US jury to decide if Palestinian authorities to blame for attacks

Palestinian authorities shouldn’t be blamed for a series of deadly terror attacks in Israel that killed or wounded Americans in the early 2000s, a lawyer told a New York City jury Thursday at a high-stakes civil trial.

In his closing argument, defense attorney Mark Rochon said there was no proof the PLO and the Palestinian Authority sanctioned the six attacks as alleged in a 2004 lawsuit, even though members of their security forces were convicted in Israeli courts on charges they were involved.

“It is not the right thing to hold the government liable for some people doing crazy and terrible things,” defense attorney Mark Rochon said in his closing argument.

“There is no conclusive evidence that the senior leadership of the PA or PLO were involved in planning or approving specific acts of violence.”

“What they did, they did for their own reasons… not the Palestinian Authority’s,” he said in federal court in Manhattan.

The six attacks in question took place between 2001 and 2004, killing 33 people and injuring more than 390 others, including members of the 11 plaintiff families.

A lawyer for the plaintiffs was to give his closing argument later Thursday.

The civil case in Manhattan and another in Brooklyn have emerged as the most notable attempts by American victims of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict to use US courts to seek damages that could reach into the billions of dollars.

The suits against the PLO and Palestinian Authority and the other against the Jordan-based Arab Bank had languished for years as the defendants challenged the American courts’ jurisdiction. But recent rulings found that they should go forward under the Anti-Terrorism Act, a more than two-decade-old law that allows victims of US-designated foreign terrorist organizations to seek compensation.

The plaintiffs in the Manhattan case have relied partly on internal records showing that the Palestinian Authority 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. Jurors also heard testimony from family members of people killed in the attacks and from those who survived but never fully recovered.

On Thursday, Rochon argued that it was illogical to conclude that payments made after the attacks motivated the attackers in the first place.

“You know a lot about prisoner payments and martyr payments,” he told the jury. “Do you have any evidence that they caused these attacks? No.”

Last year, a Brooklyn jury decided that Arab Bank should be held responsible for a wave of Hamas-orchestrated suicide bombings that left Americans dead or wounded based on claims the financial institution knowingly did business with the terror group.

A separate phase of the Brooklyn trial dealing with damages, set to begin in May, will feature testimony from victims.