Neria Leiter, 39, the son of Israel's ambassador to the United States, was critically injured on Wednesday after a Palestinian man rammed a vehicle into a security checkpoint in the occupied West Bank. Leiter, a military reservist, was checking vehicles near the Israeli settlement of Beit Horon — a community in the central West Bank along the main highway linking Jerusalem to Tel Aviv — when the attacker struck. Israeli forces opened fire on the suspect, identified by the Palestinian Health Ministry as Mahmoud Suleiman, as he attempted to flee, killing him. Leiter was subsequently airlifted to Shaare Zedek Medical Centre in Jerusalem, where he underwent several hours of complex brain surgery overnight and was reported to have been stabilised, though still in danger of losing his life.
Ambassador Yechiel Leiter wrote on social media that his son "needs a miracle," noting that Neria had continued to serve as a reservist even after the family suffered an earlier devastating loss. The ambassador's older son, Major Moshe Yedidya Leiter, was killed in northern Gaza in November 2023, roughly a month after the Hamas-led October 7 attacks that triggered the war there. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Isaac Herzog both expressed wishes for Neria's recovery, with Herzog describing him as "fighting for his life." Netanyahu visited the Leiter family at the hospital Wednesday night before departing for the United Nations General Assembly in New York. Ambassador Leiter, who had been expected to accompany Netanyahu, remained in Jerusalem.
The attack occurred during the Jewish High Holy Days, in the days following Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, and adds to a surge in violence that has gripped the West Bank since October 2023. Recent months have seen deadly Palestinian attacks on Israelis alongside a sharp rise in settler violence against Palestinians, forced evictions from Palestinian towns, and expanded Israeli military operations across the territory. Earlier this week, an Israeli man was killed in a separate shooting attack in the West Bank.
The West Bank is home to approximately three million Palestinians and 500,000 Israeli settlers. Israeli settlements — residential communities built in territory occupied by Israel since 1967 — are considered illegal under international law, which prohibits an occupying power from transferring its civilian population into occupied territory. The territory, along with the Gaza Strip, forms the core of the land designated for a future Palestinian state under international peace plans.
The attack also drew pointed commentary from Ambassador Leiter, who used the occasion to criticise French President Emmanuel Macron over remarks made at the UN General Assembly on Tuesday in which Macron highlighted settler violence against Palestinians. Leiter accused Macron of acting "out of ignorance, malice, or perversity." The broader diplomatic backdrop remains fraught: Ambassador Leiter has been a key figure in recent Israeli-Lebanese diplomacy, having helped broker a framework agreement between the two countries in late June, announced alongside Lebanese and US officials, as a first step toward stability following renewed conflict between Israel and the Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah.