Soccer Dad

The palestinian catch 22

Time after time the Palestinians try to evade responsibility for terrorism. Now they've been nailed in court and they're still trying to evade justice:

A federal judge awarded the family a default judgment of $192.7 million in damages after the P.L.O. and the Palestinian Authority refused to defend the suit on the merits.

But now the Palestinians, holding themselves out as a partner in the Middle East peace process, have changed lawyers, and asked the judge for a second chance. The judge, Victor Marrero of Federal District Court in Manhattan, has agreed to set aside the judgment and give them that chance.

But there's a catch. He is requiring the Palestinians to post a bond of $192.7 million so that if they lose again, the damages would be paid.

So Abbas and Fayyad have sworn that they can't afford to pay the judgment. But this leads to another problem:

Another expert, Beth Van Schaack, an associate law professor at Santa Clara University, said that the legal process, if the Palestinians do participate fully, could allow an inquiry into Palestinian finances, and whether money went to support terrorism.

"The Abbas administration has gotten themselves in a little bit of a bind," Professor Van Schaack said. "If they are claiming, 'We can't put up the bond because we don't have the money,' " she said, "that opens the door to do some level of discovery about money."

As Elder of Ziyon who has done more reporting on the subject than the NYT notes, the PA has been spending most of its budget in Gaza, effectively using those funds to help Hamas. (And yes, unfortunately, this is going on with Israel's acquiescence.)

No wonder, then, that the attorney for the plaintiffs, David Strachman says:

Mr. Strachman argued in court papers that the descriptions of Palestinian finances had been "woefully incomplete and frankly disingenuous."

"The issue is: What assets do they have?" he told the court in July.

And where are they spending them?

UPDATE: I'd forgotten this item from two months ago:

The international community has paid out nearly a billion dollars in direct aid to the Palestinians in six months, officials of the International Donors' Conference for the Palestinian State said here late Monday, while hitting out at Israeli restrictions on movement by Palestinians.

The Palestinians are receiving plenty of aid. The main question is what they're doing with it.

UPDATE II: The Palestinians' representative (replacing Ramsey Clark) is Richard Hibey. My Right Word notes that Hibey's been in the news before.

Crossposted on Yourish.