The Israel Policy Center

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Building A Jewish Democracy

 

Supreme Court Reverses Finding That Palestinian Authority is Sovereign

 

Jerusalem, Aug. 8 - Israel’s Supreme Court reversed a verdict of Tel Aviv District Court from 2006 which found that the Palestinian Authority was a sovereign entity whose actions are not justiciable in Israeli courts. The District Court ruling constituted a remarkable precedent, in which a court presumed decide a delicate issue of international relations without reference to the position of the Government of Israel.

 

At issue was a land purchase by an Israeli organization in the Samaria region on the basis of testimony by the Mukhtar of an Arab village regarding the ownership of the real estate in question. The Mukhtar, who received the payment for the land, turned out to have lied regarding ownership of the land. The Israeli organization sued to get its money back, received a judgment in its favor and attempted to seize the estate of the Mukhtar (now deceased). The District Court ruled that Israeli court judgments were not enforceable in territory under the control of the Palestinian Authority because the Authority is sovereign.

 

The Supreme Court overturned the verdict, basing itself on a previous ruling that the question of the Palestinian Authority’s “sovereignty” was to be decided on a case-by-case basis by Israel’s Foreign Minister. 

 

The Palestinian Authority was established in the Oslo Accords, by which the Palestinians were granted a degree of self-rule under Israel’s ultimate authority.

 

The judges in the case were Supreme Court Justices Edna Arbel, Reuven Rivlin, and Salim Joubran, the court’s sole Arab. It may be noted that Arbel is a close friend of Chief Justice Dorrit Beinish. Beinish forced Boaz Okon out of the legal system, causing him to resign, when she made clear that she would not consent to his serving as director-general of the legal system and strongly intimated that she would not promote him to the Supreme Court. Okon was a protégé of former Chief Justice Aharon Barak.