On Sunday evening, a terrorist from Hebron drove his vehicle into a group of teenagers at the Gush Etzion Junction, wounding three people, including two girls, ages 17 and 15, before being shot dead by a soldier from the IDF’s Kfir Brigade. The soldier who killed the terrorist then turned and administered emergency medical treatment to one of the wounded, saving her life. The attacker was identified as Amjad al-Natsha, 31, a resident of Hebron. He was killed at the scene.

Yaron Rosenthal, head of the Gush Etzion Regional Council, who arrived at the scene, put it plainly: “Our hold here at Gush Etzion Junction began 100 years ago. We have known many challenges, and today is also a difficult day. With God’s help, we will continue our hold here on the good mountain of Gush Etzion.”

Gush Etzion, the “Etzion Bloc,” is a cluster of Jewish communities south of Jerusalem, in the heart of the Judean hills, the biblical heartland of Israel. In November, Aharon Cohen, 71, a grandfather, a father of six, a longtime resident of Kiryat Arba, was murdered at this same junction in a combined ramming and stabbing attack carried out by two terrorists from Hebron and Beit Ummar. Now, months later, another Hebron terrorist targeted children at the same spot.

Following Sunday’s attack, the IDF raided al-Natsha’s home in Hebron, interrogating those close to him. Highway 60, south of the junction toward Kiryat Arba, was closed in both directions.

The 17-year-old girl was transferred to Shaare Zedek Medical Center in serious condition with injuries to her limbs. The 15-year-old arrived at the same hospital in moderate condition with facial injuries. A third person was treated for shock at the scene.

The soldier who neutralized the terrorist did what Jewish law, halacha, demands and what the Jewish soul instinctively does: he stopped the threat and then saved a life. That is pikuach nefesh, the obligation to preserve life, in action on a bloodstained road in the hills of Judea.