NEW YORK (AP) — In a high-stakes legal offshoot of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a U.S. jury was asked Thursday to decide whether executives at Jordan-based Arab Bank should be held responsible for a wave of suicide bombings in the early 2000s that left several Americans dead or wounded.

A lawyer for Arab Bank told the jurors in closing arguments at a civil trial in federal court in Brooklyn that the attacks were dictated by a historical cycle of violence that had nothing to do with how the bank does business.