The Jerusalem District Court has ruled that the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) must pay tens of millions of shekels in compensation to victims of the 2001 terrorist bombing at the Sbarro pizzeria in central Jerusalem, according to a Channel 12 report.

The August 9, 2001, suicide bombing, one of the deadliest attacks of the Second Intifada, claimed the lives of 16 civilians, including seven children, and injured 130 others.

The court’s decision is based on evidence of the PA’s longstanding policy of financially compensating terrorists and their families. This precedent-setting ruling could potentially pave the way for victims of the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, massacre to also seek financial restitution from the PA.

The court’s ruling came in response to two lawsuits filed by victims of the 2001 attack, marking the culmination of a two-decade legal battle. The decision relied on an April 2022 Supreme Court ruling, which established the PA’s liability for terrorist acts due to its practice of paying stipends to security prisoners and the families of attackers.

Justice Isaac Amit, in the 2022 ruling, wrote that the PA’s payments to convicted terrorists and those killed during attacks constituted an acknowledgment of responsibility for their actions. “[The PA] expresses its consent to their actions, in a manner that takes responsibility for the acts. This justifies that [the PA] will be assigned personal and direct responsibility,” Amit stated.

Channel 12 reported that the compensation could be drawn from funds Israel has been withholding since 2018 from monthly tax revenues it collects on behalf of the PA.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)