Israeli Victims of Suicide Attacks See Grounds for Lawsuit

If roadblocks, home demolitions and family deportations don’t deter suicide bombers, maybe attorneys will.

At least three pending lawsuits against the Palestinian Authority seek millions of dollars in compensation for injury, lost business and even the chilling effect that violence has had on tourism.

The central tenet of the lawsuits--by a group of hotels, an Israeli bus company and a businessman--is that the Palestinian Authority as a quasi-governmental organization has been negligent in preventing acts of terror--and in some cases has even abetted them.

This month, an Israeli court agreed to increase to $20.4 million the amount of Palestinian funds that Israel will “attach”--essentially seize pending an outcome--after the filing of a 50-page lawsuit by 37 hotels accusing the authority of scaring tourists away.

The attachment, and any settlement, comes out of taxes Israel collects on behalf of the Palestinians.

Nabil abu Rudaineh, a senior aide to President Yasser Arafat, said the Palestinian Authority takes the cases seriously but disputes their basic premise. “We are the ones who should take Israel to court for the occupation and millions of dollars in damaged and destroyed buildings, not the other way around,” he said. “We will probably sue them.”

In the other cases, the Egged bus company, Israel’s largest, is in the final stages of preparing its own lawsuit, which it expects to file in the Court of International Justice in The Hague or another United Nations venue, seeking $81 million in compensation for lost lives, gunfire-and bomb-related damage to its buses and lost revenue as riders increasingly walk, hitchhike and otherwise avoid riding its vehicles.

And pioneer litigant Shlomi Dan, a businessman, has an ongoing lawsuit against the Palestinian Authority for $815,000 in pain, suffering and economic loss after his spinal cord was damaged in a March 4, 1996, suicide bombing at Tel Aviv’s Dizengoff shopping center.

The plaintiffs all say their motives are economic rather than political, even as they acknowledge that the lawsuits can’t help but have a strong political element. Attorneys add that they expect other Israeli industries and individuals to follow their lead.

“We recently saw the World Trade Center families file suit,” said Carmit Bar-On, an attorney representing the hotel industry. “It’s an international trend.”

This latest battle tactic in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has some Israelis fretting that their country is catching the “American disease” and will get swept up in a lawsuit frenzy.

Others are more sanguine. “We haven’t gone that far,” said Roland Roth, an attorney for one of the plaintiffs. “We haven’t gotten to the point where everyone’s suing if their drinks are too hot, or too cold, or whatever it is.”

Ordinary Israelis expressed mixed views over the idea of trying to hold the Palestinian Authority financially and legally responsible for bombings and other attacks.

Health policy researcher Bruce Rosen, 44, said he thinks the court should treat the cases as straightforward commercial claims and ignore the political implications. Orin Sheetreet, a 24-year-old sandwich shop worker, said he doesn’t think the plaintiffs can win, while Boaz Epstein, a 28-year-old mechanic, thinks that it’s worth a try. “I say, ‘Go for it,’ ” he said.

The hotel industry has been among the hardest hit by the Palestinian intifada, with those in Jerusalem or catering to businesspeople reporting occupancy rates as low as 8%. Avi Rosenthal, director-general of Israel’s 350-member Hotel Assn., says 5.3 million tourists have stayed away from Israel since the start of the intifada 23 months ago, depriving the industry of $6 billion in revenue and 60,000 jobs.

As a result, the hotel owners who filed suit believe that the Palestinian Authority should pay, and they say more hoteliers are expected to join the suit.

Hotel industry attorney Bar-On says she faced skepticism before in a similar case when previous clients sought compensation for damage suffered during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Ultimately, however, they prevailed under a U.N. compensation plan, she said, including one hotel group that was awarded $1.25 million.

“At first people laughed,” she said. “But the people who didn’t join ate their hats.”

Neta Ziv, a legal professor with Tel Aviv University, said that the hotel case is innovative but that it could prove difficult to make a causal link in civil court between the injury suffered as a result of attacks and the Palestinian Authority’s responsibility.

The Egged bus company has suffered far more direct damage from the recent violence than the hotel industry. Over the last 18 months, the company’s 4,000 vehicles have been the object of 13 suicide bombings and 188 other attacks that killed 100 people, including one of its drivers, and wounded 600.

Ridership has also eroded by nearly 15% on average, with the slump especially pronounced immediately after an attack.

“We’ve been thinking about filing this lawsuit for a long time,” Egged spokesman Ron Ratner said. “Buses are a major target, and we haven’t seen the end of it.”

The granddaddy of all plaintiffs, however, is businessman Dan, who was the first to file suit against the Palestinian Authority in 1997, paving the way for subsequent lawsuits.

“It’s been a fascinating case,” said Roth, his attorney.

Roth said Dan came to him bankrupt, his life a shambles and intent on suing shortly after the 1996 suicide attack confined him to a wheelchair. Dan’s initial idea was to go after the trucking company that had transported the suicide bomber to the attack. But Roth had an epiphany one day in mid-1997, he said, after reading in a local paper that Arafat had an account at an Israeli bank.

“That’s when I had my brainstorm,” Roth said. “I was sure hundreds of other victims would have the same idea about attaching the money, so I ran to court. But no one else was there.”

The last several years have seen a protracted struggle to have Israel recognize Dan’s claim given the novel legal approach and its political implications. But Dan persevered. Now Roth is preparing to call witnesses, to prove that what they say is the clear causal link between the Palestinian leadership and the bombing.

Some, meanwhile, fear that Israel is following in the United States’ footsteps, becoming increasingly litigious. Rosen, the health policy analyst, says he’s watched medical malpractice cases steadily increase.

But others pooh-poohed the notion, citing a less litigious culture and high costs that tend to discourage frivolous suits. Filing a $1-million lawsuit, for instance, costs you $25,000 just in court fees.

“In the U.S., you have lots of time to sue, and there’s lots of money all over the place,” said Jerusalem resident Epstein, the mechanic. “In Israel, it’s just not like that.”