Palestine Liberation Organisation executive committee member Hanan Ashrawi speaks during a press conference in Ramallah.
Reuters/New York
A US jury has found the Palestine Liberation Organisation and the Palestinian Authority liable for supporting attacks in Israel more than a decade ago that killed dozens of people.
Jurors in Manhattan federal court awarded $218.5mn in damages to 10 American families who brought the case, a sum that is automatically tripled to $655.5mn under a 1992 US anti-terrorism law, lawyers for the families said.
Both defendants said they would appeal. It is unclear whether the plaintiffs can ever collect, though their lawyers vowed to seek out Palestinian assets to satisfy the judgment.
The verdict was the second in less than a year in which a US jury found defendants liable under the Anti-Terrorism Act, which lets US citizens injured by acts of international terrorism pursue damages in federal court.
Last September, a federal jury in Brooklyn found Arab Bank Plc liable for providing material support to Hamas. A separate trial to determine damages is scheduled for this year.
The verdicts could bolster efforts by American victims to hold foreign entities responsible in US courts for overseas attacks.
A 12-member jury on Monday found the PLO and the Palestinian Authority liable over six shootings and bombings between 2002 and 2004 in the Jerusalem area and which have been attributed to the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades and Hamas. The attacks killed 33 people and injured more than 450.
The PLO and the Palestinian Authority have faced similar lawsuits in the past but this was by far the largest judgment entered against the defendants.
Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah’s office issued a statement saying both defendants would appeal and calling the allegations in the case “baseless.”
He also cited a decision this month from US District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly in Washington, D.C., who ruled she did not have jurisdiction over two similar Anti-Terrorism Act cases against the Palestinian Authority.
The plaintiffs had requested more than $350mn of damages, or more than $1bn after tripling.
They claimed late PLO chairman Yasser Arafat and his agents routinely arranged for attackers to be paid, kept them on Palestinian payrolls and made payments to families of attackers who died.
Lawyers for the PLO and the Palestinian Authority said those entities condemned the attacks, and blamed them on rogue low-level employees.
The verdict added a new dimension to the long-running Middle East conflict. Palestinians wish to form a state in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, lands Israel occupied in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
Palestine has since 2012 been a UN “observer state” and Palestinians are expected soon to join the International Criminal Court, which launched an inquiry that could lead to war crime charges against Israel.
Ruling a setback for cash-strapped Palestinian Authority
The Palestinians may be turning to the international courts to advance their bid for statehood but they have lost a first battle in the US courts that could cost them dearly.
The Palestinian leadership denounced the decision and vowed to appeal, saying the US justice system was being exploited by “hardline rightwing Israeli factions opposed to peace”.
The ruling does not bode well for the Palestinian Authority, which is already struggling to handle a major financial crisis that has been exacerbated by Israel’s freezing of millions of dollars of tax revenues as a punishment for the ICC move.
Even before the ruling Washington had expressed concern that the crisis could lead to the collapse of the Authority. But it remains a question whether the Palestinian leadership will have to pay the damages.
Israeli lawyer Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, who represented the victims, said she would leave no stone unturned in forcing them to pay and would target Palestinian assets in both the US and Israel.
But senior PLO official Hanan Ashrawi told reporters in Ramallah: “We cannot pay. We do not have this money.”
