Was Yasser Arafat killed by polonium poisoning?

[Karee 4,191]

JERUSALEM — On the evening of Oct. 12, 2004, Yasser Arafat, the flamboyant, autocratic and inscrutable chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, sat down for dinner at his besieged compound in Ramallah in the West Bank. And so began one of the great medical mysteries in the modern Middle East.

A month later, Arafat was dead in a French hospital.

By natural causes? Or was it a murder most foul? Theories have swirled in the past nine years that Arafat was assassinated, perhaps poisoned — by rivals, by his inner circle, by Israeli agents.

On Wednesday, a final 108-page report by a team of Swiss experts revealed that tests on Arafat’s exhumed remains and possessions — a shaft of his hair, a urine stain on his underwear, a woolen cap — “moderately support the proposition that the death was the consequence of poisoning with polonium-­210,” a highly radioactive substance 250,000 times as toxic as cyanide.

“This has confirmed all our doubts,” Arafat’s widow, Suha, told the Reuters news agency. “It is scientifically proved that he didn’t die a natural death, and we have scientific proof that this man was killed.”

Suha Arafat, speaking in Paris, called her husband’s death “a real crime, a political assassination.”

She did not name any suspects, but if her husband truly was killed, there would be many. He had myriad enemies — not least the Israeli government.

Arafat spent his life battling the Israelis, first as a guerilla fighter and later as a statesman. For decades, he served as leader of the Fatah movement and the face of the PLO, always in his olive green uniform, patchy grey beard and checkered scarf.

His critics called him a terrorist and a crook, and they accused him of amassing a personal fortune and ultimately failing the Palestinian cause. His supporters revere him as a kind of founding father, and his portrait hangs on the wall of every Palestinian Authority functionary in the West Bank.

Before his death in 2004 — more than a decade after he signed the Oslo Accords, which offered a still-unfulfilled promise of peace — Arafat was confined to his Ramallah compound by the Israeli military. The second intifada, or uprising, was raging in Israel and the occupied territories as a wave of Palestinian suicide bombers was met with a fierce Israeli crackdown.

Israeli officials have repeatedly denied that their government had anything to do with Arafat’s death.

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor told the Jerusalem Post on Wednesday that the Swiss findings were “more soap opera than science,” calling them part of the ongoing battle between Arafat’s widow and the Palestinian Authority.

Suha Arafat, a secretary and interpreter who in 1990 married the longtime bachelor who was more than twice her age, has had a strained relationship with the Palestinian leadership. She has been accused of living in luxury, siphoning off Arafat’s millions. She resides in Paris, not in the Palestinian territories, and has been quoted as saying that she tried to divorce Arafat “a hundred times.”

Source:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/was-yasser-arafat-killed-by-polonium-poisoning/2013/11/06/bada9e82-472c-11e3-95a9-3f15b5618ba8_story.html

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

At the time of Arafat's death in 2004, French doctors said the cause was undetermined. An autopsy was not conducted.

Of course nobody would have even thought to test for polonium at that time... the Litvenenko case didn't happen until 2 years later.

Polonium is a rare substance... only people with access to a nuclear reactor can get it. (By the way, experts say the polonium detected in Arafat's case could be traced to the nuclear reactor it came from - but they would need samples from the reactor to do the match.)

Keep in mind that polonium loses 50 % of its radioactivity every four months, so the traces in Arafat’s body and personal effects would have become untraceable in a few more years. Looks like someone knew that time was running out.

Anyway, Ariel Sharon admitted that Israel had repeatedly tried to assassinate Arafat:

Sharon: He is a person that every single government of Israel tried physically to get rid of.

Lurie: Mossad tried to kill Arafat?

Sharon: I won’t go into details on who tried to kill him–but I can tell you with absolute certainty that all the governments of Israel tried to get rid of him. There was not one Israeli government that did not see it as a main objective of hers.

http://www.meforum.org/255/ariel-sharon-rabin-and-peres-are-taking-the-path

And remember the disgusting smears that Zionists tried to push after Arafat's death - gleefully claiming that he had died of AIDS, and because of a supposed predilection for young boys. The depths of depravity...

