The Jerusalem District Court has begun to hear evidence in the case brought by the families of Vadim Nurzhitz and Yossi Avrahami, two Israeli reservist soldiers murdered in a PA (Palestinian Authority) more than a decade ago.

In October 2000, the pair accidentally entered the PA controlled city of Ramallah and were taken into custody by local PA policemen and then transported to a local police station. When news of the detention of two Israeli soldiers reached the local Arab population, they wildly flooded the area where the Israelis were being held. PA policemen allowed the mob to enter the police station and permitted them to attack the reservists. Numerous police officers participated in the vicious murder and mutilation of the Israelis as well. The brutal lynching was captured on video by Italian TV and broadcast around the world. Few can forget the image of the badly battered bodies of the Israelis being thrown out of the window of the police station to the frenzied crowd in the street. An infamous photo captured one of the attackers proudly displaying his bloody hand out the window.

Shurat HaDin gathered evidence of the murders and brought suit in the Jerusalem District Court against the PA for 64 million NIS, claiming that the PA was responsible for the heinous murder of the two Israelis and demanding compensation in addition to punitive damages.

The case was brought in December 2000. At the time no one had ever sued the PA before nor tried to hold the Palestinians responsible for their criminal behavior in a court of law. It was the first time that anyone had sought to finally make the Palestinians pay. This pioneering lawsuit was stalled several times over the years as the Israeli courts endeavored to sort through the numerous issues of first impression it raised. The PA had initially tried to raise a defense of sovereign immunity, alleging that it was a state and was immune from lawsuits. Yasser Arafat’s government argued that under the Oslo Accords Israelis could not sue the PA in an Israeli court.

It took us many years but we eventually had the Israeli Supreme Court rule that the PA was not a sovereign state and not entitled to immunity. This important ruling opened up the door to many other victims of Palestinian terrorism being able to advance their cases against the Palestinians.

In the past weeks, the Jerusalem Court has heard testimony by our witnesses, General Yosef Kuperwasser, a former Military Intelligence head and Professor Ephraim Karsh an expert in Palestinian terrorism from King’s College in London. Both witnesses provided compelling testimony of Yasser Arafat and the PA’s direct involvement in the Intifada violence. Both alleged that the Palestinian’s planned and launched the Intifada terrorism as a strategic policy designed to weaken Israel and force the government to make political concessions. They energetically rejected the defense’s claim that the Intifada was a spontaneous grassroots uprising that Arafat could not control. Instead the witnesses presented overwhelming examples of the PA’s involvement.

The plaintiffs’ case is continuing with the lawyers preparing to call numerous additional expert witnesses to testify as to how our Oslo peace partners, the Palestinians, planned, funded and perpetrated the years of terrorist suicide bombings, shootings and violence that devastated Israeli society and left more than 1,000 dead and over 5,000 injured. Meticulously researched evidence of the official incitement and glorification of terrorism which whipped up the Palestinians and induced the brutal violence will be presented to the court. The witnesses will continue to explain in detail how the PA police in Ramallah carried out the cold blooded lynching of two innocent Jews in a police station.

(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem / Shurat HaDin Israel Law Center)