A roughly $655.5 million civil judgment against the Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization is no longer frozen in the American courts. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, acting alone on the Supreme Court's emergency docket, denied an application by the two Palestinian entities to suspend enforcement of the award while they prepare a full appeal — a decision that opens the door for American victims of early-2000s attacks in Israel to begin collecting.
The denial, issued in early August 2026 and first reported by Reuters and other outlets, came without a written opinion and without referral to the full Court, according to accounts of the order. That procedural brevity matters: it signals that the circuit justice did not regard the emergency criteria for relief as satisfied, and it leaves the underlying legal questions unresolved for now.
For the plaintiffs — American victims and the families of victims of attacks in Jerusalem and elsewhere in Israel during the Second Intifada — the practical consequence is immediate. Nothing in the U.S. court system currently stands between them and the machinery of enforcement.
What Justice Sotomayor decided
As Circuit Justice for the Second Circuit, which covers New York, Sotomayor handles emergency applications arising from the court that oversaw the long-running litigation. The PA and PLO asked her to stay enforcement of the judgment while they prepared a petition for a writ of certiorari — the formal request that the full Supreme Court review the case.
She declined. Reporting on the order indicates it was issued on or about Monday, August 3, or Tuesday, August 4, 2026, and that it carried no accompanying opinion and was not circulated to the other eight justices. Emergency applications of this kind are frequently resolved in a single line, but the absence of any referral or explanation removes the clearest early signal of how the broader Court might view the case.
Under the Supreme Court's usual practice, a party denied a stay by the circuit justice may still ask the full Court to intervene. The PA and PLO retain that option, though as of mid-September 2026 no such renewed application had been publicly reported.
How the case reached this point
The litigation is a product of two decades of procedural grinding. The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York entered the $655.5 million judgment in 2015, after a jury found the PA and PLO liable in a civil case brought by American victims and their families over attacks during the Second Intifada. The case is commonly referred to in shorthand as the Sokolow case.
That judgment did not survive intact. The district court later dismissed the case, and the matter moved through the appellate system. Then, in decisions dated March 30 and early April 2026, a three-judge panel of the Second Circuit reinstated the district court's original award, reversing its earlier dismissal after a change in controlling law. That reinstatement is what revived the plaintiffs' ability to enforce — and what prompted the Palestinians' emergency request to the Supreme Court.
The appeal the PA and PLO now contemplate would not be about the facts of the underlying attacks. It would centre on jurisdictional questions: whether the Palestinian entities could properly be brought before a U.S. court at all, and whether the legal framework that animated the Second Circuit's reversal was correctly applied. Those are the questions the Palestinians would want the full Supreme Court to take up.
Why enforcement is the pivotal moment
A judgment and a collection are different things, and the gap between them is where most of this story's uncertainty lies. With the stay denied, plaintiffs' lawyers are free to pursue enforcement actions — identifying assets, seeking court orders, and pressing jurisdictions that will honour U.S. judgments to freeze or turn over Palestinian funds.
Enforcement is not automatic, and it is unlikely to be quick. It requires locating assets that fall within the reach of a court willing to act, and it depends on cooperation from financial institutions and foreign authorities. The plaintiffs' strategy, according to reporting on the case, is expected to focus on Palestinian Authority tax revenues and other assets of the PA and PLO, including funds collected by or passing through jurisdictions willing to enforce American judgments.
Tax revenues are the obvious target because they are the PA's principal and most visible income stream, cleared through arrangements with Israel and routed through banking channels that are, in principle, traceable. Any attempt to intercept them would immediately become a political as well as a legal event, with consequences well beyond the courtroom.
For now, though, the significance is structural: the plaintiffs have moved from holding a piece of paper to holding a live claim they can act on.
A Palestinian Authority already under strain
The timing is punishing. In filings and analyses submitted to the Court this summer, the PA argued that paying the judgment could push it toward financial collapse. The award has been estimated at roughly one-third of the annual wage and pension bill for all Palestinian public employees — a comparison that captures how large the sum is relative to the institution being asked to pay it.
The fiscal picture was already deteriorating before the stay application. As of July 2026, the PA was paying only around 70 per cent of public sector salaries, booking the remainder as arrears. That is not a marginal adjustment; it is a sign of an administration running short of cash to meet its most basic recurring obligation.
