Extradition: the PA’s dirty little secret

It’s that dirty little secret which nobody wants to talk about, because it makes everybody uncomfortable. It hovers in the background, it’s hidden in the closet, and it lingers in the recesses of our minds. But it’s there, written in black and white in the Oslo Accords, and it can’t be erased: the Palestinian Authority (PA) is obligated to surrender to Israel any terrorist whose extradition the Israelis request.

Which is what makes the ongoing standoff in Bulgaria such an inconvenience!

A Palestinian terrorist who escaped from an Israeli prison 25 years ago is now being given shelter in the PA’s consulate in Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria.

The terrorist is Omar Nayef Zayed, who was convicted in 1986 of murdering an Israeli yeshiva student. He started a hunger strike in 1990, which resulted in the Israeli authorities admitting him to a hospital in Bethlehem. He escaped from the hospital, slipped out of the country, and made his way to Bulgaria. 

Israel has asked the PA to hand him over, in accordance with Annex IV, Article 2, Par.7(f)(1) of the Oslo II agreement that Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and the PA signed in 1995. That clause specifically obliges the PA to comply with every Israeli request for extradition.

During 1995–96, Israel submitted 36 extradition requests. Additional requests were made in subsequent years. Not one of them has ever been honored.

Over the years, State Department officials became experts at coming up with excuses for the PA’s non-compliance on extradition. The classic example involved diplomat Dennis Ross. In May 1997, Ross was invited to speak at the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) in New York City. An audience member asked him why the U.S. was not demanding that the PA hand over Nafez Sabih, a Palestinian terrorist involved in the murder of JTS student Matthew Eisenfeld. Ross said Sabih had not been extradited Israel because “the Palestinians are required [to extradite terrorists to Israel]” only “if they haven’t imprisoned these people,” and he would not be extradited to the U.S. because “the United States does not have an extradition treaty with the Palestinian Authority.”