US court finds PA liable for attacks in Israel
This posting has 4 items:
1) WSJ: Jury Finds Palestinian Authority, PLO Liable for Terrorist Attacks in Israel a Decade Ago;
2) FT: Palestinians to appeal against US ruling on terrorist attacks, more information on appeal and background than others;
3) Jewish Forward: A Verdict on the Palestinians argues PA must distance itself from past violence;
4) AFP/Ma’an: US jury orders PA, PLO to pay $218 million to attack victims;
A 2002 bus bombing in Jerusalem that killed 18 during the second intifada. Photo by Getty Images
Jury Finds Palestinian Authority, PLO Liable for Terrorist Attacks in Israel a Decade Ago
Federal jury orders groups to pay $218.5 million to victims’ families
By Nicole Hong, WSJ
February 23, 2015
A federal jury in New York on Monday found the Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization liable for supporting six terrorist attacks in Israel more than a decade ago and ordered the groups to pay $218.5 million to the American victims’ families.
Monday’s verdict in Manhattan federal court follows a lengthy legal battle stemming from a lawsuit filed in 2004 under the U.S. Antiterrorism Act. The 1992 law, which allows U.S. victims of international terrorism to seek remedy in federal court, automatically triples the jury damages awarded to more than $655 million because the claims involved an act of terrorism.
The verdict comes amid mounting problems for the Palestinian Authority, the government of Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. U.S. officials have warned that the Authority is already edging close to an economic crisis since a January decision by Israel to freeze transfers of at least $200 million in tax revenue it collects on behalf of the Authority.
The sanction came in response to a move by the Authority to join the International Criminal Court in the Hague, where it wants to bring war-crimes trials against Israel over its occupation of the West Bank. Israel has argued the Palestinian Authority is guilty of war crimes itself, and the federal verdict could be used by Israel to bolster that argument.
After less than two days of deliberations, the 12-member jury decided the Palestinian Authority and the PLO knowingly helped facilitate a wave of deadly shootings and bombings in Israel in the early 2000s, which killed 33 people and wounded more than 400 others. The plaintiffs were 10 U.S. families affected by six specific attacks, including a 2002 bombing of a Hebrew University cafeteria and a 2004 suicide bombing on a public bus in Jerusalem.
“The message is clear,” said Kent Yalowitz, the Arnold & Porter LLP partner who represented the plaintiffs. “If you kill or injure Americans, the long arm of the American law will come after you.”
The Palestinian Authority and PLO, which is the political representative of Palestinians, have said they had no involvement in the attacks and shouldn’t be held responsible for the actions of a handful of extremist individuals. The groups said Monday they were “deeply disappointed” by the verdict and planned to appeal the decision, calling the charges against them “baseless.”
“This is not a verdict based on legal grounds,” said Ghassan Shakaa, chairman of the PLO’s Department of International Affairs. “It is a politically biased verdict based on [America’s] bias and siding towards Israel.”
In a statement late Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised the jury for finding the Palestinian Authority was responsible for what he called “murderous” attacks.
The trial, which began in mid-January, was emotional at times, especially during testimony from the victims and their families, when they vividly described the mental and physical injuries they sustained. None of the families were present when the verdict was read, but Mr. Yalowitz said they were “pleased” with the decision.
It is unclear how the compensation would be paid out given the Palestinian Authority’s economic squeeze. On Monday, Israel said it cut off electricity to parts of the West Bank because the Palestinian Authority had fallen behind on its payments to Israel.
“It’s going to be difficult but not impossible to collect the monetary judgment,” said Jens David Ohlin, a professor at Cornell Law School who specializes in international law. “The best hope the plaintiffs have in this case is to either find assets in the U.S. or convince the Israelis to help them collect the judgment.”
State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Monday she had no comment on the jury’s decision.
The verdict comes about five months after a federal jury in Brooklyn found Arab Bank PLC liable for supporting terrorist acts in and around Israel, the first time a bank was held liable in a civil lawsuit under the antiterrorism statute. The recent verdicts could pave the way for more lawsuits against organizations, including global banks, that allegedly facilitate or fund terrorist acts.
“We will make sure [the Palestinian Authority and PLO] pay every dollar of this judgment,” said Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, director of the Shurat HaDin Israel Law Center and the Israel-based lawyer for the plaintiffs. She said her group has “gone after” Palestinian assets in previous cases, adding that the plaintiffs would try to seize assets in the U.S. and Israel, including bank accounts and real estate.
Palestinian leaders tried for years to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing that U.S. courts had no jurisdiction over them, but U.S. District Judge George Daniels allowed the trial to proceed. Mark Rochon, the Miller & Chevalier partner representing the defendants, said during the trial the groups shouldn’t have to “pay for something they did not do.”