Those two facts together — an unpaid salary backlog and a judgment worth a third of the annual payroll — explain why the Palestinian side framed the request to Sotomayor as an existential matter rather than a routine litigation step. Whether the Court accepts that framing is a separate question from whether it is accurate, and the circuit justice's silent denial suggests it was not treated as sufficient grounds for emergency relief.
What the plaintiffs' side says
The plaintiffs and their lawyers have long argued that the judgment represents accountability, not aggression — that American victims of attacks carried out during the Second Intifada are entitled to the damages a jury awarded them, and that prolonged non-payment is itself a form of denial of justice.
Their enforcement position, as described in reporting, is straightforward: pursue identifiable Palestinian assets, including tax revenues, wherever U.S. judgments can be given effect. They have not, as of mid-September 2026, publicly outlined a negotiated alternative, and no concrete settlement framework has been reported.
What the Palestinian side argues
The PA and PLO have argued that the judgment, if enforced, would do damage that extends far beyond the defendants. Their filings to the Supreme Court this summer contended that payment on this scale could push the Authority toward financial collapse — with the knock-on effects falling on public employees already receiving partial salaries, and on the wider population dependent on PA services.
Their legal argument runs in parallel: that the jurisdictional foundations of the case are flawed, and that the Second Circuit's reinstatement warrants full review. The denial of a stay does not weaken that argument on the merits, but it does mean the Palestinians must make it while enforcement pressure builds, rather than from behind the shield of a suspended judgment.
The competing interests at stake
This case sits at the intersection of several legitimate but conflicting claims, and any honest account of it has to hold them together.
On one side is the entitlement of individual victims and families to compensation awarded by a jury in a court that found the defendants liable. Judicial systems exist in part to convert such findings into something real; a verdict that can never be collected is a verdict in name only.
On the other is the concern — voiced by the PA and echoed by critics of the litigation — that enforcement against a governing institution's core revenue is a blunt instrument. It could degrade services, deepen arrears, and create instability in a body whose fiscal failure would be felt by people who had no role in the attacks at issue.
There is also a jurisdictional question that is genuinely contested: how far U.S. courts can reach non-U.S. entities for conduct abroad, and how changes in controlling law should apply to cases already decided. The Second Circuit addressed this in its March and April 2026 decisions; the Supreme Court has not.
None of these positions cancels out the others. The enforcement phase now beginning will test how U.S. law balances them in practice.
What happens next
Three tracks are now running simultaneously.
The first is collection. Plaintiffs' lawyers can begin or advance enforcement actions targeting Palestinian assets and revenue streams. Expect a period of filings, asset identification, and jurisdictional manoeuvring that may take months or longer to produce tangible results — and possibly attempts by the Palestinians to seek protection in courts outside the United States.
The second is the appeal. The PA and PLO can file or finalise a petition for certiorari asking the full Supreme Court to review the Second Circuit's reinstatement of the judgment and the underlying jurisdictional issues. If the Court grants review, the legal picture could change substantially. If it declines, the appellate outcome stands. Neither step has been publicly confirmed as completed.
The third is negotiation. Settlement or third-party mediation remains theoretically available, but as of mid-September 2026 there is no publicly reported framework, no announced talks, and no evident channel. The denial of the stay reduces the Palestinians' leverage at any such table, which may make talks less likely in the short term rather than more.
The wider significance
Beyond this case, the order carries a signal about how the Supreme Court's emergency docket handles high-stakes international disputes. A one-line denial from a single justice, issued without reasons or referral, leaves observers to infer the Court's thinking from silence. That is a familiar feature of the shadow docket, and it is precisely why the denial should not be read as a ruling on the merits of the Palestinians' appeal.
It also sharpens a longer-running debate about litigation as an instrument of accountability. Supporters see these cases as one of the few mechanisms by which victims of terrorism can obtain redress against organisations that states are often unwilling or unable to pursue. Critics see enforcement against a governing authority's tax revenues as a measure that punishes institutions and populations rather than decision-makers.
What is clear, as of September 14, 2026, is that the dispute has entered a new phase. For nearly a decade the $655.5 million award existed in a kind of legal suspension. It is now live and actionable in the United States — and the next round of this fight will be fought not only over what the law means, but over where the money is, who can reach it, and who will agree to hand it over.