When Alan Bauer lifted his seven-year-old son from a Jerusalem street in March 2002, his only concern was whether the child was still breathing.
A Palestinian suicide bomber had exploded behind them on King George Street. Bauer had been walking home with his son after spending the day at a doctor’s appointment and his office. The explosion hurled him forward, and when he looked back, the boy who had been gripping his hand was nowhere to be seen.
“We were hand in hand a minute ago, a second ago,” Bauer explained to The Media Line. “Anyway, I turn around, and I don’t see him.”
Bauer discovered his son lying face-down on the sidewalk. While both survived the attack, his son sustained severe head trauma that later necessitated emergency surgery and extensive rehabilitation. Bauer suffered shrapnel wounds to his arm. More than twenty years later, this bombing has become central to a renewed legal battle following a federal appeals court’s decision to restore a $655.5 million judgment against the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).
According to Bauer, this case represents more than just financial compensation—it’s about forcing accountability for what he describes as a PA-orchestrated attack conducted not by external groups, but by individuals directly connected to the PA’s security and political structure. “The entire attack was Palestinian Authority people,” Bauer stated. “It wasn’t Hamas, it wasn’t Islamic Jihad. These were people who were formally paid by the Palestinian Authority.”
The affected families initially prevailed in 2015, when a New York jury determined the PA and PLO were responsible and granted $655.5 million in compensation to American families harmed during Second Intifada attacks. However, an appeals court later overturned this decision—not because they disputed the trial evidence, but because they ruled that U.S. courts lacked proper jurisdiction over the PA and PLO.
This situation shifted after Congress modified the relevant legislation and the U.S. Supreme Court validated the new jurisdictional structure. In March, the Second Circuit restored the original judgment, reinstating the $655.5 million award. The victims have yet to receive payment, making enforcement the next phase of their struggle.
Bauer said his legal pursuit began months following the bombing, after reading Israeli media reports based on military charges that revealed the attack’s participants. “The bomber, as I mentioned, was a policeman,” Bauer explained. “The one who sent him was an intelligence agent. The bomb itself actually came from the Intelligence Bureau of the Palestinian Authority.”
He further claimed that prominent Palestinian officials were linked to the attack’s support structure. According to Bauer, Marwan Barghouti provided funding shortly before the bombing. He also alleged that Hussein al-Sheikh, currently a senior PA official, was identified by those involved as having supplied money and weapons and as having authored the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades’ responsibility letter following the attack.
The legal action was initiated in 2004 representing American families impacted by seven separate attacks. Bauer noted that eleven families were initially included in the lawsuit, though one was removed before trial. Legal discovery didn’t commence until 2014, with the case proceeding to trial the next year. “We won completely,” Bauer said. “All 24 counts, they were found guilty. There was a large judgment, tripled … $655.5 million.”
The victory proved temporary. In 2016, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the verdict on jurisdictional grounds, determining that U.S. courts lacked authority over the PA and PLO. Bauer said the victims found themselves “lost in space,” not because their evidence was rejected, but because the Palestinian defendants argued they maintained insufficient presence in the United States. “They said the Palestinian Authority is not at home,” he explained. “They don’t have, there’s no jurisdiction over them because they don’t have enough of a presence in the US.”
This jurisdictional challenge moved the case from courtrooms to Congress. Lawmakers initially attempted to address the issue by linking U.S. jurisdiction to the PA’s acceptance of American assistance, but Bauer said the Palestinians circumvented this requirement by declining the funds. Congress then pursued a different approach, targeting the PA’s payments to terrorists who had killed or injured American citizens.
Under this legislation, the PA received 120 days to cease these payments or be considered as having agreed to U.S. jurisdiction. “The law was signed by President Donald Trump, went into 2019, became the law, 120 days passed, and they kept paying the terrorists,” Bauer said. “But they can’t stop paying the terrorists.”
The matter eventually reached the U.S. Supreme Court. Bauer said the Biden administration’s Department of Justice supported the victims, arguing the law was constitutional, while President Trump’s administration maintained this position before the court. The Supreme Court ruled unanimously in favor of the legal framework, returning the case to lower courts. “The Department of Justice under Biden came on our side,” Bauer said. “The Trump administration, they continued being on our side. And the Supreme Court heard our case, with the US arguing with our lawyer, Kent Yalowitz. And we won 9-0.”
When the case returned to the Second Circuit, Bauer said the court faced two options: restore the original verdict or require a new trial. “Either a new trial, which nobody on our side wanted, it would be more flying back and forth, going through the whole process again, or to return the verdict,” he said. “So a month ago, approximately, the Second Circuit, 3-0, they returned the verdict.”
Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, who founded Shurat HaDin, the Israel Law Center, told The Media Line that the restored judgment resulted from a legal battle spanning more than two decades that required both courtroom persistence and legislative changes in Washington. “Now we have a final judgment against the Palestinian Authority for $655 million after 22 years of litigation.
Darshan-Leitner said the PA’s defense claimed that while the attackers may have been on their payroll, they acted independently. “They said, ‘Indeed they were our employees, but they were rogue employees,’” she explained. “‘They did the attacks after work hours. It wasn’t our policy to kill Israelis. We were against killing Jews.’”
