While the Palestinian Authority may be gaining control of land in the Gaza Strip following the evacuation of Israeli Jews, it has lost control of its U.S.-based assets – frozen by court order due to the PA's failure to pay a $116 million terrorism judgment.
According to the Boston Globe, Rhode Island attorney David Strachman obtained the court order as part of his representation of children orphaned when their parents were killed in Israel by Palestinian terrorists.
The assets frozen include U.S. holdings in a $1.3 billion Palestinian investment fund meant to finance economic development as well as bank accounts used to pay Palestinian representatives in Washington, D.C.
Also frozen are about $30 million in assets from the Palestinian Monetary Authority, the Palestinian equivalent of the U.S. Federal Reserve, the Globe reported.
Strachman also has taken court action to seize the PA's building in New York City that houses its U.N. observer mission.
The attorney says if the Palestinian Authority wants to show the world it is a responsible government, it will pay up.
''If you are a responsible party or entity or political organization, at the end of the day, you pay your judgment," Strachman told the paper in a telephone interview from Israel, where he was on vacation. ''They have very brazenly refused to pay."
The case puts the Bush administration in the delicate position of giving financial aid and political support to an entity that has refused to obey a U.S. federal court order to pay terrorism victims.
''For the administration, it's difficult," said one Palestinian official speaking from Gaza, who asked not to be identified. ''Right now, they are trying to figure out a creative way to deal with it without embarrassing anyone."
According to the report, Palestinian Finance Minister Salam Fayyad asked U.S. Secretary of State for advice on the problem.
The PA has refused to pay the judgment because doing so would admit its culpability in terror attacks against Israel. There are at least four other lawsuits pending in the U.S. filed by Americans and involving Palestinian terror. If the PA were to pay terror-related court judgments, it could open itself up to countless lawsuits.
The Globe reported the case is the first to result in a financial judgment under a 1991 antiterrorism law that allows U.S. citizens to sue foreign organizations in civil court for terrorism. It stems from the 1996 murders of Brooklyn-born Yaron Ungar, a American, and his pregnant Israeli wife, Efrat, whose car was sprayed with bullets by Hamas terrorists. Those convicted of the crime were found to be carrying uniforms issued by the Palestinian Authority, according to Strachman, who was appointed by an Israeli court to represent the couple's relatives.
Though late PA Chairman Yasser Arafat tried to argue the Palestinian Authority was a sovereign state and therefore immune from such suits, the court disagreed and awarded the multi-million dollar judgment against the PA as well as Hamas and the PLO.