Background
The appellants are the parents of a young man murdered in a terrorist attack on the Jerusalem pedestrian mall (midrachov) on December 1, 2001. They sued the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) for compensation. On January 5, 2026, the Jerusalem District Court (Deputy President Judge A. Dral, Civil Case 19236-04-24) entered judgment in the parents’ favor, awarding them damages. The parents then appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing that the amount of compensation was insufficient.
Under Israeli appellate procedure, an appellant must ordinarily deposit a security bond to cover the respondent’s potential costs. On February 5, 2026, the parents filed the present motion seeking either a full exemption from that bond requirement or, in the alternative, permission to substitute a set-off notice — effectively applying the unsatisfied judgment debt the PA already owes them against the bond obligation. The parents argued that the PA had not paid a shekel of the award, that enforcement proceedings (Execution File 512985-02-25) had been opened, and that the outstanding debt owed by the PA — exceeding NIS 5 million — dwarfed any bond amount, making the traditional rationale for a bond inapplicable.
The PA and PLO opposed the motion, pointing out that the parents had provided no evidence about their own financial situation, and noting that the respondents had filed a parallel appeal (CA 57891-02-25) challenging the very judgment the parents sought to enforce — meaning the debt was not uncontested. In their reply, the parents noted that the PA’s legal arguments had already been rejected in a closely related parallel proceeding (CA 15278-04-25, decided March 8, 2026 by President Justice Y. Amit, Justice Yael Willner, and Justice G. Kanafi-Steinitz), after which the PA moved to withdraw numerous other appeals it had filed on similar grounds.
The Court’s Holding
Registrar Judge Moran Yahav denied the parents’ request for a full exemption from the bond but exercised her discretion to reduce the bond to a nominal NIS 5,000. The decisive factor against exemption was the parents’ failure to address their own financial circumstances at all — a standard threshold requirement — and their failure to attach any supporting documentation. While the size of the PA’s unpaid debt to them was noted, that fact alone does not relieve an appellant of the obligation to show financial hardship.
At the same time, the court reduced the bond well below the ordinary amount, invoking two considerations: the nature of the underlying litigation — a terrorism-compensation suit — and the significant power imbalance between individual victims’ families and institutional respondents such as the PA and PLO. The court relied on CA 6647/22, Nurzitz et al. v. Palestinian Authority (Nov. 14, 2022) and Misc. App. 1528/06, Werner v. Official Receiver, ¶ 12 (Oct. 17, 2007) as precedents recognizing this factor.
The court also denied the alternative request to replace the bond with a set-off notice. Because the PA’s own appeal (CA 57891-02-25) against the District Court judgment is still pending before the Supreme Court, the underlying award is not yet final and the debt remains legally disputed. A set-off may only substitute for a bond where the debt to be offset is undisputed; that condition is not satisfied here. The court cited CA (Misc.) 67586-09-24, M.R.R.G. Initiatives Ltd. v. Patkhi Brothers Construction Ltd., ¶ 3 (Feb. 8, 2025) for this principle. The bond of NIS 5,000 must be deposited no later than June 21, 2026, failing which the appeal may be dismissed without further notice.
Key Takeaways
- An appellant seeking a bond exemption must address their own financial position and provide supporting documentation; failure to do so is fatal to the exemption claim even where the respondent owes a large unsatisfied judgment.
- Israeli courts may significantly reduce (rather than waive) a bond where there is a material power imbalance between individual terrorism victims and institutional defendants such as the Palestinian Authority.
- A set-off notice cannot substitute for an appellate security bond unless the debt to be offset is legally undisputed — which it is not while the debtor’s own cross-appeal remains pending.
- The fact that a respondent’s parallel legal arguments were rejected in related proceedings (here, CA 15278-04-25) can undercut the respondent’s procedural arguments, but does not by itself satisfy the appellant’s own documentary obligations.
Why It Matters
This ruling adds to a line of Israeli Supreme Court decisions addressing the procedural hurdles facing victims of Palestinian terrorism who have obtained judgments against the PA and PLO but face persistent difficulties in collection. The decision confirms that courts will temper bond requirements in recognition of the structural asymmetry between individual plaintiffs and quasi-sovereign institutional defendants, but will not dispense entirely with procedural safeguards simply because the respondent has failed to pay prior judgments.
For practitioners, the case is a practical reminder that even sympathetic litigants — parents whose son was killed in a terror attack — must satisfy basic procedural documentation requirements when seeking bond relief. It also clarifies the limits of the set-off mechanism: so long as any appeal by the judgment-debtor is live, the debt is “in dispute” within the meaning of the relevant case law, and the set-off route remains closed.