A panel of three High Court of Justice judges on Sunday morning heard a petition from the Palestinian Authority (PA) against a law compensating terror victims that was enacted last March.
A commotion broke out in the courtroom at the end of the hearing, as the relatives of murdered terror victims expressed their outrage at the fact that the hearing had been held.
The hearing took place shortly after MDA EMTs and Paramedics had treated 4 casualties including a woman, 70, and a man, 68, who were stabbed to death by a PA terrorist, as well as two men in moderate to serious condition, in three separate scenes in Holon near Tel Aviv (2 Elderlies Stabbed to Death in Holon Terror Attack).
“The judges asked the representative of the PA to explain exactly what she thought the basis for striking down the laws were and why she thought that the court should actually strike them down. That really caused the whole commotion because in the original petition, the PA never admitted that it was paying salaries to terrorists, never took any type of responsibility for that,” legal expert Maurice Hirsch, told TPS-IL.
Hirsch, who was attending the hearing, is the director of the Initiative for Palestinian Authority Accountability and Reform in the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, a Jerusalem-based research institute.
“The PA’s representative never admitted that the PA was paying salaries to terrorists, but rather tried to make all types of convoluted claims as to why she believed the court should intervene. And then there was basically the calls from the crowd, like, ‘You’re paying salaries to terrorists, so why do you think the court should intervene?’” Hirsch said.
“And then Justice [Yael] Willner said specifically that all you have to do to avoid the liability of the law is to stop paying salaries to terrorists. And so really that was the end of the hearing. The judges didn’t even ask the state to weigh in at all over and above what they’d submitted. That’s very irregular. It’s clear that the judges had come to the conclusion that there was no basis for this petition in the first place.”
The law took effect on June 1. According to the law, victims of terrorism and their families are now able to file tort claims and receive compensation from those who “give wages and compensation, and those whose liability is determined according to the tort ordinance, in favor of committing acts of terrorism.”
According to the law, the victims of terrorism will be able to receive compensation “from any property of those involved in the financing of terrorism,” including from the frozen funds “paid by the Palestinian Authority in connection with terrorism transferred to it from the government of Israel”.
Incidentally, on June 24, when the PA’s petition from May was accepted, Attorney General Gali Baharav Miara told the court that it should reject it outright and that there should be no hearing, stating, “The Palestinian Authority requests to be allowed to continue the policy of giving rewards to terrorists. This is a despicable and disgraceful policy.”
The Palestinian Authority Martyrs Fund comprises two funds operated by the PA: The Foundation for the Care of the Families of Martyrs pays monthly cash stipends to the families of PA terrorists killed, injured, or imprisoned while carrying out violence against Israel; The Prisoners Fund makes disbursements to terrorists imprisoned in Israeli jails.
In 2016, the PA paid out about NIS 1.1 billion ($303 million) in stipends and other benefits.
Because the payments are higher to terrorists whose sentences are longer, the stipend system encourages more extreme acts of violence that would incur longer sentences.
After a short hearing, the judges said there was no need to hear the position of the state and the Knesset, so it is reasonable to assume the petition would be rejected.
In May, the Palestinian Authority submitted their unprecedented petition to the High Court, requesting that the court order the annulment of the Law on Compensation for Victims of Terrorism and the Law on Compensation for Victims of Hostilities, which allow the victims of terrorism and their families to receive compensation from the PA. The petition claims that these are illegal laws that harm the economic sovereignty of the PA and would lead to its economic collapse.
This was the first time that the PA had petitioned the High Court to annul a law passed by the Knesset.
According to the PA, the implementation of the laws will result in a violation of its constitutional rights, as the laws require it to compensate any person who suffered damage from an act defined as a “terrorist act,” regardless of whether the PA was responsible or involved in the act.
The laws, according to the PA, will lead to “the financial collapse of the PA and damage to the management of the civil life of the Palestinians defined as ‘protected residents,’ all of it in violation of international law that gives the Palestinian Authority ‘superior’ status and obligates Israel to protect Palestinians as an occupying power.”
“The commitment [to transfer tax revenues] was part of the Oslo Accords and instead of using the money to promote peace, they’re using the money that they received from Israel to incentivize and reward terror. And therefore, they have no constitutional right to that money,” Hirsch told TPS-IL. “What’s clear is that the PA is more worried about how they can continue funding their terror promoting activities rather than anything else, which would explain why they chose this subject maybe to come before the court.”
In June 2017, PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas called the efforts to stop the payments to terrorists and their families an “aggression against the Palestinian people,” and defended the salaries paid to imprisoned Palestinians as a “social responsibility.”
In response to the Taylor Force Act, a US law that halts economic aid to the PA as long as it continues to pay the terrorists, Abbas vowed, “If we are left with one penny, we will spend it on the families of the prisoners and martyrs.”
Under the Deduction Law, also known as the “Pay-for-Slay Law,” the Israeli government since 2018 has been deducting the amount that the PA pays in terrorist payments from the taxes and tariffs it collects on behalf of the PA. These funds are the largest source of income for the PA. In July 2021, Israel deducted NIS 597 million ($159 million) for 2020, compared to total PA funding of NIS 517.4 million ($137 million) in 2019.
In September 2022 Israel issued seizure orders for NIS 10 million ($2.65 million) that the PA transferred into the private accounts of security prisoners who were involved in deadly attacks.
Content by Pesach Benson/TPS was used in this report.
