How Elliot Ness Would Deal With Terrorists?

The Boston Globe reports today that Palestinian Authority's US assets are frozen:

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 economic and diplomatic activities in the United States at a critical moment for the fledgling government.

This is an interesting twist on how they finally caught up with Al Capone and put him in prison--through income tax invasion. After 9/11 there was a lot of talk on the necessity of going after terrorists by drying up their financial sources. Though it seems that in general that strategy has not been too successful, here it might be doing some real good:

Palestinian officials have refused to pay the claim, arguing that doing so would be a politically dangerous admission of 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.

True, these Palestinian Arab officials are exaggerating the effect that the lawsuit is having, and Strachman admits that, " the Palestinians have billions in overseas banks, and that they are exaggerating the hardships that would be caused by paying the judgment," but this will still hit the terrorists, and make some US officials uncomfortable.

The unpaid claim has also brought a diplomatic price. It has frustrated Palestinian efforts to send a new ambassador to Washington because the envoy would have no functioning bank account, according to two of the Palestinian officials based in the West Bank.

Staff at the PLO mission in Washington have not been paid for three months, according to Said Hamad, a senior member of the PLO mission in Washington.

''Unless the mission is able to use these funds, . . . it will be necessary to close the mission with attendant injuries to Palestine and its people and negative consequences to peace in the Middle East," Clark's legal team wrote in a motion earlier this month.

Cool.

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