West Bank cousins handed life in prison for deadly 2024 terror spree in Ra'anana

Ahmed Zidat, 25, and Mahmoud Zidat, 44, jailed for life plus 60 years after killing Edna Bluestein, 70, and injuring 17 others in ramming and stabbing attack across multiple locations

By Charlie Summers

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8 April 2025, 2:45 pm

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The Lod District Court on Tuesday sentenced two perpetrators of a 2024 car-ramming and stabbing attack, in which they killed an elderly woman, to life imprisonment plus 60 additional years.

Cousins Ahmed Zidat, 25, and Mahmoud Zidat, 44, were convicted of repeatedly ramming vehicles into pedestrians across several locations throughout Ra’anana on January 15, 2024. The terror attack killed 79-year-old Edna Bluestein and injured at least 17 others.

The perpetrators, from the southern West Bank town of Bani Naim, had been working in the Ra’anana industrial zone without proper documentation. The two pleaded guilty and were convicted in July 2024 on terror charges including aggravated murder, attempted murder, causing injury and other offenses.

According to an indictment filed by prosecutors in February 2024, both identified with the Hamas terror group and had planned other terror attacks in the past. They carried out their rampage using three cars in separate parts of the city.

Ahmed rammed into one pedestrian at high speed, exited his wrecked vehicle, then hijacked another car to run into two other pedestrians. He again got out of the car and began stabbing one of his victims.

Mahmoud, meanwhile, spotted a crowded bus stop and rammed his car into those waiting there, running over 18 people, including Bluestein.

Left to right: cousins Ahmed Zidat, 25, and Mahmoud Zidat, 44, who were convicted of repeatedly ramming vehicles into pedestrians across several locations throughout Ra’anana on January 15, 2024. (Used in accordance with Clause 27a of the Copyright Law)

One of them told the Shin Bet that “when the war in Gaza started,” they “decided to carry out an attack and become martyrs… Initially, we intended to stab Jews, but then we decided to run over as many Jews as possible,” Channel 12 reported last year.

Dozens of terrorist attacks have been carried out in Israel since Hamas’s October 7, 2023, massacre, which saw thousands of terrorists burst across the border from the Gaza Strip by land, air and sea, killing some 1,200 people and seizing 251 hostages of all ages. In response to the deadliest attack in the country’s history, Israel vowed to eliminate Hamas from the Gaza Strip, where the terror group has ruled since 2007, and return the hostages.

Israeli police forensics personnel inspect the area around a damaged car following a terrorist ramming attack in the central town of Ra’anana, on January 15, 2024. (JACK GUEZ / AFP)

Since then, 51 people, including Israeli security personnel, have been killed in terror attacks in Israel and the West Bank. Another eight members of the security forces were killed in clashes with terror operatives in the West Bank.

Troops have arrested some 6,000 wanted Palestinians across the West Bank, including more than 2,350 said to be affiliated with Hamas.

According to the Palestinian Authority health ministry, more than 900 West Bank Palestinians have been killed in that time. The IDF says the vast majority of them were gunmen killed in exchanges of fire, rioters who clashed with troops, or terrorists carrying out attacks.