As if there were not enough mysteries surrounding Yasser Arafat, a new row has just broken over where he was born. The French authorities, refusing to mention the cause of Arafat’s death on his death certificate, took extra care to mention Jerusalem — and not Cairo — as his place of birth. This has caused some consternation in Egypt where a copy of Arafat’s birth certificate is circulating, showing that the happy event occurred in Cairo. The controversy over where Arafat was born is neither here nor there. In any case there are more mysteries in Arafat’s life than in any work of pulp fiction.
What is the issue here is the culture of secrecy that continues to do much harm to the Palestinians as well as to other Arab peoples. The net effect of that culture is that people will always think that things are much worse than they actually are and that their leaders are hiding things, even when they are not.
Take the issue of the cause of Arafat’s death. The French say his family were informed and they asked that the cause of death not be mentioned on the death certificate. Arafat’s family members deny this, in effect branding the French government, which owns and controls the hospital where Arafat died, of being liars. So much for gratitude. As things stand, we are unlikely ever to know the exact cause of Arafat’s death. In the meantime, conspiracy theories are having a field day, with some of Arafat’s closest aides, including Leila Shahid, Palestinian ambassador in Paris, running rumor mills of their own. But when all is said and done, one could even swallow the mystery about the cause of Arafat’s death.
What one cannot swallow are the shady deals that are reportedly under way with regard to vast sums of money that the late leader controlled in the name of the Palestinian people. Arafat often boasted of his business acumen and he insisted on remaining the chief executive of at least two of his companies. To pretend, however, that his fortune was the fruit of his genius in business would require a good deal of cheek, to say the least. Arafat may have been a Bill Gates in terms of business genius but it is unlikely that he could have built a business empire while trying to liberate Palestine part-time. Thus, morally if not legally perhaps, whatever fortune he may have amassed belongs to the Palestinian people. And God knows that the Palestinians, having suffered four more years of economic ruin inflicted by the intifada and Israeli repression, cannot afford to be robbed by their dead leader. To be sure, Arafat is not the only world leader to be regarded as a kleptocrat. Mobutu and Ferdinand Marcos also amassed vast personal fortunes that took years to track down and repatriate, if only in part.
The new Palestinian leadership needs to make a genuinely fresh start. It needs to foster a culture of transparency in which the public treasury is not regarded as part of the leader’s personal fortune. The leadership should publish details of whatever deal it may have made with Arafat’s family and keep the public informed about whatever investigation it has ordered into the late leader’s financial dealings.