But Mr. Yalowitz said the groups supported the terrorist organizations that carried out the attacks in the early 2000s. He argued that Palestinian leaders endorsed the terrorists by paying and promoting the individuals who committed the attacks, even after some of them were convicted of murder.
Mr. Rochon said the fact that Palestinian authorities paid and promoted prisoners wasn’t the reason they committed acts of terror.
—Nicholas Casey contributed to this article.
Palestinians to appeal against US ruling on terrorist attacks
By John Reed in Jerusalem, Financial Times
February 24, 2015
Palestinian officials said on Tuesday they planned to appeal against a landmark US court decision that holds them liable for six terrorist attacks in Israel a decade ago.
The ruling threatens to undermine the Ramallah-based government’s already shaky finances.
The Palestine Liberation Organisation and Palestinian Authority said they were “deeply disappointed” after a New York court late on Monday ordered them to pay $218.5m in a suit brought by 10 US families.
The attacks killed 33 people, including several US citizens, and injured hundreds between 2002-2004, during the second intifada against Israel.
The damages are due to be tripled to more than $650m under a US antiterrorism law that allows American victims of overseas attacks to bring their cases in a US federal court.
“We will appeal this decision,” Mahmoud Khalifa, the Palestinian deputy information minister, said. “We are confident that we will prevail, as we have faith in the US legal system and are certain about our common sense belief and our strong legal standing.”
Mr Khalifa said that the case, in which senior Palestinian and Israeli officials and family members of the victims testified, was “just the latest attempt by hardline anti-peace factions in Israel to use and abuse the US legal system to advance their narrow political and ideological agenda”.
The court verdict comes at a time when the PA, the interim administration in Ramallah set up after the Oslo Accords two decades ago, is facing a severe cash crunch that has renewed perennial fears that the donor-dependent body — whose responsibilities include policing — could collapse.
Israel’s government last month moved to withhold tax and customs revenues it collects on behalf of the Palestinians as punishment for their decision to join the International Criminal Court.
The PA is the West Bank’s biggest employer, and has on its payroll another 70,000 civil servants in the Gaza Strip.
On Monday afternoon the Israel Electric Corporation cut off power to the northern West Bank cities of Jenin and Nablus for about 45 minutes as a warning of possible further cuts over the Palestinians’ 1.9bn shekels ($484m) of unpaid debt to the state-owned utility.
The power cut marked the first time the Israeli state-owned utility has deliberately cut off Palestinian electricity supplies, an IEC spokeswoman told the Jerusalem Post.
Israel’s government and victims’ groups welcomed the US jury’s decision.
“The US federal court decision determines the responsibility of the Palestinian Authority for the murderous terrorist attacks of the previous decade,” Benjamin Netanyahu, prime minister, said. “Instead of drawing the requisite lesson, the Palestinian Authority is advancing steps that endanger regional stability such as the hypocritical application to the ICC, even as it is allied with the Hamas terrorist organisation.”
An attorney involved in the case told the FT that the plaintiffs would be pressing for the fine to be collected from bank accounts, investments, and other assets the two Palestinian bodies hold in the US and Israel.
“We will enforce our judgment and put a lien on their assets,” said Nitsana Darshan-Leitner of the Shurat HaDin Israeli Law Center, which served as the Israeli counsel for the plaintiffs. “We also intend to approach the Israeli government to deduct this verdict from the tax money that it collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority.”
Relations between Israel and the Palestinians have soured sharply since the collapse of US-brokered peace talks last year and a decision by President Mahmoud Abbas to pursue unilateral steps toward international recognition such as ICC membership, a move the Israelis and Americans opposed.
Israel’s military killed a Palestinian man, Jihad Shehadi al-Jaafari, in a refugee camp outside the West Bank city of Bethlehem overnight after clashes between stone- and brick-throwing protesters and troops. The clash happened at the Deheisheh refugee camp after Israeli soldiers entered on an arrest mission.
Twitter: @JohninJerusalem
When a New York jury found the Palestinian Authority and the Palestinian Liberation Organization liable for knowingly supporting six terrorist attacks in Israel more than a decade ago, the news was greeted with cheers and I-told-you-so’s from Israeli government officials and activists on the right.
From the left, there was silence.
Examine the February 23 verdict, and you can understand why it could cause such discomfort for those who have argued for years that the Palestinian leadership is an appropriate and responsible negotiating partner to end its conflict with Israel.
It’s not just that the jury in Federal District Court in Manhattan ordered the P.A. and the PLO to pay the 10 families who served as plaintiffs a total of $218.5 million in compensation — an amount that, under a special terrorism law, should increase to $655.5 million. The P.A. is just about broke now, its financial crisis exacerbated by the Israeli withholding of $100 million in monthly revenues, punishment for the Palestinian decision in December to join the International Criminal Court. If the Palestinians lose their expected appeal, there is no telling if or how they can come up with this kind of money.
