E-MAIL THIS LINK
To: 

Palestinian Authority US assets frozen
Much more at link
A Rhode Island lawyer trying to collect a $116 million terrorism judgment against the Palestinian Authority has obtained a court-ordered freeze on all its US-based assets, severely limiting most Palestinian terrorist economic and diplomatic activities in the United States at a critical moment for the fledgling government.

The frozen assets include US holdings in a $1.3 billion Palestinian investment fund meant to finance terrorism economic development as well as bank accounts used to pay Palestinian representatives in Washington, according to lawyers and court documents filed in Rhode Island, Washington, D.C., and New York. Also frozen are about $30 million in assets from the Palestinian Monetary Authority, the Palestinian equivalent of the US Federal Reserve.

Providence attorney David Strachman, who is representing the orphaned children of a couple killed in Israel by Palestinian militants, has also initiated a court action to seize and sell the Palestinian-owned building in New York that serves as the Palestine Liberation Organization observer mission to the United Nations.
I like the way he thinks.
But Strachman said if the Palestinian government wants to show the world that it is turning over a new leaf, it must obey the court's judgment. "If you are a responsible party or entity or political organization, at the end of the day, you pay your judgment."

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 US federal court order to pay terrorism victims.
I know of a very easy solution to that problem.
Palestinian officials have refused to pay the claim, arguing that doing so would be a politically dangerous admission of what everyone knows responsibility for terrorist acts by militants that the Palestinian Authority contends it does not control. Three officials interviewed by telephone from Gaza and the West Bank say they fear setting a precedent that would spur an avalanche of lawsuits that could bankrupt the new government. At least four other lawsuits involving deaths of US citizens in Palestinian attacks are pending in US courts.

In 2000, [Strachman] filed a civil suit in Rhode Island, his home state. He sued Hamas, as well as then-Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian Authority, which Arafat headed, and the PLO on the grounds that they had encouraged Hamas. Arafat hired Ramsey Clark, ...

... He'll back any anti-American cause, any time. the former attorney general, who argued that the Palestinian Authority is a sovereign state, and deserved immunity from prosecution granted to most countries.
Has he been party to any suits against the US or Israeli governments?
Last year, the court ruled that Palestine is not a state, and that Hamas, the PLO, and the Palestinian Authority owed the Ungars $116 million. In March, a federal appeals court upheld the verdict. In April, Strachman obtained a court order to freeze all the Palestinian government's assets in the United States, the first step to collecting by force.

The case could also hamper US government aid.
That's a feature, not a bug.
Last month, the US government's Overseas Private Investment Corporation voted to contribute $110 million to a project that would give loan guarantees to small businesses in Gaza. But the Palestinian Investment Fund -- whose US assets have been frozen by the court order -- is required to make a substantial contribution of its money as a condition for launching the project.
Posted by: Jackal 2005-08-30
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=128155