Who might have killed true Palestinian patriot?

YASSER Arafat’s demise in 2004 begged many questions. Firstly, the Percy Military Hospital in France, where he slipped away, initially declined to state the cause of death on the grounds his family hadn’t given its permission. Later, his doctors’ confusing and, in parts, incoherent medical report was leaked. Its finding was that the former Palestinian president had died of a massive heart attack. I know next to nothing about medical matters, but from the little I do know, his lingering symptoms — vomiting, diarrhea and stomach pain — together with irregularities in his blood platelets were hardly consistent with heart failure. Then, ‘coincidentally’, samples of the leader’s blood sent to Tunisia for testing mysteriously disappeared while the French hospital has apparently destroyed its samples of Arafat’s bodily fluids that could have greatly assisted forensic investigators.
At the time, I wondered why his wife Suha had refused to allow a biopsy on her husband’s liver and declined to give permission for an autopsy following his death. Similarly incomprehensible was her apparent willingness to hand over Arafat’s personal items and clothing — toothbrush, blood-stained cap, underwear and tracksuit — to Al Jazeera some eight years on for testing by the Institute of Radiation Physics in Lausanne, Switzerland where traces of Polonium-210 were found. This is the same radioactive isotope used to assassinate former KGB spy Alexander Litvinenko in 2006. But whereas he ingested a single lethal dose, there is speculation that Arafat might have been poisoned slowly over time to allay suspicions. Certainly, his first bout of vomiting wasn’t long after he enjoyed an evening meal.
Stranger still is Suha’s quest to have Arafat’s body exhumed from its mausoleum in Ramallah in light of her earlier objection to an autopsy, a demand the Palestinian National Authority has blessed provided it gets the green light from his close family. Although one should perhaps give Suha the benefit of the doubt. It’s possible that she believed an autopsy involving desecration of the corpse or the consequent delay of burial would have elicited wrath from Muslim clerics or she may have been concerned that there was truth in rumors that Arafat suffered from the AIDs virus that turned out to be false according to the medical report later issued.
For close members of Arafat’s family this latest revelation was no surprise; they had been consistent in their claims that he had been poisoned, claims that were mostly written off as wild conspiracy theories in Western newspapers. Yet, it now appears that his family is divided over the exhumation of his body, the nays led by his cousin Nasser Al Qedwah who has been vocal in his belief that Arafat was assassinated. He says the evidence from Switzerland, said to be inconclusive, is sufficient; he puts his reluctance down to Islamic precepts even though the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem has given the go-ahead.
I’m left to wonder why those who presumably loved him aren’t more enthusiastic about getting to the bottom of the mystery. Surely, they, more than anyone, should be spearheading demands for a thorough investigation to bring closure in the way the 9/11 and the Lockerbie families have done. If it were to be confirmed beyond a shadow of doubt that Polonium-210 was the cause of death then fingers would point at government agencies as the isotope can’t be cooked-up like Ricin in someone’s kitchen; it is only manufactured by certain world powers.
In that case, the likeliest suspects would be the United States (in particular, the Bush White House) or Israel which both treated Arafat, a Nobel Peace Prize recipient for participating in the Peace of the Brave, as a terrorist at worst or an obstacle to achieving their respective interests at best. Israeli Cabinet members regularly issued death threats to Arafat, including the current Defense Minister Ehud Barak who openly threatened him in the Jerusalem Post. Israel kept him imprisoned in his Ramallah compound that was bombed on more than one occasion.
George W. Bush made it clear that he wasn’t welcome in the White House and refused to shake his hand whenever they were in the same place at the same time. Those joined-at-the-hip allies knew that Arafat would never sell his people out. He would never accept to be their puppet or concede to unjust peace proposals that would deprive Palestinian refugees in the Diaspora of their right to return or result in a postage stamp-sized, non-contiguous demilitarized Palestine, which, according to the Palestine Papers released by Al Jazeera, can’t be said of his successor. If Arafat was dubbed the man who couldn’t say ‘yes’, then Mahmoud Abbas is the man who always said ‘yes’ (to the US and Israel) receiving nothing in return.
It would be interesting to learn what’s going on behind the scenes. Is the Palestinian Authority being leaned on to put a lid on the matter or is the Palestinian leadership itself concerned about the possible outcome of an investigation? After all, if Arafat did die from poisoning, whoever orchestrated it would have needed one or more Palestinian collaborators who had access to the president. For instance, a video circulating the Internet appears to show a Palestinian being held in Ketziot prison admitting that he had been recruited by the Mossad to infiltrate Arafat’s inner circle for the purposes of poisoning his food; of course, the authenticity of the video remains in doubt.
Also unauthenticated is a letter in Arabic, purportedly written by senior adviser to the Fatah leadership Mohammed Dahlan to the Israeli Defense Minister on July 13, 2003. Spotlighted on the Electronic Intifada website, the letter reads: “Be certain that Yasser Arafat’s final days are numbered, but allow us to finish him off our way, not yours. And be sure as well that…the promises I made in front of President Bush, I will give my life to keep.”
Arafat was no saint. He made mistakes, not least his siding with Saddam Hussein during Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990. But nobody can deny that he sacrificed much for the Palestinian cause eschewing personal luxuries and bravely putting his life on the line since he co-founded the Palestinian National Liberation Movement (Fatah) in 1959. He famously said “Peace is a one-way road. Let us together remove the obstacles facing us.” Sadly, like his partner in peace Yitzhak Rabin who was assassinated, someone out there may have considered Yasser Arafat’s olive branch that in later life replaced his gun as the biggest obstacle of all.

n This article is exclusive to Arab News.