Court puts PA on the hook for huge sums in compensation, damages for terror attacks
Jerusalem District Court has ruled PA must pay NIS 46 million to heirs of 3 Sbarro bombing victims due to stipends it pays to terrorists; and hundreds more suits have been filed
Jeremy Sharon is The Times of Israel’s legal affairs and settlements reporter
The Jerusalem District Court ruled last week that the Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization must pay the next of kin of three victims of the deadly 2001 Sbarro terror bombing attack NIS 46 million ($12.5 million) in punitive damages, compensation, funeral costs, and legal expenses.
The decision was based on a Supreme Court ruling from 2022 that said the Palestinian Authority was culpable for terrorist attacks in Israel due to its policy of paying stipends to convicted Palestinian terrorists in Israeli prisons and to the families of slain terrorists, and could therefore be sued for compensation by the victims of such attacks.
The Jerusalem court’s decision also relied on legislation passed earlier this year allowing the victims of terrorism and their families to seek not only compensation but also punitive damages, from the Palestinian Authority and any organization that pays people for committing acts of terrorism.
The impact of the ruling will not end merely with financial obligations toward the heirs of the Sbarro bombing victims. There are several hundred other victims of Palestinian terrorism who have also filed suit against the Palestinian Authority for compensation and punitive damages.
This means that the PA is likely to be found liable for hundreds of millions of shekels in compensation and punitive damages for such people in the wake of last week’s decision.
In the case the court ruled on last week, three siblings of the Schijveschuurder family, represented by Asaf Posner, lost three other siblings in the Sbarro bombing in downtown Jerusalem. The Schijveschuurders’ mother and father were also killed, as were 11 other people, but the suit focused on the three children who were killed.
(Lawsuits over the Schijveschuurder parents, Mordechai and Tzira, are still pending before the court, as are lawsuits for three other families whose family members were killed in the Sbarro bombing. A pre-hearing is scheduled for those cases for the end of February.)
Meir Schijveschuurder, one of the siblings who brought the suit for compensation and damages, was himself wounded in the bombing, as was another sibling. He’s also a lawyer, and he’s representing other victims of Palestinian terrorism, including those from the Sbarro attack, in their suits against the Palestinian Authority and the PLO.
Schijveschuurder says he has 80 clients who were either injured or whose family members were killed in Jerusalem bombings on Ben Yehuda Street, at Sbarro, Cafe Moment, and the Hebrew University.
These attacks took place between August 2001 and July 2002, at the height of the Second Intifada, when Palestinian terrorists conducted a stream of suicide bombings, killing hundreds of Israeli civilians.
In total, some 380 suits have been filed against the PA and the PLO for compensation and damages from the Second Intifada era, Schijveschuurder says, and he estimates that the Palestinian Authority may therefore be liable for as much as NIS 1.5 billion (some $410 million).
The Jerusalem District Court’s ruling last week assessed punitive damages of NIS 10 million for each of the Schijveschuurder children slain in the Sbarro attack.
Alongside the punitive damages, the court also assessed compensation based on the national average wage and other considerations, which amounted to between NIS 1.4 million and NIS 1.9 million.
The court also awarded the three heirs NIS 1 million per victim for pain and suffering as a result of the murders, plus interest, which amounted to NIS 5 million.
The final figure the court came up with amounted to over NIS 13 million per victim. The court then ordered the PA to pay heavy legal costs of some NIS 5.8 million — owing to the fact that the cases have dragged out for two decades and involved considerable expenses for the plaintiffs — resulting in a final sum of just under NIS 46 million.
This ruling against the PA is straightforward justice to Schijveschuurder.
“The fact that the terrorists who killed my parents are getting paid for doing so is shocking; it burns into my mind; it’s unbelievable,” said Schijveschuurder following the ruling.
Efforts to collect the money
There are two ways in which the money can be collected, although one of them is highly unlikely to transpire.
Plaintiffs attorney Posner said he has already sent a letter to the Palestinian Authority demanding payment based on the court order, which has given the PA until December 18 to respond.
“I’m not waiting by my email for an answer,” Posner said wryly.
Should the Palestinian Authority refuse to pay, Posner will file a motion to the court for the State of Israel to release some of the hundreds of millions of shekels in frozen funds deducted by Israel from the taxes it collects for the Palestinian Authority.
The Knesset passed a law in 2018 stipulating that Israel would deduct the total sum of money that the PA pays in monthly terrorist stipends from the monthly tax funds it transfers to the Palestinian governing body, and freeze that money until such time as the PA ceases to pay the terrorist stipends.
Posner says that there is already a seizure order of NIS 60 million against those frozen funds as well as the unfrozen tax funds Israel collects monthly. If — or, more likely, when — the Palestinian Authority does not pay up, he will request that the court issue an implementation order for the Treasury to release those funds in order to pay the compensation and damages awarded by the court.
Schijveschuurder says there is already NIS 3 billion in the pot from the frozen tax funds, and therefore rejects the idea that the Palestinian Authority will collapse if the victims of Palestinian terrorism successfully sue it for compensation and punitive damages, since it is already managing without those funds.
Deterring future payments to terrorists
Things could get worse for the PA if it starts paying stipends to the terrorists who perpetrated the October 7 massacre, since it would then be exposed to thousands of lawsuits from the survivors and relatives of victims of those attacks.
Schijveschuurder said he hopes that the threat of massive financial liability will encourage the PA not to make such payments, and added that this would be a positive outcome of the legal action he has pioneered.
If it were to decide to fund stipends for the perpetrators, however, then the PA would deserve to collapse, he said, asserting that it would have to make a choice between “making the Palestinians successful and helping them flourish as a people” and financing and encouraging terrorism.
“This ruling does historic justice. If this was a normal country, the PA would not be allowed to exist if it pays terrorists,” said Schijveschuurder. “Since the state didn’t see to this, at least the court won’t allow it, without compensation for the victims.”
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