Unprecedented High Court hearing on Palestinian terror payments ends in uproar
A hearing at Israel’s High Court of Justice over the Palestinian Authority’s standing to petition the court ended abruptly on Sunday as terror victims raucously called on the PA’s lawyer to acknowledge Ramallah’s controversial “pay for slay stipends” to imprisoned terrorists.
Israeli-Arab lawyer Sawsan Zaher, who was representing the Palestinian Authority is escorted to safety by court security after the courtroom became unruly on Aug. 4, 2024. Photo by Yoav Dudkevitch/TPS-IL
The court was hearing an unprecedented petition filed by the PA seeking to overturn Knesset legislation allowing victims of Palestinian terror to more easily claim financial compensation from the PA. The PA has never directly petitioned Israel’s High Court before.
“The judges asked the representative of the PA to explain exactly what she thought the,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 The Press Service of Israel.
Hirsch, who was attending the hearing, is the director of the Initiative for Palestinian Authority Accountability and Reform in the Jerusalem Centre 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.”
After the justices declared the hearing over, court guards closely escorted lawyer Sawsan Zaher, who was representing the Palestinian Authority, out of the raucous courtroom. Zaher is an attorney for Adalah, a Haifa-based non-governmental organization.
An official ruling is expected to be handed down within days.
Pay for Slay
The Palestinian Authority allocates seven percent of its annual budget for its so-called “Martyr’s Fund,” which provides stipends to Palestinian 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. The new law allows families to collect judgments against the PA from the frozen funds.
“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.”
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.
Meanwhile, families of terror victims were angered that the court gave the Palestinian Authority standing to file a petition.
Itzik Bonzel, father of Sgt. Amit Bonzel, 22, who was killed fighting in Gaza in December, was in court representing the families of fallen soldiers. He told TPS-IL, “The court did not even require a response from the respondents to the petition — the Attorney General, the Knesset, and other bodies representing the victims of terrorism who joined the petition. For us, the joy is mixed with sadness because, from our perspective, this petition should not have even reached a hearing in the Supreme Court.”
MK Limor Son Har Melech, whose husband, Shuli, was killed in a 2003 Palestinian drive-by shooting attack, said, “The very existence of the hearing at the High Court is a complete delusion. In the midst of a recess in the courts, when important hearings are postponed, the judges of the court schedule an urgent hearing on the petitions of full-fledged terror financiers, against bereaved families. This is what was important for the High Court to discuss this morning. In the reality we are in, we have to remember the distorted and crazy order of priorities that the judges practice.”
In a filing with the High Court prior to the 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.”
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 Palestinian who went on a stabbing rampage in Jaffa in 2018. Congress passed the Taylor Force Act, which halted U.S. aid to the Palestinians as long as terror stipends were being paid out.
U.S. assistance to the Palestinian Authority resumed under the administration of President Joe Biden. In December 2022, American victims of Palestinian terror filed a lawsuit against the President and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, arguing that the payments violate the Taylor Force Act.
