WASHINGTON — A long-standing lawsuit targeting Palestinian authorities has been brought back into focus by the Supreme Court, following the claims of Americans who were killed or injured in terrorist incidents in the Middle East.
The court upheld a law from 2019 which enables victims to pursue their cases against the Palestinian Liberation Organization and the Palestinian authorities.
These incidents, primarily occurring in the early 2000s, resulted in the deaths of 33 individuals and left many more injured. In one particularly notable case from 2018, a US-born settler was fatally stabbed by Palestinian assailants near a mall in the West Bank.
The victims, along with their families, assert that there was involvement or incitement by Palestinian agents in these attacks.
Palestinian representatives have consistently argued against allowing such cases to proceed in American legal systems.
Despite multiple attempts by Congress to enable victims’ cases to be heard, the federal appeals court in New York has generally sided with the Palestinian Liberation Organization and the Palestinian authorities. Back in 2016, the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the victims in a previous case, stating that US courts cannot address matters involving foreign-based entities for arbitrary assaults that do not target the US specifically.
In that earlier ruling, the court had awarded a hefty $654 million judgment to the victims, but the legal framework complicated their ability to bring the case forward.
The victims were litigating under an anti-terrorism law enacted in 1992, originally designed to facilitate justice for those affected by international terrorism. This was, in part, a response to the murder of American Leon Klinghoffer in a terrorist attack on the Achille Lauro cruise ship in 1985.
After the Supreme Court declined to take up the case in 2018, Congress again revised the law, aiming to clearly signal its intent to keep avenues for victims open.
In a notable judgment, a court had determined the PLO and Palestinian authorities were accountable for six attacks and subsequently awarded $218 million in damages, which, under legal stipulations, was automatically tripled.
