A U.S. federal appeals court overturned a lower court decision and gave the green light to a family suing the Palestinian Authority under the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1991.
The case involves the family of American contractor Mark Parsons, who was killed by a bomb planted by Palestinian Authority terrorists in Gaza in 2003, when his company deployed security for U.S. State Department workers.
Lawyers for the family had argued that the Palestinian Authority violated the anti-terrorism law and that the terrorists were acting on behalf of or with aid of the PA.
A lower court had ruled that the family’s claims against the Palestinian Authority were too speculative to support a judgment in their favor. The Court of Appeals in Washington D.C. did not reject the conclusion but added, “We believe a reasonable juror could conclude that Palestinian Authority employees provided material support to the bomb.”
Mark Parsons and two other members of Dyn Corp International were murdered while protecting a State Department convoy with government workers n their way to interview Gaza applicants for Fulbright scholarships.
The higher court said that there is enough evidence to allow the suit to proceed. It noted that investigations of the terrorist attack revealed that Gaza terrorists asked PA guards to ignore their preparations for planting the roadside bomb that blew up part of the convoy.
The investigation reportedly was disrupted by tampering of evidence by PA Arabs, who also threw rocks at investigators’ vehicles.
“We conclude that a reasonable juror could find on the basis of the family's evidence that Qarmout [the leader of the terrorist cell] planted the bomb that killed Parsons and that Palestinian Security forces at the nearby security checkpoint complied with Qarmout's request not to interfere with his effort to plant a bomb. Because such acts qualify as providing material support ... we reverse the district court's grant of summary judgment to the Palestinian Authority on the family's material support claim."
PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas in recent years has publicly told English media and Western leaders that he is against terror, but speeches to Arabs often incite terror. The most recent Palestinian Authority terror attack on Jews was the murder of Ben Yosef Livnat by Palestinian Authority security forces when he was returning from prayers at Joseph’s Tomb (Kever Yosef) in Shechem.