The family of Tehiya Bloomberg, who was killed in a terrorist shooting attack near Kalkilya in August 2001, filed a NIS 100 million ($20.5 million) lawsuit yesterday against the European Union, charging that the EU's financial support of the Palestinian Authority has been used indirectly to finance Palestinian terrorist activities.

The civil suit, the first claim of its kind against the EU, was filed in Tel Aviv District Court yesterday by British born Steven Bloomberg. Bloomberg's wife, a mother of five and five months pregnant, was gunned down in front of her young children as they drove home from shopping for school supplies. Bloomberg and his fourteen-year-old daughter, Tzipora, sustained serious spinal injuries in the attack, confining them both to wheelchairs. Bloomberg has only recently begun to return to work. The family lives in Ginot Shomron.

"The army has done what it has done [to fight Palestinian terrorism] but the money still keeps flowing in to the Palestinians, " Bloomberg told the Jerusalem Post. "My parents living in England and many other Europeans who oppose terrorism are paying against their will to fund terrorism."

Family attorney Nitsana Darshan-Leitner intends to prove that the EU is the largest supporter of Palestinian terrorism, supplying funding for Palestinian Authority salaries and the purchase of illegal weapons. "The EU has recklessly provided the PA with massive amounts of financial aid, while knowing that the money was being diverted from its intended civilian purposes to Palestinian terrorist groups," Darshan-Leitner said. "After Israeli government warnings that PA buildings in Gaza funded by the EU were targeted by the IDF [because of their use] as terror bases, the EU either had an awareness, or should have been aware, that its monies were being used for terrorism," Nitsana Darshan-Leitner added.

Palestinian police officer Farid Azouni is charged with having participated in the shooting, and Kalkilya police chief Samar Abu Hania is accused of planning the attack on the Bloombergs. The two, who were both salaried employees of the Palestinian Authority at the time of the attack, were arrested by Israeli security forces in October and remain in Shin Bet custody.

"Without the EU's reckless provision of financing to the Palestinians, hundreds of Israeli terror victims would still be alive and thousands of others would never have had to suffer their tragic injuries," Darshan-
Leitner said.

Following the signing of the Oslo Accords, the EU pledged to provide funding to the PA for civilian projects, primarily to pay the salaries of the PA's municipal workers. The EU reportedly donates approximately $10 million a month to the PA, and the total amount of aid provided since 1994 is about $1.5 billion. The plaintiffs in the suit against the EU contend that PA Chairman Yasser Arafat channeled large sums of these EU funds to terrorist organizations such as the Fatah, Tanzim, and Force 17. Moreover, the complaint alleges that the EU failed to undertake any steps to monitor or scrutinize how the PA was utilizing the money.

David Kriss, a spokesman for the European Commission in Israel, said the EU has "yet to receive any evidence that the Palestinian Authority has misused our funds to fund terrorist activities." Kriss said the Commission was "treating these allegations made by the Israeli government very seriously and that it awaits any evidence to show that those funds have been misused."

Darshan-Leitner said that EU has thirty days to prepare a defense. The lawsuit may include preliminary arguments regarding jurisdiction and immunity, and EU representatives will be called to appear in the Tel Aviv District Court for the hearing.

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