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REPORT: PLO leader Yasser Arafat was poisoned

Arab World Materials 7 November 2013 11:55 (UTC +04:00)
By Claude Salhani - Trend : He has more lives than a cat, his aides would say about Yasser Arafat, the historic leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization. He is said to have survived more than 40 attempts on his life, including a plane crash in the Libyan Desert, where he and those accompanying him were presumed dead.
REPORT: PLO leader Yasser Arafat was poisoned

By Claude Salhani - Trend : He has more lives than a cat, his aides would say about Yasser Arafat, the historic leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization. He is said to have survived more than 40 attempts on his life, including a plane crash in the Libyan Desert, where he and those accompanying him were presumed dead.

Many of his followers began to believe that "the old man," (el khtiar) as he was affectionately referred to, had a sixth sense, that he could smell danger approaching.

One of his closest aides recalls one event in Beirut during the Israeli invasion of 1982 when Arafat and some 20 of his lieutenants were in a meeting in the area close to the Arab University of Beirut, the neighborhood where most of the PLO groups had offices. Suddenly Arafat stood up and shouted for every one to leave the building immediately. No sooner had he emerged that Israeli war jets swooped down from the sky and leveled the building where just moments earlier Arafat and his closest advisers had been meeting.

In 1970 when the PLO fought a bloody civil war with Jordan and the Palestinian resistance was booted out of the Hashemite Kingdom, it is said that Arafat escaped disguised as a woman.

He escaped numerous attacks by Israeli and Arab foes. In 1973 Ehud Barak, the man who was to become Israeli prime minister some years later, led a commando team into Beirut and assassinated Kamal Nasser, Kamal Adwan and Abu Youssef, three Palestinian leaders close to Arafat. Arafat apparently had left the apartment where the three leaders were meeting moments before the Israeli hit team arrived.

In 1982 when the Israeli invasion and subsequent siege of the Lebanese capital forced Arafat and his entourage to leave Beirut for Tunis, it was reported that an Israeli army sniper positioned in one of the upper floors of the Lebanese electric company building near Beirut Port had Arafat in his cross hairs and could have taken him out, but was ordered by his superior officer to stand down. That superior officer later regretted his decision, that officer was Ariel Sharon. Arafat was under the protection of the Multinational Force, composed of US Marines, and French and Italian elite forces.

But in the end they finally got him. Who killed him? That we will probably never know.

Arafat was a man with many enemies. It could have been the Israelis, who became frustrated with Arafat dragging his heels over peace talks. Indeed, Arafat should have never accepted the role of Palestinian president. He was not a tactful politician. Arafat, an engineer by trade and schooling, was more of a street smart tactician who knew how to rally people around him and work the crowds. Once his PLO unit had made it to the occupied territories and he had set up shop in Ramallah, he should have resigned and taken a back seat, assuming the role of father of the nation. Instead, like several Arab leaders, he wanted to hold on to power, regardless of the consequences.

The end for Arafat was not pleasant. The Israelis kept him locked up in his offices in the presidential compound in Ramallah. He had a very unhealthy life style, working long hours, late into the night. Usually till 4 or 5.am. Although he was not a smoker he was surrounded by people who constantly smoked and the effect on his lungs were just as negative.

It could have been Hamas, the Palestinian religious organization, with whom Arafat was at odds. Or it could have been any of a plethora of individuals, organizations or individuals who wanted him dead.

Unable to blow him up, unable to shoot him, they finally poisoned him with radioactive polonium, his wife Suha said, speaking from her home in Paris.

"Suha Arafat said the evidence in the report suggested that her then healthy 75-year-old husband, who died in 2004 four weeks after he first fell ill following a meal, was almost certainly murdered by poisoning. She told al-Jazeera: "This is the crime of the century."

Claude Salhani is a senior editor of English service of Trend Agency in Baku, Azerbaijan.

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