Israeli Forces Kill Palestinian at West Bank Checkpoint After Car-Ramming Wounds US Ambassador's Son

A 29-year-old Palestinian man was shot dead by Israeli forces on Wednesday at the Maccabim checkpoint on Route 443, west of Ramallah, after his vehicle struck an Israeli patrol member.

The Palestinian health ministry named the man as Mahmoud Mohammed Mahmoud Suleiman, from the Ramallah area, and said he was killed by Israeli gunfire near the village of Beit Ur al-Tahta. The Israeli military said Suleiman carried out a car-ramming attack at the checkpoint and was shot dead at the scene. Israeli police said a vehicle drove toward a joint police-military patrol and struck one of its members, who was seriously wounded.

That soldier was later identified as Neria Leiter, son of Yechiel Leiter, Israel's ambassador to the United States.

"Neria needs a miracle," Ambassador Leiter wrote on X, saying medical staff were fighting to save his son's life.

Leiter said Neria had continued serving as a reservist after his older brother, Moshe Yedidya Leiter, was killed fighting in Gaza in November 2023. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he and his wife were "praying for a miracle."

The New Arab's correspondent on the scene reported that Israeli forces withheld Suleiman's body and blocked Palestinian ambulances from reaching him after the shooting, a claim not independently corroborated but consistent with practices Israeli forces have followed in past West Bank killings. Forces closed the Maccabim checkpoint, which links six Palestinian villages to Ramallah and has been shut repeatedly in recent days, and tightened restrictions at several other crossings in the Ramallah and al-Bireh governorate.

Local sources said Israeli settlers threw stones at Palestinian vehicles that evening on the Ramallah-Nablus road near the settlement of Shilo. No serious damage was reported.

The checkpoint shooting came on a day of broader Israeli military activity in the West Bank. Taha Basharat, mayor of Jaba, north of Jerusalem, told The New Arab that Israeli forces entered the area with bulldozers and demolished two industrial structures days after issuing demolition orders. Other agricultural and residential structures were reportedly demolished elsewhere in the West Bank and around occupied East Jerusalem the same day.

The circumstances of the car-ramming itself remain disputed: Israeli authorities describe it as a deliberate attack, while no independent account of Suleiman's intent has been published. What is confirmed by both Palestinian and Israeli sources is that he died at the scene and that the soldier he struck, the son of a sitting Israeli ambassador, was gravely wounded.