That is worrying enough — much as we wish to see justice fulfilled and terror victims’ families compensated, Israel would be in even graver danger if the P.A. collapsed. But what is more discomforting is what led a neutral American jury to its conclusion: that the supposedly moderate Palestinian government was directly linked to terrorism.
The finding enabled Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman to declare a “moral victory” in his quest to prove that terror was “an integral part” of the P.A. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu echoed that claim, accusing the Palestinian leadership of continuing to endanger regional stability by its support of “murderous terrorist attacks.”
Lieberman and Netanyahu have argued this point for years, so routinely that — as terror attacks dwindled and the West Bank remained relatively quiet, and as their own experts praised the Palestinian security forces’ effectiveness — it seemed no more than a convenient excuse for political inaction and continued settlement building on occupied land.
Now a U.S. jury agrees with them.
This poses a serious challenge to anyone (including the Forward) who still stubbornly believes that the current Palestinian leadership is capable of implementing a two-state solution as the only way to lift the stain of occupation while ensuring Israel’s long-term safety and democratic character.
The plaintiffs offered internal records showing that the P.A. continued to pay the salaries of employees who were put behind bars in terror cases and paid benefits to families of suicide bombers and gunmen who died committing the attacks. Some of the convicted terrorists received regular promotions in rank from the P.A. as they sat in jail.
The Palestinians’ lawyer argued that there was no proof the P.A. itself sanctioned the attacks, which together killed 33 people and injured 390 others, and that these acts were committed by rogue employees acting on their own. Why, then, did those rogue employees draw a salary in jail? The defense also argued that financial payments to terrorists’ families did not signal an endorsement of such activities, but were instead a humanitarian gesture of assistance.
This explanation seems as unconvincing to us as it evidently did to the jury.
Speaking to the Ma’an News Agency after the verdict, Palestinian cabinet ministers said that during the period covered by the court case — January 2002 to January 2004 — Israel reoccupied major Palestinian cities, killed hundreds of Palestinians, and arrested hundreds more, creating conditions that do not excuse terrorism, but put it into context. Historical context.
“The [court] decision is a tragic disservice to the millions of Palestinians who have invested in the democratic process and the rule of law in order to seek justice and redress their grievances,” Mahmoud Khalifa, deputy minister of information for the P.A., told Ma’an. “We stand ready to be a partner in peace…”
On that last argument, Khalifa has a point. These attacks took place more than a decade ago, before Mahmoud Abbas became chairman of the PLO and president of the P.A. While Netanyahu and his political compatriots still tar Abbas with the brush of his violent predecessor, Yasser Arafat, many other Israeli leaders — including, most notably, the just-retired, much-revered former President Shimon Peres — have praised Abbas for his commitment to nonviolence, evidenced by the conduct of his security forces and the consistent pronouncements of his government.
He inherited a government that supported terrorists. Should he be held accountable for that?
Well, yes.
What a powerful gesture it would be if Abbas stopped these payments. It would remove one more piece of ammunition from the hands of Israeli leadership uninterested in solving the conflict. It would honor the victims of terror and acknowledge the rule of law. And — here we are probably being unduly optimistic — it would be a bold step to restore trust and prove, again, that this Palestinian leadership is willing to break from its violent past.
US jury orders PA, PLO to pay $218 million to attack victims
By AFP / Ma’an news
February 24, 2015
WASHINGTON — A US jury on Monday ordered Palestinian authorities to pay $218 million in damages to American victims of six separate attacks in Israel between 2002 and 2004.
The jury found the Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization liable on 25 separate charges after a day of deliberations in the New York court.
Eleven plaintiff families filed suit in federal court against both the PA and the PLO following the attacks that killed 33 people and injured more than 390 others.
The plaintiffs had pressed for the PA and the PLO to be held accountable for supporting the attacks carried out by members of the Islamist movement Hamas and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, some of whom were also on the entities’ payroll.
But lawyers for the PA said last week it should not be held responsible for “crazy and terrible” attacks committed in Israel, insisting the subjects acted independently.
The Palestinian defence team said that neither the PLO nor the PA had anything to do with the attacks. Defence lawyer Mark J. Rochon told the jury on Thursday that he did not want “the bad guys, the killers, the people who did this, to get away while the Palestinian Authority or the P.L.O. pay for something they did not do,” the New York Times reported.
PLO Executive Committee member Hanan Ashrawi testified for the defence, telling the jury, “We tried to prevent violence from all sides,” the Times report said.
A New York court last month had ruled there was sufficient evidence suggesting that the PA and PLO were involved in attacks during the Second Intifada that killed US citizens.
The suit was filed under the US Anti-terrorism Act.
Ma’an staff contributed to this report.