However, Darshan-Leitner said this argument failed when confronted with the PA’s continued payments to imprisoned terrorists and attackers’ families. “If they were wrong employees, how do we keep paying their salary until today?” she said, describing her side’s argument to the jury. “You promote them in rank every three years, you pay stipends to the families of the suicide bombers, you call town squares and streets in the name of the suicide bombers. This is not how you treat wrong employees.”
The case now enters the collection phase. Darshan-Leitner said the PA and PLO possess assets and revenue sources that can be pursued, including a PLO mission building in New York, tax revenues held by Israel for the PA, Palestinian bank accounts, and investment funds. “First of all, they do have the money,” she said. “But let’s say they will come and say they don’t have the money. We are going to demand from the State Department to enforce the judgment.”
She indicated the judgment could be paid in installments. “If they cannot pay it all at once, we can do it over payments,” Darshan-Leitner said. “Monthly payments of $20 million a month will not bankrupt the Palestinian Authority. This is what we did in previous cases against the Palestinian Authority.”
Darshan-Leitner said her broader objective extends beyond victim compensation to pressuring systems that finance and incentivize terrorism. “We go after the deep pockets, because we want to, not only to get the money for the victims, but we want to influence,” she said. “I don’t believe you can influence a terrorist that goes with a mission to kill someone.”
Bauer characterized the case in similar terms. He said the years of litigation revealed what he considers a false distinction often drawn in Western diplomacy between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority. “One of the canards of the Intifada was ‘Hamas is bad and the Palestinian Authority is good,’” Bauer said. “‘The Hamas guys, they’re crazy. They’re murderers. They’re exploding terrorists. The PA, they want peace.’ And unfortunately, nothing could be further from the truth.”
He said while the PA and Hamas have different structures and ideologies, both have employed violence against Israelis and Jews. “They’re both terrorist organizations,” Bauer said. “Each has its own goals. Sometimes they work together. Sometimes they hate each other.”
For Bauer, the issue remains relevant because several Palestinian figures connected in his view to Second Intifada violence continue to be treated internationally as political leaders. He specifically mentioned Barghouti, whose release has been demanded by supporters who present him as a future Palestinian leader. “He’s never said, ‘I will never be involved in another terror attack,’” Bauer said. “‘I apologize to all those whom I harmed.’”
The case also reveals a complex record of U.S. government involvement. Bauer said Congress consistently supported terror victims and the Justice Department eventually backed the plaintiffs before the Supreme Court. However, he strongly criticized the State Department, claiming it repeatedly prioritized PA stability over enforcing judgments for American victims.
“The Congress always was very supportive,” Bauer said. “The laws were passed. President Trump signed them. The Department of Justice has always been very supportive of terror victims and anything to help hold terror groups responsible. The Department of State has, let’s say, been more reticent on the good times, actually opposed to us and the bad times.”
The Palestinian Authority has claimed in recent years that it has modified or eliminated its formal prisoner payment program. Darshan-Leitner said courts should not accept this assertion without evidence. “In my current cases, they come and say we canceled the law, we don’t have this policy anymore, but the court doesn’t take their word,” she said. “The court asks them to prove that they don’t pay the terrorists.”
When asked whether they continue making payments, she responded: “Yes, yes, yes, they keep paying.”
She said new cases filed after October 7 will directly test these claims, because the PA will need to demonstrate whether its payment system has genuinely changed or whether it has simply been rebranded as welfare or social assistance. This question has evolved beyond a legal dispute—it addresses whether the PA can still be presented internationally as a reformed governing entity while victims argue in court that its own structures rewarded the violence that harmed them.
For Bauer, the judgment follows a personal journey that began with survival, not litigation. In the weeks following the bombing, his family’s priority was simply getting through each day. His son was initially blind and unable to move his left side, Bauer said, though his sight and movement eventually returned. The boy underwent physical therapy, hydrotherapy, electrotherapy, and other rehabilitation treatments. “Thank God his vision came back, as did his motion on his left side,” Bauer said. “This day, over 20 years later, he still limps a little bit.”
Bauer himself authored a memoir the year following the bombing, describing how the attack lasted only seconds but transformed every aspect of family life. In the interview, he expressed it more simply. “At that point, we started a completely new life,” he said. “Up to that point, we had one life. And that ended. You close the book, seal it.”
Now, after 22 years in court, Bauer said the verdict gives the law “teeth,” particularly for American victims harmed overseas. “You can’t hold al-Qaida. Al-Qaida has no representative,” he said. “But something like the Palestinian Authority that specifically does have an office in New York with the UN, they have facilities also in Washington. They can’t run away anymore.”
The PA and PLO may still pursue additional review. But Bauer said the plaintiffs have already endured the trial, the appeal, the legislative battle, the Supreme Court, and the return to the Second Circuit. “Our lawyer joked for the Supreme Court that our lawsuit could have already gone to law school,” Bauer said. “By the time it reached them.”
For Darshan-Leitner, the restored verdict represents part of a broader legal strategy: follow the money, force institutions to account for attacks they enabled, and treat financial infrastructure as part of terrorism’s machinery. “The one who sent him has to pay,” she said. “I’m not going after the individuals. I want to direct the other one that I want to find responsible.”
For Bauer, the case has returned to where he and the other plaintiffs stood in 2015: with a judgment in hand, but still awaiting payment. After 22 years of litigation, he said the ruling gives the law “teeth.” What remains is whether the Palestinian Authority and PLO will be compelled to pay it.
