The son of Israel's ambassador to the United States was fighting for his life in a Jerusalem hospital Thursday after a car-ramming attack at a West Bank checkpoint left him with severe head injuries requiring emergency brain surgery, according to hospital officials and his father.

Neria Leiter, a reserve soldier stationed at a checkpoint near the Beit Horon settlement on the Route 443 corridor west of Ramallah, was struck Tuesday afternoon when a car veered into him and other soldiers, according to accounts from the scene. Israeli forces shot and killed the driver, identified by the Palestinian Health Ministry as 29-year-old Mahmoud Mahmoud Suleiman of the nearby village of Beit Ur al-Tahta. No other soldiers were seriously hurt.

Doctors at Shaare Zedek Medical Center rushed Leiter into a lengthy surgery to relieve pressure on his brain. The hospital's trauma chief said his life would remain in danger for at least another 24 hours even after the operation stabilized him. He remains in intensive care.

A family already marked by war

The attack carries an added weight of tragedy for the Leiter family. Ambassador Yechiel Leiter's eldest son, Maj. Moshe Yedidya Leiter, was killed in combat in northern Gaza in November 2023, weeks after the October 7 Hamas attack. Neria, according to reporting on his service record, continued volunteering for reserve duty on multiple fronts in the years since his brother's death.

I am grateful to the IDF, to the medical team at Shaare Zedek who are now fighting to save the life of Neria.

Ambassador Leiter, who has represented Israel in Washington since early 2025 and has recently led back-channel talks touching on Lebanon, cut short his schedule and flew back to Israel to be at his son's bedside. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the hospital and posted that he and his wife were "praying for a miracle," while asking the public to pray for Neria by his Hebrew name, Neria Dov ben Chana.

Palestinian residents of Beit Ur al-Tahta told reporters that Israeli forces raided the village and searched homes in the hours after the shooting, sealing off entrances as troops searched for information about the driver. There has been no claim of responsibility by any militant group, and Israeli police have not yet said whether they consider the ramming a coordinated attack or an act by a lone individual, per CNN's on-the-ground coverage.

The incident lands amid a tense stretch for the West Bank, where car-ramming and stabbing attacks at checkpoints have recurred sporadically through the broader Israel-Hamas war, even as international attention has been fixed on Gaza cease-fire diplomacy and this week's UN General Assembly sessions in New York. Doctors say Leiter's next 24 to 48 hours are considered the most critical window for his recovery, and the ambassador has said he remains "full of hope" as his son remains under close monitoring in intensive care.