Amid a controversy over Ramallah’s “pay for slay” stipends, Knesset lawmakers advanced legislation aimed at barring the Palestinian Authority from filing legal petitions at Israel’s High Court of Justice on Tuesday.
The bill strips entities that transfer funds associated with terror — including the Palestinian Authority’s stipends to imprisoned terrorists and their families — from approaching the High Court.
According to the legislation’s explanatory notes, “The purpose of the bill is to correct an anomaly according to which elements hostile to the State of Israel, including those who work directly and in a declared manner to harm its citizens through acts of terrorism, are considered to have the right to stand before the High Court when they come to petition against the policies of the Israeli government.”
The bill passed its preliminary reading by a vote of 52-23. It now returns to the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee. MK Simcha Rothman, who chairs that committee, proposed the legislation.
In August, a hearing at Israel’s High Court of Justice over the Palestinian Authority’s standing to petition the court ended in uproar as terror victims raucously called on the PA’s lawyer to acknowledge Ramallah’s controversial “pay for slay stipends” to imprisoned terrorists.
The court was hearing an unprecedented petition filed by the PA seeking to overturn Knesset legislation allowing victims of PA Arab terror to more easily claim financial compensation from the PA. It was the first time the Palestinian Authority ever directly petitioned Israel’s High Court.
Despite claiming to be operating at a 172% budget deficit, the Palestinian Authority in July recognized 899 new prisoners from Gaza and tens of thousands more Gaza “martyrs” as eligible for controversial “pay for slay” payouts, according to a report released by Palestinian Media Watch in July.
Families of terror victims were angered that the court gave the Palestinian Authority standing to file a petition.
In a filing with the High Court ahead of the July hearing, Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara argued, “It cannot be considered appropriate that a court in Israel would open its gates to the Palestinian Authority and hear its arguments about the supposed injury to its constitutional rights, while it continues with its abhorrent and disgraceful policy.”
The Palestinian Authority allocates seven percent of its annual budget for its so-called “Martyr’s Fund,” which provides stipends to PA Arab terrorists in Israeli prisons, and the families of terrorists killed in attacks. The size of the monthly payouts is primarily determined by the duration of the terrorist’s incarceration, with a negligible additional factor based on family size.
Israeli officials say the stipends provide incentives for terror and regularly offset an equivalent amount from taxes that Israel collects on behalf of the PA. Victims and their families are allowed to collect judgments against the PA from the frozen funds.
Ramallah has been paying out stipends for years, but the issue came under a spotlight following the murder of Taylor Force, a U.S. citizen killed by a PA Arab who went on a stabbing rampage in Jaffa in 2018. Congress passed the Taylor Force Act, which halted U.S. aid to the Palestinian Authority as long as terror stipends were being paid out. However, the Biden administration resumed aid to the PA in 2021.