Edited November 9, 2013 by Falastin_Qalbi

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

I took these in September 2003:

Everyone was commenting at the time on how pale he looked...

[lostinblue 1,989]

The question to ask is where are the billions of dollars that arafat stole from his people .... even today they live in poverty? Such a great man.

[Karee 4,191]

The question to ask is where are the billions of dollars that arafat stole from his people .... even today they live in poverty? Such a great man.

Are you suggesting that Israel killed him because he was stealing money from the Palestinian people? That would be kinda hypocritical on the part of Israel.

Palestinian Authority loses $300m in trade taxes a year to Israel

UN report defines as 'fiscal leakages' the customs, purchase and value-added taxes destined to the PA but retained by Israel

• Mark Tran
• theguardian.com, Tuesday 3 September 2013 13.00 EDT

The estimated cost to the Palestinian Authority of the $300m leaked annually to Israel is equivalent to 17% of total tax revenue. Photograph: Khalil Hamra/AP

The Palestinian Authority is losing about $300m (£193m) a year in "leakage" of customs, purchase and value-added taxes which are not transferred to the Palestinian treasury by Israel, according to preliminary UN estimates (pdf).

The UN conference on trade and development (Unctad) defines fiscal leakage as Palestinian fiscal revenue destined for the PA but retained by Israel instead. Palestinian trade taxes consist of purchase tax and VAT, levied on all imports, whether they originate from Israel or elsewhere, as well as additional excise tax and custom duties on imports from sources other than Israel.

Mahmoud el-Khafif, co-author of the preliminary report, said initial figures were higher but were revised when challenged by the Bank of Israel. "These are very conservative estimates," he said emphasising that this fiscal loss is from two sources only. "We focused on leakages from indirect imports – goods produced in a third country, imported to Israel and sold on to Palestine. The second leakage is from smuggling."

The report says the losses do not include the revenue leakages from many other sources, including taxes levied by Israel on incomes of Palestinians working in Israel and settlements; revenue loss from under-pricing imported goods in invoices due to lack of Palestinian control over borders and access to proper trade data; revenue loss related to lack of control over land and natural resources; financial resources loss related to goods and services imported through the Palestinian public sector (petroleum, energy, and water); and fiscal loss as a result of the smaller tax base caused by the destruction of the productive base and loss of natural resources to occupation.

According to the protocol on economic relations, or Paris protocol, signed in 1994 by Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation, any product wholly produced in Israel or has more than 40% of Israeli value added is exempt from customs duties, but subject to VAT and purchase tax.

Unctad, however, says not all Palestinian imports from Israel are goods produced in Israel or meet the rule of origin. It also says a significant portion of these imports are produced in a third country. These are cleared as Israeli imports before being sold in the occupied Palestinian territory as if they had been produced in Israel.

Customs revenue from these indirect imports is collected by the Israeli authorities but not transferred to the PA, as they are not labelled as being destined for the occupied Palestinian authority and are imported by Israeli importers and resold to Palestinian consumers.

Unctad estimates that about $115m of revenue from direct and indirect imports from Israel were not transferred to the PA in 2010 and 2011.

Smuggling is another source of significant fiscal revenue loss. Where the smuggled goods are produced in Israel, the PA loses VAT and purchase tax revenue.

Where goods are produced in a third country, tariff revenue is also leaked along with VAT and purchase tax revenue. By adding up the leakage from total imports and smuggling from Israel, Unctad estimates the total as more than $300m a year.

The estimated costs to the PA of the $300m leaked annually to Israel is equivalent to 17% of total tax revenue, in addition to 4% in lost GDP and about 10,000 jobs a year. If the leakage could be curtailed, and the money transferred from the Israeli treasury to the Palestinian treasury, the resulting increase in revenue would help to expand economic growth and employment, says Unctad. The gross domestic product of the occupied Palestinian territory would therefore increase by 4% and employment would increase by 10,000 jobs per year, the report contends.

Unctad says foreign aid has masked the impact of the measures imposed by Israel. However, with the decline of such support and the subsequent global economic crisis, the severe impact of the occupation on Palestinians is becoming clearer. The economic impact was most pronounced in Gaza, where growth fell from 21% in 2011 to 6.6% in 2012. The decline is concentrated in Gaza's agricultural and fishing sector, which has been directly affected by Israeli military action in Gaza in last November.

