Moshe Saperstein, who lost an arm fighting in the Yom Kippur War, was shot in the hand during a terror attack on the Kissufim Corridor, the main road leading to Gush Katif. One woman and two soldiers were murdered in the attack, which ended with Saperstein running down the terrorist with his car.
Following the lead of a dozen other terror victims holding American citizenship, Saperstein filed a suit in the United States against the Palestinian Authority and the PLO for complicity in the attack. A federal jury in Florida awarded Saperstein $16 million, but due to an American law involving victims of foreign terror groups the sum could be tripled.
Lawyers for the PA claimed in preliminary hearings that both the PA and the PLO are immune from prosecution due to Palestine being a sovereign state. That argument was rejected by the court and the PA subsequently did not attend the trials.
Saperstein is a prolific writer, dispatching lengthy personal-style emails from his home in the Gush Katif community of N’vei Dekalim prior to its destruction and his eviction in 2005. The emails were forwarded far and wide and published on several web sites, including Arutz-7.
After the expulsion, Moshe and his wife Rachel lived for nearly a year in a small hotel room at the run-down Jerusalem Gold Hotel, where they and their neighbors were placed by the government. They now reside in Nitzan, the grid of double-size trailers located near Ashkelon, awaiting a permanent housing solution.
The money awarded to the Sapersteins must now be collected by identifying PLO assets in the US and elsewhere and having them confiscated by the court.