Arafat poisoning may disrupt peace talks

Nine years after the presidential compound in Ramallah echoed with chaotic gunfire as the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was laid to rest, those who have always claimed his death was the result of Israeli poisoning will be grimly buoyed by the findings of Swiss scientists.

Speculation that Arafat’s sudden illness was the result of foul play by the legendary Israeli secret services took hold even before the Palestinian leader died in a hospital near Paris on November 11th, 2004. Israel has always categorically denied any involvement.

But the explosive conclusions of Swiss scientists who conducted tests on samples taken from Arafat’s exhumed corpse last November will reignite accusations against Israel and deepen the widespread conviction among Palestinians that a man they saw as a revolutionary hero was murdered. It is likely to worsen the already corrosive atmosphere of the faltering peace negotiations and fuel popular demands that the Palestinian leadership walk out.

Arafat’s health deteriorated rapidly in autumn 2004, after he had been a virtual prisoner in the presidential compound in Ramallah, known as the Muqata, for 2½years.

Israeli troops and tanks besieged the rubble of the shelled compound, in which 270 Palestinian leaders and fighters were holed up, controlling everything that went in – including food and water – and ensuring that no one came out.

After Arafat fell ill with vomiting, diarrhoea, stomach pains and fever, he was flown – with Israel’s consent – to a military hospital near Paris. He died there less than two weeks later. Arafat’s widow Suha refused to allow an autopsy at the time and French doctors determined the cause was a stroke triggered by a blood disorder.

In a radio interview given more than a year before Arafat’s death, the then deputy prime minister Ehud Olmert had said of the Palestinian leader: “Expulsion is certainly one of the options. Killing is also one of the options.”

The Israeli secret services have a long track record of both overt and covert assassinations of their enemies. However last year, Dov Weisglass, a senior aide to Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister at the time of Arafat’s death, insisted: “Israel did not have any hand in this.” Raanan Gissin, another Sharon aide, said Israel had “never touched a hair on his head”.

But last summer, the finger of blame was pointed again at Israel after al-Jazeera said tests conducted by a Swiss laboratory had found traces of the deadly polonium 210 on Arafat’s personal items, including underwear and a toothbrush handed over by his widow. The Palestinian Authority agreed to exhume the dead leader’s body to facilitate further tests by Swiss, French and Russian experts. In a six-hour pre-dawn operation last November, the mausoleum was broken open and samples were taken from the corpse.

Arafat was a man who divided the world: revered by Palestinians and their supporters, reviled by Israel and its allies. His portrait still hangs in most Palestinian homes. Nonetheless, the Palestinian people have inevitably moved on. Acts of violence, espoused by Arafat, are rare; instead, the Palestinian leadership has invested its hopes in diplomacy and negotiations.

Anti-Israel sentiment
The critical question is whether the Swiss scientists' conclusions will change anything. It is possible the disclosure of the results could trigger protests. But it is more likely that the main effect will be to deepen cynicism and further entrench anti-Israel sentiment in the West Bank and Gaza.

The findings do not prove Israel murdered Arafat.

French investigators, who launched an inquiry last year at the request of Suha Arafat, a French citizen, will have to make that case if they believe one exists.

Meanwhile, the international community will have little enthusiasm for anything that could disrupt the delicate peace process, which commands negligible support among the Palestinian public and is already stuck on the starting blocks.

– (Guardian service)