In March, Israel announced it would resume the regular transfer of about $100m a month to the PA after withholding the tax revenues it collects on behalf of the Palestinians as a punitive measure following last November's statehood recognition at the UN. The move came before the resumption of peace negotiations last month.

The report recommends changes to the Paris protocol, so that it is a more balanced framework "consistent with Palestinian sovereignty needs for economic, fiscal and policy independence". The report also recommends that the PA has full access to all data related to imports from or via Israel when the final destination of goods is the occupied Palestinian territory. It also suggests the abolition of existing time restrictions, that prevent the PA from claiming due revenue.

Source:

http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2013/sep/03/palestine-loses-300m-trade-taxes-israel

[Pooky 3,839]

Are you suggesting that Israel killed him because he was stealing money from the Palestinian people? That would be kinda hypocritical on the part of Israel.

LiB didn't mention Israel, just wanted to know where this iconic Palestinian leader stashed the millions of dollars he embezzled from his people. Edited November 10, 2013 by Pooky

[Karee 4,191]

LiB didn't mention Israel, just wanted to know where this iconic Palestinian leader stashed the millions of dollars he embezzled from his people.

Ohh ok. Thanks for confirming that his post had zero to do with the original post. Much appreciated.

[Pooky 3,839]

Ohh ok. Thanks for confirming that his post had zero to do with the original post. Much appreciated.

Not so fast.

The Israelis may be the obvious culprits, but there are a fair few out there who believe that it could be case of "follow the money". His widow, for instance, does not act like someone with overly clean hands in all this. Whether or not this avenue, too, involves the Israelis, is a good question.

What intrigues me is that whoever perpetrated this, if indeed Polonium poisoning is the cause of death, had to have had someone on the inside, with access to Arafat, to administer the poison. Could that be the Israelis?

[spookyturtle 9,466]

What intrigues me is that whoever perpetrated this, if indeed Polonium poisoning is the cause of death, had to have had someone on the inside, with access to Arafat, to administer the poison. Could that be the Israelis?

Maybe he secretly was an Israeli?

[Pooky 3,839]

Maybe he secretly was an Israeli?

Probably not.

[Ban Hammer 13,594]

Maybe he secretly was an Israeli?

as his wife wound up with the money, maybe it was her

[lostinblue 1,989]

Reports are billions of Dollars..........Children dying of poverty while the leaders family party. Someone perhaps got pissed off within the PA I think........ then blame the usual suspects....If he would have saved one child's life...could have been a great leader. It was Party time corruption and greed. The hospitals that could have been built with that money Billions of dollars they report. Lifted the whole area out of poverty IF he had only shaken a hand on the White House lawn. agreed to peace. Left generations to live in squalor while HIS..lived like KINGS....but lets blame the Jews...even with this story.

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

This apocryphal story about Arafat supposedly embezzling millions of dollars has been circulated endlessly.

However, according to the International Money Fund’s final audit, “In total, the Fund estimates, the amounts diverted from the official budget from 1995 until 2000, when the diversions stopped, may have exceeded $898m. IMF officials say $799m was returned to the PA, with the difference accounted for by investment losses… the bulk of the money diverted from the budget - including all the Swiss bank accounts - was either given back or invested in companies that became part of the PIF, an assertion backed by the IMF.”

Shrewd. Clever. Maybe even devious. But it isn't theft. Arafat knew that bank funds, tax revenues and other "transparent" funds can be easily frozen or blocked, or subject to external control. Israel and the US continually use these tactics on any Palestinian funds they can get to, in order to pressure the PA to advance US/Israeli interests.

Arafat's methods kept the money under his own control, but there is no evidence that he embezzled anything.

The "transparent" Abbas, Fayyad etc are a pack of thieves, though.

[spookyturtle 9,466]

as his wife wound up with the money, maybe it was her

That's certainly possible. You just know that somewhere along the line a woman is blame.

[Karee 4,191]

That's certainly possible. You just know that somewhere along the line a woman is blame.

Funny how that works.