Tag Archives: yasser arafat

| Rare Video: Mandela Speaking on Palestine [Extracts]

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Rare Video: Mandela Speaking on Palestine [Extracts] ~ BDS South Africa.

REFERENCES MADE BY NELSON MANDELA

PLO: The Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) was created in 1964 with the purpose of advancing the struggle for Palestinian self determination. The PLO is recognised as the “sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people” by over 100 countries with which it holds diplomatic relations. Like South Africa’s (now ruling ANC) the PLO was considered by the United States and Israel to be a terrorist organisation until 1991. In 1993 Israel officially recognised the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people.

YASSER ARAFAT: Late leader of the Palestinian people as well as chairman of the PLO.

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ABOUT THE VIDEO
– 1990 Town Hall Meeting with Nelson Mandela on Palestine, Cuba and other issues

The video consists of extracts from a 1990 town hall meeting, held in New York and chaired by Ted Koppel of ABC Networks. The meeting formed part Nelson Mandela’s first visit to the USA immediately following his release after 27 years in prison.

Much of the meeting focused on Nelson Mandela’s advocating of sanctions against Apartheid South Africa, his support for the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) as well as his close friendship with Yasser Arafat (of Palestine) and Fidel Castro (of Cuba).

This meeting took place in 1990, long before the world had embraced Nelson Mandela or the ANC. However, even then, Mandela stood firm and resolute on his principles and organisation’s policies even though it could have “hurt” his and the ANC’s “image”, for example his support for the Palestinian and Cuban people.

Nelson Mandela supported the Palestinian struggle when it was unfashionable and unpopular, he was a true leader. Hamba Khale Tata…

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| Pro-Palestine Mandela’s mixed legacy for the Middle East!

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Mandela’s mixed legacy for the Middle East ~ Kevin Connolly, BBC Middle East correspondent, Jerusalem.

We may never see another life like Nelson Mandela’s; and so there may never be a death quite like his either.

The man who repaid persecution with patience and racism with reconciliation came to be seen as a kind of embodiment of our noblest instincts for making peace.

He chose the difficult path of forgiveness and togetherness when he could have been forgiven for choosing the way of bitterness and vengeance.

So its not surprising that in many places of division rival sides scramble to place their ties with Mandela in the best possible light and to claim the legitimacy that confers.

Nowhere more, of course, than in the Middle East.
Yasser Arafat and Nelson Mandela (Cairo, 1993)

There was a genuine personal warmth between Arafat and Mandela, according to a former Palestinian official

The truth is that Mr Mandela did not embroil himself much in the conflicts of others – perhaps naturally wary of diluting his enormous moral authority by spreading himself too thinly around the world’s areas of conflict.

The Middle East is one area though where we know quite a bit about Mr Mandela’s connections and his thoughts and feelings.

Mutual admiration

The Palestinians have the easiest case to make in claiming Mr Mandela’s blessing for their cause.

During his long years in jail as an ANC prisoner he was embraced by the PLO leadership as a fellow-fighter in a kind of global family of liberation movements.

Muammar Gaddafi of Libya and Cuba’s Fidel Castro also provided political and material support during the ANC’s long years in the wilderness.

Mandela and Ehud Barak (Oct 1999)Mandela visited Israel but was critical of its policies towards the Palestinians

Mr Mandela never forgot it either, even when the political winds changed and he was a global superstar while some of his old allies found themselves on the losing side of history.

When Yasser Arafat died he called him “an icon in the proper sense of the word”.

He also said simply: “Yasser Arafat was one of the outstanding freedom fighters of his generation… It is with great sadness that one notes that his and his people’s dream of a Palestinian State had not been realised.”

The former foreign minister of the Palestinian Authority Nabil Shaath, who came to know Nelson Mandela personally, said there was a genuine personal warmth between Arafat and Mandela that underlined the political link between them.

And he said Palestinians had much to learn from the ANC about maintaining the momentum of a global campaign through long years of struggle.

He told the BBC: “I think they waged the world’s best-ever campaign [to end apartheid] and there’s a lot to learn from that, as well as the lesson of reconciliation.”

Advice to Israel

At a moment when anyone with a claim to a share in the Mandela legacy is proud to make that connection, Israel has a painfully difficult case to make.

It was a close, if secretive, ally and arms supplier apartheid South Africa and there is a good case to be made that Israeli support helped the all-white regime in Pretoria to last longer than it otherwise might have.


“I owe a debt of honour to the Jews even if I have sometimes made restrained remarks about Israel” ~ Nelson Mandela

There have been stories – which are difficult to substantiate definitively – that the co-operation extended into Israel sharing nuclear weapons technology.

Mr Mandela observed sharply that when he was finally released from prison he received invitations to visit “from almost every country in the world, except Israel”.

When Israel did begin issuing invitations (as many as four in the course of the 1990s) Mr Mandela was in no hurry to accept.

