by Reuters and Israel Hayom Staff
New York trial to decide whether Palestinian Liberation Organization and Palestinian Authority should pay $1 billion in compensation over seven terrorist attacks that killed 33 people and wounded hundreds in 2001 to 2004 • PLO, PA deny allegations.
Palestinian soldiers lower
the Palestinian flags to half mast at the Muqataa Compound in Ramallah
on July 20, 2014, to honor the people killed in the Gaza Strip during
Israel's Operation Dove.
Photo credit: AFP
 |
More than a decade after a series of shootings
and bombings in the Jerusalem area, a trial in New York this week is
slated to determine whether the Palestine Liberation Organization and
Palestinian Authority should pay up to $1 billion in compensation to
victims.
Jury selection begins on Jan. 13 for the civil
trial, which is expected to last 12 weeks and adds a new dimension to
the long-running Middle East conflict and tensions among Palestinians,
Israel and their respective allies.
"The political considerations are extremely
complex," said Bruce Zagaris, a partner at Berliner, Corcoran & Rowe
in Washington, D.C., specializing in international law.
The case concerns seven terrorist shootings and bombings from 2001 to 2004 that killed 33 people and wounded more than 450.
Victims and their families claim that the
defendants helped carry out and finance the attacks, in part through
support for Hamas and the Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, which the U.S.
government has labeled terrorist organizations.
The PLO and the Palestinian Authority have denied the allegations, including that they violated the U.S. Anti-Terrorism Act.
Mark Rochon, a partner at Miller &
Chevalier representing the defendants, declined to comment via a
spokeswoman. Kent Yalowitz, a partner at Arnold & Porter
representing the plaintiffs, was unavailable to comment.
U.S. District Judge George Daniels in
Manhattan will oversee the trial. Last September, a federal jury in
Brooklyn found Arab Bank liable under the anti-terrorism law for having
provided material support to Hamas.
"Palestine" has since 2012 been a United
Nations "observer state," and Palestinians this month moved to join the
International Criminal Court, which they have stated they will try to
use to press legal action against Israel.
Last month, Daniels rejected the PLO's bid to
throw out the lawsuit seeking $1 billion -- a sum the plaintiffs want
tripled -- on the grounds that he lacked jurisdiction.
He distinguished the case from last January's
U.S. Supreme Court decision that German automaker Daimler AG could not
be sued in California over alleged illegal conduct outside the country
merely because it had a subsidiary in the state.
Peter Margulies, a professor at Roger Williams
University School of Law in Bristol, Rhode Island, said Daniels may
have been "too hasty," given that higher courts might ultimately extend
the Daimler reasoning to organizations such as the PLO.
"You don't want everyone in the world to be
hauled into court when the contacts may be thin," he said. "That's a
plausible reading of what the Supreme Court said."
Another issue is that if it loses, the PLO could drag out appeals for years, or be unable to pay a big judgment to begin with.
"The Palestinians are broke," said Zagaris.
Plaintiffs in similar prior cases, including
against Iran, have also struggled to recover big awards because the
defendants have few or no U.S. assets, and "most foreign jurisdictions
will not enforce these types of U.S. judgments," he said.
The plaintiffs say the Palestinians have plenty of money to pay any judgment.
Reuters and Israel Hayom Staff
Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=22729
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
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