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What happened: An off-duty Israeli soldier was killed and six other people wounded in a truck-ramming terror attack near the city of Modiin yesterday.

• A Palestinian truck driver arrived at the Maccabim checkpoint from the Israeli side of Route 443, made a U-turn and subsequently ran over a number of off-duty soldiers on the side of the road.
• The soldiers, from the 411th Battalion of the 282nd Regiment in the IDF’s Artillery Corps, were walking from a nearby army post to a bus station to a team-building activity in Modiin.
• The Israeli soldier killed in the attack was named as Cpl. Maksym Molchanov, 20, an immigrant from Ukraine. The IDF said four soldiers were among those hurt in the attack, including Molchanov, another seriously wounded victim, and two others who were lightly hurt.
• The Palestinian assailant, named as father of five, 41-year-old Daoud Abdel Razak Faiz, fled toward the Hashmonaim checkpoint four miles away where he was shot dead by security forces. Faiz lived in the nearby West Bank town of Deir Ammar and had a permit to enter Israel for work.
• Last night the security forces measured Faiz’s home for future demolition.
• Route 443 is a major highway leading from Jerusalem into central Israel through the West Bank and passes the Israeli city of Modi’in.
• In a separate incident, four Israeli soldiers were wounded by explosive device late Wednesday night while they were escorting Jewish worshippers to Joseph’s Tomb, near Nablus.

Context: The attacks came as tensions remain high across the region, amid a string of Palestinian attacks in Israel and the West Bank that have left 34 Israeli citizens dead (as well as one Italian and one Palestinian worker in Israel) and approximately 150 injured since the beginning of the year.

• On Wednesday a 22-year-old Israeli was wounded in a stabbing attack in Jerusalem by a 14-year-old Palestinian assailant who was shot and killed by an off-duty police officer.
• According to a recent assessment of the Shin Bet security service, there are around 200 active intelligence warnings of potential attacks. The Shin Bet has prevented over 350 shooting attacks this year. So far this year 1,560 Palestinians have been arrested and 750 guns have been confiscated. In the last month alone, about 287 arrests were made and in the last two weeks about 150 wanted persons were caught and 39 weapons were confiscated.
• 179 Palestinians have been killed in 2023, the vast majority combatants involved with terrorism and killed in armed clashes with Israeli troops.
• Contributing factors behind the attacks continue to be:
  • Large proliferation of weapons available in the West Bank, primarily smuggled from Jordan.
  • Online incitement, filming and glorification of attacks, particularly engaging disenfranchised young men on TikTok.
  • Erosion of the legitimacy of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the decline of its effective control of large areas of the West Bank.

Looking Ahead: The security cabinet will likely meet again in the coming days to decide on steps to try and stem the wave of terrorist attacks. The government remains divided on their approach to the Palestinians. The security establishment advocates confidence building measures to support the PA, including economic relief measures and supporting their security apparatus inside Palestinian cities – a move supported by Defence Minister Gallant.

• Ministers Smotrich and Ben Gvir have advocated the PA’s collapse, and aspire to annexation. At a Security Cabinet meeting last week, Ben Gvir pushed for a more punitive response, including an increase in checkpoints and closures, and the resumption of targeted assassinations.
• Yediot Ahronot today reported that Ben Gvir has instructed the Prison Service to limit visiting times for the families of security prisoners from the West Bank to once every two months instead of once per month. The policy will come into effect from Sunday and apply to 1,600 prisoners of the approximately 5,000 security prisoners. The paper reports that the policy is opposed by Prison Service Commissioner Katy Perry. Security prisoners have an influential status on the Palestinian street.