A federal appeals court in New York has reinstated a $655.5 million damages judgment against the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority for financing and orchestrating terrorist attacks during the Second Intifada, capping a more than two-decade legal odyssey that survivors and victims’ families refused to abandon.

The ruling reinstates a 2015 jury verdict in Sokolow v. Palestinian Authority, which had been thrown out by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in 2016 on jurisdictional grounds and left in limbo after the Supreme Court declined to intervene in 2018. Its revival was made possible by a May 2025 Supreme Court decision that established US courts do have jurisdiction to hear terrorism claims against the Palestinian Authority for financing attacks on American citizens, even when those attacks occurred on foreign soil.

The case dates to 2004, when Shurat HaDin — Israel Law Center — filed suit on behalf of American victims and their families under the Anti-Terrorism Act, a 1992 statute allowing US nationals to seek civil damages for acts of international terrorism. The complaint alleged that the PLO and PA financed and directed seven separate attacks in Jerusalem between January 2001 and February 2004.

Among the plaintiffs are families who lost children in the bombing of the Hebrew University cafeteria, the Goldberg family, whose father was killed in the No. 19 bus bombing in Jerusalem, and survivors including Mark Sokolow, Jonathan and Alan Bauer, and Shaina Gold, who were wounded in separate attacks on Jaffa Road.

A jury found the PLO liable in February 2015 and awarded $218.5 million in damages. Under a treble-damages provision of the Anti-Terrorism Act, that figure was automatically tripled to $655.5 million.

The PA appealed, and the Second Circuit vacated the verdict the following year, ruling the court lacked jurisdiction over a foreign entity for acts committed abroad. The case has been working its way back through the system ever since.

The legal landscape shifted last year when the Supreme Court ruled in a separate but related case brought by Miriam Fuld, whose husband Ari Fuld was stabbed and killed by a 17-year-old Palestinian terrorist outside a shopping center in 2018. That ruling established that courts could hear terrorism claims against the PA, clearing the precedential hurdle that had blocked the Sokolow case from proceeding.

The 2019 Promoting Security and Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act also bolstered the plaintiffs’ position, establishing that foreign entities that make payments connected to terrorist activity or maintain activities tied to the United States may be deemed to have consented to US court jurisdiction.

Despite the size of the judgment, collecting it will not be easy. US courts have no direct mechanism to compel the PA or PLO to pay, and neither entity is expected to comply voluntarily.

Shurat HaDin said it plans to seek enforcement through the Israeli legal system, citing treaty arrangements between Washington and Jerusalem. If successful, the judgment could eventually affect PA tax revenues, a significant pressure point given that Israel collects customs duties on the Authority’s behalf.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)