A Palestinian attacker crashed his car into two people in northern Israel on Friday, killing a pedestrian, before stabbing a teenage hitchhiker to death.
The suspect has been named as Ahmad Abu al-Rub, 37, from the northern West Bank town of Qabatiya, inside the separation wall south of Beit She’an, where the attack took place.
He drove his employer’s car in the attack. The authorities believe he illegally entered Israel a few days ago and had been working in the black market.
In a statement Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, named the victims as Samson Mordechai, 68, and Aviv Maor, 16, from a kibbutz in northern Israel, who was stabbed near a bus stop as she was trying to hitchhike.
Mordechai was a resident of Beit She’an. He was run over and then dragged 50 metres by the attacker’s car. The city’s mayor said that he was killed on his way back from a synagogue.
Another 16-year-old was also hit in his lower body by al-Rub’s car and left lying on the kerb. Al-Rub attempted to flee but was shot by a civilian passer-by and taken to the nearby hospital.
A second person was being treated for a head injury in hospital after being chased and then struck by the car.
“[We] support the heroic citizen who neutralised the terrorist,” Netanyahu said. “While there have been many successful counterterrorism operations over the past year, we unfortunately experience murderous attacks from time to time.
“The government of Israel will continue to act to thwart anyone who seeks to harm its citizens.”
Israel Katz, the defence minister, instructed the Israeli military to act “forcefully and immediately” in Qabatiya, calling on the army to “locate and thwart every terrorist and strike terror infrastructure in the village”, adding that anyone aiding and abetting attacks “will pay the full price”.
The government is in the midst of enacting new laws proposing the death penalty for those convicted of deadly attacks on Israelis.
The mayor of Beit She’an paid tribute to Mordechai, a father of two, as “a wonderful man, from a wonderful family. Everyone knows him. We are a small community. He was on his way back from synagogue when he was hit.”
Avner, the dead man’s younger brother, said: “One of the residents of Beit She’an called me and said: ‘Someone hit your brother, can you come to Beit She’an?’ At that point, they didn’t even realise it was a terrorist attack and I didn’t even know that my brother had been killed.
“I immediately got into my car and arrived at the scene, where I received the news that my brother had been murdered. His wife was at home at that point and didn’t know anything.
He added: “This is a brother I was very close to. He had just recently retired and was planning to rest and enjoy himself and this terrible tragedy happened to us. Nothing can prepare you for something so terrible.”
Bet She’an is a quiet but key city hub near the border with Jordan and is situated on a main north-south motorway that runs between Israel and the occupied West Bank, leaving it vulnerable to infiltration.
The last major attack there took place in 2002, at the height of the second intifada, when six Israelis were killed by two Palestinians who drove a stolen vehicle to a polling station, where they detonated bombs and fired into lines of voters.
Danny Levy, Israel’s police commissioner, said Friday’s attack was a “very grave incident” and the police and security services are investigating al-Rub’s background and his family.
Itamar Ben Gvir, the far-right nationalist minister in charge of police, called on Jewish civilians to take up arms to prevent such attacks.
“I call on Israel’s citizens: come arm yourselves, we’ve made it easier to do so, we’ve made a huge reform on this issue, come arm yourselves, it saves lives,” Ben Gvir said in a statement in the wake of the attack.
“The second thing I think will save even more lives is the death penalty law for terrorists,” he said. “I really hope no one blocks this law for me; there are those who think all terrorists come to commit suicide, that’s not true — they don’t come to commit suicide; they come afterward to live in prisons.
“So yes, they’ve changed the conditions in prisons from one end to the other, and yes, Israel’s prisons have long ceased to be summer camps — but we must pass the death penalty law for terrorists. I’m doing everything to make it happen.”
There has been a rise in attacks on Israeli civilians over the past two years since the Hamas attack on southern Israel of October 7, 2023 and the subsequent war in Gaza.
Stabbing and car-ramming attacks, and other lone assailant incidents, have taken place inside Israel. The deadliest attack came in September when six civilians were killed by Palestinians who opened fire on a bus during the morning rush hour in Jerusalem.
Violence by Jewish settlers against Palestinian civilians has also increased. On Thursday, a video was published and shared with police that showed an armed Israeli settler and army reservist driving his tractor into a Palestinian as he knelt in prayer at the side of a road.
The video shows the man falling over on the ground as the settler gets out of his tractor and shouts at him.
The settler, who is known to the authorities, is under house arrest for the next five days. He reportedly opened fire earlier inside the village of Deir Jarir, near the de facto Palestinian capital of Ramallah, while wearing civilian clothes.