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Steven Emerson,
Executive Director
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February 23, 2015
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Jury
Finds Palestinian Authority Liable for Intifada Terror
Feb 23, 2015 at 3:04 pm
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Palestinian Authority (PA) policies, including direct financial support
to employees convicted by on terrorism charges, and payments to families of
those killed waging terrorist attacks, make it liable for damages in attacks which killed
wounded Americans, a New York jury decided Monday.
Jurors awarded $218.5 million in damages to the victims and their
families. Provisions in the U.S. Anti-Terrorism Act triple that to $655.5
million.
The jury's award "will not bring back these families' loved ones,
nor heal the physical and psychological wounds inflicted upon them, but it
truly is an important measure of justice and closure for them after their
long years of tragic suffering and pain," said Nitsana Darshan-Leitner
of Israel's Shurat HaDin law center, said after the jury award was
announced. Darshan-Leitner has helped bring numerous civil cases against
sponsors of terrorist attacks, saying the aim here, as in the other cases
is "making the defendants pay for their terrorist crimes against
innocent civilians and letting them know that there will eventually be a
price to be paid for sending suicide bombers onto our buses and into our
cafes."
The judgment comes at a particularly difficult time for the
Palestinian Authority, already strapped for cash and hoping to secure a
place in the International Criminal Court to pursue war crimes charges
against Israelis.
The jury received the case late Thursday, after about six weeks of
testimony. They heard from survivors and eyewitnesses to the attacks, which
included shooting sprees on Jerusalem streets, suicide bombings and the
bombing of a Hebrew University cafeteria. Those attacks killed 33 people
and wounded hundreds more.
Targeting civilians was "standard operating procedure" for the
Palestine Liberation Organization, its Fatah military wing and the Al Aqsa
Martyrs Brigade, plaintiffs' attorney Kent Yalowitz told jurors when the trial began. Yasser Arafat, the
PLO's longtime chairman and the PA's president, controlled all those
entities.
Arafat's handwritten consent appears on PA documents detailing the payments to the terrorists and
their families that later were seized by Israeli military forces. Those
records became key evidence showing the PA's knowledge and support for the
bloody wave of attacks. One 2002 report sent to the PA's General Intelligence
Service chief praised a West Bank squad for its "high quality
successful attacks."
The squad's "men are very close to us (i.e. to the General
Intelligence) and maintain with us continuous coordination and
contacts," the report said.
Many of the attackers and their accomplices were PA employees. Those who
were sent to Israeli prisons remained on the PA payroll, with periodic
raises depending on the length of their sentences.
Palestinian officials promise to appeal.
Defense attorneys maintained that the terrorists acted on their own and
that the PA could not be responsible for the actions of all of its
employees. In his closing argument, Yalowitz asked jurors to consider the outrageous nature of such
communication.
"If you have a policy that says: If you commit a terrorist act, you
keep your job," gain promotions and keep your pay while serving a
prison sentence, "that says something about who you are and what you
believe in."
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