorities identified the driver as 29-year-old Mahmoud Mohammad Mahmoud Suleiman, from the nearby village of Beit Ur al-Tahta.
The attack occurred near the Beit Horon settlement and the Route 443 area, a major road linking Jerusalem with parts of the central West Bank. The incident comes amid heightened Israeli military activity, settlement expansion, and rising tensions across the occupied West Bank.
The attack has also drawn attention because of Neria Leiter's family background. His father, Yechiel Leiter, is Israel's ambassador to Washington and a prominent supporter of the Israeli settlement movement. Another of Leiter's sons, Maj. Moshe Yedidya Leiter, was killed while fighting in Gaza in November 2023.The incident unfolded as Israel's government continued to articulate an increasingly expansive position on territory under Israeli control.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said Wednesday, responding to Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa's statement at the UN that the Golan Heights remain Syrian territory, that the Golan is “an integral part of the State of Israel forever.” Katz also said Israel would not withdraw from a buffer zone it has controlled in Syria since the fall of Bashar al-Assad.
Katz's statement comes despite the long-standing international position that Israel's 1981 annexation of the Golan Heights is not recognized as valid under international law. UN Security Council Resolution 497 declared Israel's imposition of its laws and administration on the occupied Syrian Golan “null and void.” The UN continues to refer to the territory as occupied Syrian territory.
Meanwhile, radical National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said Tuesday that his Otzma Yehudit party would demand the Defense Ministry for him in the next government following the October elections. He unveiled a security program that includes encouraging what he describes as the “voluntary” departure of Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank, disarming Palestinian Authority security forces, changing rules of engagement and providing greater backing for Israeli soldiers.
Neriya Leiter was named as the injured victim of the West Bank ramming attack on Wednesday. His father Yechiel Leiter, Israeli Ambassador to the US is returning to Israel immediatelyRead more here 👇https://t.co/ApKRIsw5jb pic.twitter.com/9gJgVgqHOl
The demand has already drawn resistance from within Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party, with party officials saying Wednesday that they do not intend to surrender the Defense Ministry in future coalition negotiations.
The developments come as Israel faces intensified criticism at the United Nations over its policies in the occupied Palestinian territories. UN Secretary-General António Guterres told a high-level meeting on the two-state solution on Tuesday that conditions for a viable Palestinian state were being “systematically erased.” He cited accelerating settlement expansion, land seizures, demolitions, evictions, displacement and rising settler violence.
Guterres said Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory are a “flagrant violation of international law” and referred to the International Court of Justice's findings concerning policies and practices amounting to unlawful and invalid annexation. He warned that the expansion of settlements, including the E1 plan, threatens the territorial continuity required for a viable Palestinian state.
The UN's position is also reflected in Security Council Resolution 2334, which reaffirmed that Israeli settlements in Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, “have no legal validity” and constitute a violation under international law.
Dr. Mansour Al-Maswari is Postdoctoral Fellow at Columbia University-Global Center, Amman. A Yemeni academician with a Ph.D. in English "Comparative Literature" and two MA degrees, one in political science and the other in English, Dr. Al-Maswari possesses more than 17 years of extensive experience in university-level teaching, research, research reviewing, bilingual translation, and copy-writing...
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