Palestinians handed life sentences for deadly 2007, 2021 West Bank terror attacks

An Israeli military court on Thursday sentenced two Palestinians to life in prison for separate terror attacks they carried out in the West Bank in 2007 and 2021.

The first attacker, Ali Dandis, who was arrested in December 2024, carried out a shooting at the Nahal Telem stream in the West Bank in December 2007, in which two off-duty soldiers — Staff Sgt. David Rubin and Cpl. Ahikam Amihai — were killed.

Dandis was handed two life sentences for the 2007 attack and ordered to pay NIS 5.2 million ($1.6 million) in compensation to the families of the soldiers.

The Samaria Military Court also gave Dandis an additional life sentence for a separate shooting attack targeting a bus in the West Bank in 2012, which caused no injuries, at a time when he had temporarily left the custody of the Palestinian Authority.

According to an indictment filed last year, Dandis planned the Nahal Telem shooting attack with his friends Omar Taha and Basel al-Natsha.

On December 28, 2007, the trio arrived at Nahal Telem, a stream in the southern West Bank, in an attempt to locate and kill Israeli soldiers, the indictment said.

Dandis opened fire on Rubin, killing him, and moments later, Taha opened fire on Amihai, killing him as well. Al-Natsha, the third assailant, was killed by the soldiers returning fire.

The two surviving gunmen turned themselves in to Palestinian Authority security forces following the attack. In 2008, the PA sentenced them to 15 years in prison. Dandis, who was subsequently released from PA custody, was detained on December 26, 2024, in Bethlehem by members of the police’s elite Yamam unit.

The second Palestinian sentenced on Thursday, Muhammad Youssef Jaradat, a member of a Palestinian Islamic Jihad cell, opened fire on an Israeli car near the Homesh outpost in the northern West Bank on December 16, 2021, killing Yehuda Dimentman, 25, and wounding two others.

Jaradat and a second Islamic Jihad gunman fled the scene with a third member of the terror cell to a getaway car, where a fourth accomplice — a minor — was waiting, according to an indictment filed against them in 2022.

The three suspects, along with the minor who acted as a driver, were arrested three days later in the village of Silat al-Harithiya and have been in military custody since.

Jaradat was convicted of “intentionally causing death,” the equivalent of murder in the military legal system, as well as weapon trafficking offenses.

The Samaria Military Court on Thursday handed Jaradat a life sentence and ordered him to pay NIS 2 million ($640,000) to Dimentman’s family, as well as additional compensation to the wounded victims of the attack.

The IDF said that the trial of three other suspects in the case was ongoing at the court.