Israel Matzav

The exact details of the short car ride from Karnei Shomron to Kedumim late Thursday night, with the suicide bomber in the back seat, will never be known.

But those in the settlement of Kedumim who knew the car's driver, Rafi Halevy, 63, and his wife Helena, 58, believe the couple died heroically by preventing a major suicide bombing within the community itself.

Helena's best friend, Miriam Tartner, told The Jerusalem Post that witnesses on the road outside the community saw the car swerve erratically just before it reached Kedumim.

It then came to a sudden stop, as if the driver had jammed on the breaks, said Tartner. She said she thought that during the few minutes that passed since they picked up three hitchhikers at the Karnei Shomron bus stop, including the terrorist, who was dressed as a haredi, they realized they had a suicide bomber in their car.

"Helena had the instincts of a cat," said Tartner. "I believe that Rafi and Helena spoke with the hitchhiker. When he answered with an Arab accent, they knew and tried to get him out of the car. When they couldn't, they stopped altogether," she said.

In the two days since, she said, members of the community have tried to piece together details of the blast.

They have learned, she said, that a bystander at the bus stop in Karnei Shomron thought that the bomber looked suspicious and summoned security services, but that they arrived too late.

Another witness, Narkis Ya'ari, said she had also seen the bomber at the bus stop, as well as the two other people who subsequently got a ride from the Halevys, Shaked Lisker, 16, and Re'ut Feldman, 20.

"They stood there, the three of them, the boy, the girl and the bomber. He looked like a yeshiva student. When the car stopped, they ran to it. I ran also. They were quicker," she said.

Ya'ari said she thought it was odd that someone who was haredi would want to go to Kedumim. But she dismissed the thought, assuming that he wanted to go to the more haredi settlement of Emanuel, which was on the way to Karnei Shomron.

Tartner said she believed that when the bomber didn't get off at Emanuel, it aroused the suspicions of the people in the car.

Supporting this scenario, she said, was that Lisker had called his parents when he first got in the car to tell them he had caught a ride and would soon be home. He then tried to send them an SMS text message when the car was only one kilometer away from the settlement, said Tartner. That message never got through, said Tartner. She and others learned about it from the phone company, she said.

There's a lot more about the victims of this terror attack here.