The aftermath of the car-ramming attack at Beit Aryeh in Samaria on Thursday afternoon. Photo: Magen David Adom.

A joint operation of the IDF, the Shin Bet and Israel Police led to the arrest of the perpetrator of Thursday afternoon’s car-ramming attack in Samaria, Israeli site nrg reported on Friday.

Muhammad Abdel Halim Abdel Alhamid Salem, a member of Hamas, was apprehended Thursday night in the Ramallah-governed village of Al-Lubban al-Gharbi, after eluding Israeli security forces for several hours.

Salem, 37, managed to flee the scene of his attack in the West Bank settlement of Beit Aryeh, which left four Israeli soldiers wounded, one of them seriously. He abandoned his vehicle and returned to his village on foot. He was later arrested by members of the IDF’s elite Duvdevan unit. According to nrg, Salem spent six months in administrative detention in 2001, and Shin Bet sources said he had not been involved in terrorist activities since then.

In his initial interrogation at the time of his arrest, he admitted to having committed the car-ramming attack, claiming he was influenced by Palestinian media coverage of the current situation, and specifying claims of the “dangers to the Temple Mount [Al-Aqsa Mosque] and murder of Palestinian children” as his motive.