Smoking Gun

"This has confirmed all our doubts. It is scientifically proved that he didn't die a natural death and we have scientific proof that this man was killed."
Suha Arafat

Suha and her daughter (Photo: AFP)

"Yasser Arafat died of polonium poisoning. We found the smoking gun that caused his death. What we don't know is who was holding the gun at the time. The main problem is the time frame. If this was a murder that happened yesterday, you would have witnesses and cellphone records, emails, bank transfers. In a nine-year-old case that type of information will be hard to obtain."
David Barclay, British forensic scientist

"We want to know who poisoned him and how they did it and all the details of this crime. We want to know who implemented it and planned it. We want to try all those who were involved in it. Arafat was no ordinary president. He was a big symbol for the Palestinian people."
Ghassan Shaka'a, mayor Nablus, PLO executive committee member

And heaven knows, Palestinians are big on symbols. Their premier symbol whom they now mourn as an icon of Palestinian-Arab resistance to the occupation by former Palestinian-Jews-now-Israelis, earned his stripes as a murderer gifted in inciting the thugs that surrounded him to highjacking airplanes, bombing synagogues, abducting and killing Jews, and generally waging terror where it would be least expected; say, for example at the Olympics in Munich.

His physical presence was anything but imposing, but he did most certainly impose his agenda, his will, his authority and his malevolence as a leader of an aggrieved people delighting in their world-recognition as 'refugees', representing the only such group in perpetuity, thanks to especially ordained United Nations nursing and extraordinary welfare conditioning. His adoration within the UN another item of credit, where he dramatically released a dove while in that august assembly he carried a firearm.

The result of a peace conference brokered by the United States administration, where as a representative of the Palestinians he was offered all that was demanded to agree to a cessation of hostilities against the State of Israel, was a final rejection of east Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza and a limited right-of-return provision. Knowing his life to be endangered should he sign any agreement regardless of advantage, he chose an Intifada.

Which resulted in his isolation at his Ramallah headquarters, in a bunker, where he sheltered himself from any potential of reprisals either from his Palestinian enemies of whom there were ample, or from the IDF; hard to say which he feared most; in all likelihood the former. And in all likelihood it was the former who managed to end his life. Israel had helped him to form all the outlines of a civil community, had trained its police, only to have them turn the arms back on them.

The bunker was closely guarded and impermeable to entry by anyone unauthorized to do so. Clearly, if Mr. Arafat was fed a poisonous substance like polonium-210, not very much would have been required, and the opportunity to administer it would have been afforded by those closest around him. Scientists from the University Centre of Legal Medicine in Lausanne, Switzerland now assert with 83% confidence that the man was poisoned with polonium.

Their finding, they announced, "moderately supports" that it was this deadly poison that caused his death. There were suspicions at the time of his death, despite the official French medical report that he had died of a massive stroke with a blood condition known as disseminated intravascular coagulation, without knowing what led to the DIC; possibly infections and liver disease. Which is where the rumour of AIDS conceivably came into the picture.

At the time of his death his widow steadfastly refused an autopsy. She, among so many others, expressed the opinion that her husband had been given a noxiously deadly substance that caused his death, yet she refused an autopsy. Just as his life had benefited her by celebrity, worship and a style of living she swiftly became enamoured with, his death bestowed upon her the vast fortune that the man had amassed through his corrupt practise of sieving off international funding meant for Palestinians.

She denied ever having taken money illegitimately, that the wealth she was left with was quite legitimate, without evidently having to explain how a man of no means could ever have amassed a fortune other than by claiming for himself the generosity of the international community wishing to aid the Palestinian 'refugees' living in the inadequacy of United Nations' supplied housing, food, medicine, education, but not self-respect.