Ayoon wa Azan (Memories of "Mister Palestine")

Yasser Arafat was poisoned to death. He was poisoned by Mossad agents, at the order of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, while he was under siege in the Muqataa building in Ramallah. This is what I thought when the news emerged that "Mister Palestine" was sick and suffering from vomiting and diarrhea; I continued to think this when Abu Ammar died in a French military hospital on 11 November 2004. I believe that this is the opinion of the majority of Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims. I knew Arafat from 1967 until his death. I saw him at the Hussein and Wahdat camps in Jordan, and had a meal with him and the camp bodyguards in the darkness. I did not know how to eat the dish mansaf by hand, so I was brought a rusty spoon. Later on, we had the finest Swiss cuisine, and I saw him at the fanciest hotels in the west. For me, Arafat never changed. In Beirut he had a bedroom at his headquarters in Fakhani, where I sat with him time after time. It had only a single military cot, which could be folded in half, along with a chair and a small closet, and Arafat said that his bedroom in the Muqataa was similar. All of the memories I am relating about Abu Ammar were recorded at the time. I remember that Suha Tawil, Arafat's wife, complained that their home in Gaza was an office, with Arafat's aides entering as they pleased. She was obliged to never leave the bedroom unless she was dressed to go out, so that she would not surprise anyone on the stairs, in the living room or kitchen. I remained in contact with the Palestinian president when he was under siege for two years in the Muqataa and wrote about some of those discussions in this column. I said to him once that I was calling to see how he was, and he said he wanted to do the same. I tried to provoke him by saying I was going to the south of France for summer holiday, but he laughed and said, "Congratulations." Another time, I called him and he exploded in anger. He said that the blockade had affected him. "What is this?" he said. "Aren't I an Arab president, like the others? How do they accept letting me be treated like this?" The last time I saw him and sat wit him was in Davos in 2001, during the Global Economic Forum. During a special dinner for the Middle East, we sat at the table, and Kenneth Lay, the head of Enron, and his wife, were between us, while on the other side was Gebran Tueni. I introduced him to the president and he embraced him warmly. Arafat asked him to say hello to his father, Ghassan Tueni. He told all of us that Ghassan Tueni had helped the Palestinians and their cause and always defended it, and had total respect and admiration for him. God rest Abu Ammar, Ghassan Tueni, and Gebran Tueni, and Lay, who died during his firm Enron's bankruptcy crisis. One day in London, in a wing of the Claredge Hotel, we sang Happy Birthday for our friend Afif Safieh, Palestine's envoy to Britain at the time. We were joined by employees from the British Foreign Ministry, who were visiting Arafat. Suha left her room at the sound of the singing and looked at us, smiling, then returned to her room. Suha has asked for a medical investigation into information that Arafat was poisoned, after Al-Jazeera said a Swiss medical lab had found traces of deadly radioactive material in Abu Ammar's clothes and eyebrows, namely polonium 210. The lab asked for a speedy investigation because the material may disintegrate. Thus, French experts and investigators will arrive in the coming weeks and exhume Arafat's body in the Muqataa, with the agreement of the Palestinian Authority and Arafat's family. It will be tested, to ascertain whether it was poison, or another reason. I note that Ehud Barak, a terrorist like Sharon, said when Arafat was under siege that expulsion was an option, and that killing him was another. We know that the Israelis were looking for any way to enter the Muqataa, including food, and the poisoning must have happened at that time. They are terrorists who commit terrorist crimes in Palestine and around the entire world, and I hope they get what they deserve. Sharon the terrorist, from Gaza and Sinai to Lebanon and everywhere else, has been in a coma since 4 January 2006, and is neither alive nor dead, but will be headed to hell. That is the destiny of all of them, and an independent Palestine will be established, some day. --- The views expressed by the author do not necessarily represent or reflect the editorial policy of Arabstoday.