An Israeli was attacked by two Palestinian Authority Arab hitchhikers on Route 443, which runs between Jerusalem and Modi’in, on Friday night.

Channel 10 News reported that the man picked up the two hitchhikers and, as the vehicle approached the Maccabim Junction, they struck him in the head with a glass bottle and tried to steal his car.

The driver managed to escape with the vehicle to the Maccabim security checkpoint, where he reported the incident to security forces. The IDF and Israeli police began searching the area for the two attackers.

In a recent similar incident, a Jewish trucker ended the lives of two PA Arabs who attempted to kidnap him and steal his vehicle on a road in the Hevron Hills area of Judea. A third Arab who was involved in the attempted robbery and kidnapping was wounded.

The three Arabs hurled a blunt object at the trucker, but he shot back in self-defense, according to the report, and then drove to the nearest checkpoint to contact IDF soldiers.

Former Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) chief Avi Dichter, who is now a Kadima Knesset member, labeled the incident a terror attack.

“Carjacking can easily lead to kidnapping,” he said. “We must use our intelligence apparatus to identify these car thieves and bring them to justice.”

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman later said that Israel narrowly avoided a repeat of the Gilad Shalit kidnapping with this incident, noting that tt may have started out as a carjacking, “but we have seen numerous times how these carjackings turn into kidnappings. The man who shot the terrorists deserves a great deal of praise.”

The PA-based media chose to describe the two Arabs who were killed by the trucker as “martyrs”.