Arab Bank dismisses Israeli lawsuits as ‘baseless’

AMMAN — The Arab Bank on Monday said that the lawsuits filed against it by Israelis in Israeli courts “have no legal basis”.

In a disclosure statement on the Amman Stock Exchange's website, the Arab Bank said that it had not yet received any statement of claim and that the disclosure aimed at clarifying the issue, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported.

The bank noted that the plaintiffs resorted to US courts in 2004 regarding the same issue. US courts issued several final rulings in favour of the bank, the last of which was on April 24, 2018 by the US Supreme Court.  

The bank said that this civil lawsuit was made more than 15 years after incidents that occurred between 1995 and 2005 and during the Intifada, where plaintiffs allege that they were harmed in these incidents and implicated the Arab Bank. 

The US Supreme Court in April 2018 ruled that foreign corporations cannot be sued in American courts for human rights abuses overseas, and refused to revive a lawsuit claiming that the Jordan-based Arab Bank Plc. helped finance “militant attacks” in Israel and the Palestinian territories.

The 5-4 decision left in place a lower court ruling that had thrown out a lawsuit brought by some 6,000 plaintiffs, including survivors and relatives of non-US citizens killed in attacks, filed under a 1789 US law called the Alien Tort Statute that accused Arab Bank of being the "paymaster" to armed groups.

The court ruled along ideological lines, with its five conservatives in the majority and its four liberal justices dissenting, Petra reported.

Only in recent years have plaintiffs sought to bring human rights claims under the obscure law, according to Petra.