Police’s suspicion of a terror motive in the fatal ramming of an 18-year-old Israeli settler in the West Bank over the weekend has reportedly strengthened with time, the Haaretz daily reported Tuesday, though the investigation is still ongoing.

Yehuda Sherman had been traveling in an ATV when it was hit by a Palestinian driver north of Nablus on Saturday. Police began investigating the incident as a lethal car accident, but later announced that they were probing the possibility of an intentional attack.

Citing a source familiar with the ongoing investigation, Haaretz said police increasingly suspect the incident was a terror attack and believe it occurred after a dispute between Sherman and the 57-year-old driver, from the nearby Palestinian village of Beit Imrin.

Police reportedly have evidence that the driver sped up just before the impact.

But those close to the driver, including his brother and his defense attorney, insisted the car crash was an accident.

Sherman lived in the illegal settlement outpost of Shuva Yisrael Farms in the northern West Bank. He was conducting a “land patrol” Saturday afternoon with two other men, including his brother, Daniel, who lives in and runs the wildcat outpost, the Samaria District Council said.

The council’s statement alleged that the Palestinian vehicle sped up toward the ATV before hitting it, although neither the police nor the army statement said that.

Sherman was fatally wounded, while his brother Daniel and the driver were lightly injured. All three were taken to the hospital.

The driver’s brother insisted that the ramming was completely unintentional. “My brother has never hurt anyone in his life,” he told Haaretz, expressing worry for his sibling after he “left the hospital and went straight to detention.”

The driver surrendered himself to security forces, Haaretz reported.

The brother said the fatal incident took place after the pair had attended a mourning service for their recently deceased aunt. “My brother left before I did and people said that they saw him descend in his car between the olive [trees] and the mountain. It was raining hard,” he recalled.

“We went there and we saw the accident. I didn’t know what my brother’s condition was at first,” he continued.

Meanwhile Daniel, the injured brother of the deceased Israeli teenager, claimed the driver recognized the trio and began chasing them in his car down a steep mountain. After they crashed, he alleged that Palestinians from Beit Imrin began throwing stones at them, before Israeli security forces came to their rescue.

“Arabs from the village began to come… to scream and curse us, throw stones at us. I miraculously managed to call for help. They came after a long time, they managed to save us and took us to the hospital,” he said in a video published by the Samaria District Council.

But footage from the scene, which appeared to show a group of Palestinians aiding the wounded, cast doubt on his version of events.

In a video taken in the incident’s aftermath, Palestinians and Jewish Israelis were seen carrying Sherman on a stretcher, ascending a hill from the scene of the crash toward an ambulance belonging to the Palestinian Red Crescent emergency service.

פלסטינים מסייעים לפצועים בנוכחות ישראלים בתקרית שבה נהרג יהודה שרמן בגדה, שלשום(צילום: שימוש לפי סעיף 27א' לחוק זכויות יוצרים) pic.twitter.com/kQKZ80d0l7 — הארץ חדשות (@haaretznewsvid) March 23, 2026

פלסטינים מסייעים לפצועים בנוכחות ישראלים בתקרית שבה נהרג יהודה שרמן בגדה, שלשום(צילום: שימוש לפי סעיף 27א' לחוק זכויות יוצרים) pic.twitter.com/kQKZ80d0l7

— הארץ חדשות (@haaretznewsvid) March 23, 2026

“This is a regular car accident that could happen to anyone… a motorized [off-raod] vehicle that is forbidden from traveling on the road surprised a Palestinian driver in Area A,” said Ahmad Khalifa, the driver’s lawyer, to Haaretz, referring to areas in the West Bank that are under the control of the Palestinian Authority.

He claimed the version posited by the deceased teen’s brother is “contradictory and false, and a politically extremist agenda lies behind it.”

Even before the official police update, settlers — some reportedly close to Sherman and his family — had claimed it was a terror attack. Leaders of the Religious Zionism and Otzma Yehudit parties also described Sherman’s death as an act of terrorism.

Over the past two nights, settler extremists have carried out a spate of attacks on Palestinian villages in the northern West Bank, torching homes, vehicles and other property.

The West Bank has recently seen a wave of rising extremist settler violence against Palestinians. Six Palestinian civilians have been shot dead by settlers since the beginning of March, while other violent attacks by such radical elements against Palestinians and civil rights activists seeking to protect them have become a daily occurrence in the West Bank.

More broadly, violence in the West Bank has soared since the Hamas attack on Israel triggered the Gaza war in October 2023.

More than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank by Israeli forces or settlers since the war started, according to the PA health ministry. 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.

During the same period, 65 civilians and 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 during raids in Palestinian cities in the West Bank.

The same period has also seen a major surge in attacks by settler extremists on Palestinians and their property across the West Bank. The IDF recorded 867 incidents of nationalistic crime and settler violence in 2025. The total for 2024 was 682 incidents.

Nurit Yohanan and Jeremy Sharon contributed to this report.

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