U.S. to Post Rewards for Palestinians

In another sign of the Bush administration’s growing impatience with Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, the State Department has begun publicizing rewards for the arrest and conviction of Palestinians accused of killing Americans in Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, officials said Tuesday.

The department said Palestinians wanted for the killings of as many as 21 U.S. citizens in the last decade will soon be added to the government’s Rewards for Justice Web site, https://www.dssrewards.net, joining Osama bin Laden and a host of other alleged terrorists.

“After a careful interagency review, the Department of State has decided to post on the [Web site] rewards for information that leads to the arrest or conviction of individuals responsible for certain acts of terrorism against U.S. citizens in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, or prevention of such acts,” State Department spokeswoman Susan Pittman said Tuesday.

The U.S. government offers up to $25 million for the apprehension of terrorists accused of attacking Americans or U.S. property, although actual rewards have usually been far less.

Although Pittman said the administration has always been prepared to pay a reward for the capture of killers of Americans wherever they occur, “the department had not previously made the decision to explicitly advertise on the Web site rewards for these specific acts of terrorism.”

The decision climaxed a three-year campaign by Morton Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America. During that time, Klein said, officials of both the Clinton and Bush administrations had made it clear that the U.S. government did not intend to offer rewards for curtailing Palestinian terrorism.

“They didn’t want to make an issue of it,” Klein said, adding that he had been told by senior U.S. officials that offering the rewards would interfere with U.S. efforts to mediate a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.

In recent weeks, Bush has made no secret of his anger at Arafat’s failure to rein in Palestinians who attack Israeli civilians. The president and his top aides have said there can be no progress toward peace until the violence stops.

For most of the 14 months of the Palestinian uprising against the Israeli occupation, the administration has maintained an impartial stance, criticizing Palestinian acts of terrorism as well as Israel’s military response. But since Sept. 11, the U.S. has found it increasingly difficult to press for Israeli restraint.

“This shows that Bush has become very sensitive about all terrorism,” Klein said.

The first indication of the administration’s decision to publicize the rewards came in a letter from James A. Larocco, deputy chief of the State Department’s Middle East bureau, to Stephen and Rosalyn Flatow, a New Jersey couple whose daughter Alisa, a student at Brandeis University, was killed in a West Bank bus bombing in April 1995. Larocco asked their permission to name Alisa on the Web site, and the Flatows readily agreed.

Pittman said the cases have not yet been posted but will be soon.