Middle East Monitor / July 25, 2024
Israel’s attorney general has called on the High Court to reject a petition filed by the Palestinian Authority against two recently passed laws providing for deductions from tax revenues collected by Israel on behalf of the PA to be used by the occupation state to pay compensation to “Israeli victims” of Palestinian resistance operations.
The Palestinian Authority submitted the petition to the Israeli High Court in May. High Court Justice Alex Stein ruled that the court would hear the petition and that the respondents — the Knesset, the government and the attorney general — must file their responses.
In her response, Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara said that the Palestinian Authority “pays every year, by virtue of a series of laws it legislated, massive sums to those who were involved in acts of terrorism,” including to the “terrorists” themselves or their relatives, through salaries, benefits and stipends.
“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,” she insisted. Adding that the state will argue that it is inappropriate for the court to even entertain the PA’s petition, she said that it should be rejected outright, since it is “contrary to public policy” in light of the fact that through the petition the PA is seeking to continue with its policy of “rewarding terrorists and their relatives.”
Baharav-Miara also argued that the court should reject the petition because the PA fails in its petition to acknowledge that it provides payments to “terrorists”, yet “seeks to have Knesset legislation holding it liable for such actions annulled; because relations between Israel and the PA must be conducted on the diplomatic level as stipulated in diplomatic agreements the two sides have signed; and because the PA failed to explain in its petition why the constitutional rights it claims under Israel’s Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty should apply to it.”
The Palestinian Authority pays stipends and other benefits to the families of Palestinian citizens imprisoned by Israel who lose their income as a result of their detention by the occupation authorities. The payments are similar to the social security benefits available to all citizens in many Western states. Critics of Israel’s move describe the efforts to end such payments as collective punishment.
The High Court has set the hearing for 4 August.
