JEDDAH/CLAMART, France, 1 November 2004 — As Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat waited for results of tests conducted on him by French doctors, his senior aides have resumed contact with Israel to revive the US-backed road map for peace.
Senior Palestinian and Israeli leaders held separate meetings yesterday to plan a path forward in Arafat’s absence. Palestinian officials have been convening a series of top meetings in recent days to show that their institutions continue to function, while Israeli officials scrambled to plan for the possibility that the West Bank and Gaza could erupt into chaos if Arafat dies.
At the same time sources close to the Palestinian leadership said a bitter fight had broken over who should control the ailing leader’s fortune estimated to be between $4.2 billion and $6.5 billion.
Sources said Arafat has written a will transferring control of his assets to members of his wife’s family. Some of his aides, including former Premier Mahmoud Abbas who has stepped in as interim leader, however, believe the fortune belongs to the “beit al-mal” (public treasury), and should be transferred to the Palestinian Authority. The controversy started last week when Suha, Arafat’s wife, asked Muhammad Rashid, Arafat’s confidant and adviser, to prepare a list of the ailing leader’s fortune. According to Palestinian sources Rashid has said he would furnish the list only to the Palestinian Authority.
Identifying Arafat’s personal fortune and separating it from numerous secret bank accounts that he maintains in the name of the Palestine Liberation Orgaization and Al-Fatah is no easy task.
According to Jean-Claude Robard, a Swiss investment adviser, Arafat opened his first secret bank account in 1965 with a $50,000 check from the emir of Kuwait. Since then he has set up other accounts in Switzerland, Austria, Luxembourg and the Cayman Islands.
Arafat also owns a number of hotels and holiday resorts in Spain, Italy, France, Switzerland, and Austria. He is the main shareholder in two cellular telephone companies operating in Tunisia and Algeria.
Some of Arafat’s businesses are in partnership with Arab politicians, former officials and entrepreneurs, including Rifaat Assad, a brother of the late Syrian President Hafez Assad, and Barzan Al-Takriti, a half-brother of deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. Al-Takriti is now under arrest in Baghdad.
Palestinian Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath said yesterday that Yasser Arafat’s condition had improved markedly since Friday, when the Palestinian leader was rushed to a French hospital after being ill for two weeks.
Doctors were trying to determine whether Arafat has a viral infection or some form of cancer after ruling out leukemia as the cause of his health problems, aides said.
According to French sources, one possibility was that Arafat might have been poisoned. But Palestinian sources denied an American television report that Arafat may have been the victim of an assassination attempt, through slow poisoning, by Mossad, the Israeli secret service.
In Israel, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said yesterday that Arafat would not be allowed burial in Jerusalem. Arafat has said he wants to be buried at the Jerusalem holy site known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Haram As-Sharif, or Noble Sanctuary. But Sharon said that would not be allowed. “As long as I am prime minister, Arafat won’t be buried in Jerusalem,” he told a Cabinet meeting, according to participants.
Israel has marked a burial site for Arafat in the Jerusalem suburb of Abu Dis, security officials said.
Though hard-line ministers at the meeting asked Sharon to refuse to allow Arafat back into the West Bank, the premier said he was sticking by the commitment to allow Arafat to return from France after treatment.
