U.S. victims of Palestinian terror await gov't stance on compensation

WASHINGTON - Dr. Katherine Baker, a microbiologist from Pittsburgh, says it wasn't by chance that she decided to research germs. "People," she says, "are too difficult to understand."

Last Thursday afternoon she stood at the entrance to the office of Congressman Mark Kirk, exhausted after three days of meetings with people - those creatures she finds so difficult to understand.

Each time she mentions the morning of July 31, 2002 her eyes water up. She recalls how she woke up in the morning intending to plan a birthday party for her son who was just about to return from Israel, and how by the end of that day she was planning his funeral instead.

Benjamin Blutstein was at the wrong place at the wrong time, one of five U.S. citizens killed in the Hebrew University cafeteria bombing in Jerusalem. A bag placed on a table detonated, spraying nails and debris that killed nine people and wounded dozens more. In the bombing's wake, his parents filed a law suit together with the parents of other U.S. victims.

A law passed by Congress in 1990 following the murder of Leon Klinghoffer on board the hijacked ship Achille Lauro allows the families of U.S. victims to sue the Palestinian Authority and the Palestinian Liberation Organization for compensation.

PA assets in the U.S. have been frozen and the victims' relatives were given millions in court verdicts: $116 million to the children of Yaron Unger who was killed in 1996; more than $170 million to the widow of Aharon Elis, killed in an attack in Hadera in 2002.

These legal procedures, which span over years and usually receive very little coverage, last week took center stage.

Only two weeks remain for the U.S. government to respond to a federal court's demand that it submit its opinion concerning these lawsuits, following an appeal from the PA's legal team in Washington to U.S. District Court Judge Victor Marrero to request "a statement of interest" from the State Department because of the "international ramifications."

To date, the government has refrained from taking a stance. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has in the past told PA President Mahmoud Abbas that the issue was judicial, not political. In a letter to Abbas, she encouraged him to address the issue in court. She may have since changed her opinion.

Grueling meetings

That is what brought the victims' families to Washington. They are averse to government intervention in favor of the Palestinian defendants. Last Wednesday, they met with senior State Department officials for long, grueling meetings. Then they went to Congress to try and raise support for their cause. An urgent letter signed by eight Democratic and Republican senators was dispatched to Rice. "We want to express our disapproval," they wrote to the secretary of state, to any attempt to harm the legal proceedings taken by the families.

Meanwhile, the administration is vacillating over its stance regarding the lawsuits filed by families' victims, for two reasons:

On the legal side, U.S. lawyers hired by the PA convinced Judge Marrero to seek the government's stand on the issue on whether the compensation should be nullified. They can now elect to respond, or decline to do so. But either way it will be part of his consideration when he rules.

On the diplomatic end of things, PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad last week also took up the issue with Rice during a visit to Washington. How is it possible that the U.S. will allocate funds to rebuild the PA's institutions and repair its infrastructure while on the other hand freeze its assets, Fayad asked.

Shayna Gould stood on Jerusalem's Jaffa Street when a bullet fired by a terrorist pierced her chest and exited her back. When she was released from hospital she was missing her left kidney and her nervous system and memory were damaged.

"This is the U.S. State Department and we are U.S. citizens. They should be concerned with our rights," Gould said. Her husband, Adi, stood by her side and finished sentences she was having difficulty completing. She, too, is suing, but politics, she claims, is of no interest to her.

The claim that they are politically motivated angers the families. They say the State Department has been spurred into action because of its own political considerations.

In a meeting that lasted several hours, Jeffrey Bergner, one of Rice's aides, told families last Wednesday that there were "many factors" that the State Department needed to consider, without enumerating what they were. What he meant to say, however, was that, with all due respect to the victims, the State Department's function is to take care of U.S. political interests.

David Strachman, a lawyer on behalf of the complainants, said that he hoped government intervention will not turn the war on terror into a joke. "They want to intervene because of their relationship with Fayad," he said. Strachman himself is not exactly pro-Palestinian, note those on the Palestinian side. But Strachman is not willing to enter that debate. His opinions are irrelevant. He's a lawyer and the law is on his side, period.

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