And its no coincidence that when he did come in 1999 it was at a moment when the then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak seemed close to a peace deal with the Palestinians – Mr Mandela must have hoped his presence might give some kind of final push.

It didn’t as it turned out but Mr Mandela did spell out his attitude to the core of the problem when he went to the Israeli Foreign Ministry.

He was quoted as saying: “Talk of peace will remain hollow if Israel continues to occupy Arab territories… I understand completely well why Israel occupies these lands. There was a war. But if there is going to be peace, there must be complete withdrawal from all of these areas.”

‘New page’

There was no doubt that Israel’s ties to the ugly apartheid regime left an impression on Mr Mandela but the Israeli ambassador to South Africa Alon Liel said a peace deal with the Palestinians could have changed things.

He told us: “[Nelson Mandela] was furious about the co-operation and said ‘we will never forget it’, but he said if you will change your attitude towards the Palestinians we will open a new page with Israel.”

And Mr Mandela knew how to balance the personal with the political.

There was no doubt his heart lay with the Palestinians as a people but he remembered fondly the many individual members of South Africa’s Jewish community who helped him in his hard early years.

There was the man who gave him his first job as a lawyer as well as Arthur Goldreich, the white Jewish ANC activist who went undercover as a farmer to hide Mr Mandela when he was on the run at huge personal risk.

As Mandela himself put it: “I owe a debt of honour to the Jews even if I have sometimes made restrained remarks about Israel.”

At the time of his passing everyone will do what they can to claim something of his legacy – the Palestinians much more plausibly than the Israelis.

But the outsider is left to reflect that the real tragedy is that this conflict is yet to create its own Mandela with a moral personality so powerful that it might become a catalyst for lasting change.

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MAN FREE

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| Pirate Israel’s gains from the death of Arafat cannot be ignored!

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Israel’s gains from the death of Arafat cannot be ignored ~

Jonathan Cook, The National, Abu Dhabi.

It seems there are still plenty of parties who would prefer that the death of the long-time Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat continues to be treated as a mystery rather than as an assassination.

It is hard, however, to avoid drawing the logical conclusion from the finding last week by Swiss scientists that the Palestinian leader’s body contained high levels of a radioactive isotope, polonium-210. An inconclusive and much more limited study by a Russian team published shortly immediately after the Swiss announcement also suggests Arafat died from poisoning.

It is time to state the obvious: Arafat was killed. And suspicion falls squarely on Israel.

Israel alone had the means, track record, stated intention and motive. Without Israel’s fingerprints on the murder weapon, it may be impossible to secure a conviction in a court of law, but there should be evidence enough to convict Israel in the court of world opinion.

Israel had access to polonium from its nuclear reactor in Dimona, and has a long record of carrying out political assassinations, some ostentatious and others covert, often using hard-to-trace chemical agents. There is also plenty of evidence that Israel wanted Arafat “removed”. In January 2002, Shaul Mofaz, Israel’s military chief of staff, was caught on a microphone whispering to Israel’s then prime minister, Ariel Sharon, about Arafat: “We have to get rid of him.”

With the Palestinian leader holed up for more than two years in his battered compound in Ramallah, surrounded by Israeli tanks, the debate in the Israel government centred on whether he should be exiled or killed.

In September 2003, the cabinet even issued a warning that Israel would “remove this obstacle in a manner, and at a time, of its choosing”. The then-deputy prime minister, Ehud Olmert, clarified that killing Arafat was “one of the options”.

What stayed Israel’s hand – and fuelled its equivocal tone – was Washington’s adamant opposition. After these threats, Colin Powell, the US former secretary of state, warned that a move against Arafat would trigger “rage throughout the Arab world”.

By April 2004, however, Mr Sharon declared he was no longer obligated by his earlier commitment to George Bush not to “harm Arafat physically”. “I am released from that pledge,” he said. The White House too indicated a weakening of its stance: an unnamed spokesman responded feebly that the US “opposed any such action”.

So what about motive? How did Israel gain from “removing” Arafat? To understand Israel’s thinking, one needs to return to another debate raging at that time, among Palestinians.

The Palestinian leadership was split into two camps, centred on Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas, then Arafat’s heir apparent. The pair had starkly divergent strategies for dealing with Israel.

In Arafat’s view, Israel had reneged on commitments it made in the Oslo accords. He was therefore loath to invest exclusively in the peace process. He wanted a twin strategy: keeping open channels for talks while maintaining the option of armed resistance to pressure Israel. For this reason, he kept a tight personal grip on the Palestinian security forces.

Mr Abbas, on the other hand, believed that armed resistance was a gift to Israel, delegitimising the Palestinian struggle. He wanted to focus exclusively on negotiations and state-building, hoping to exert indirect pressure on Israel by proving to the international community that the Palestinians could be trusted with statehood. His priority was cooperating closely with the US and Israel in security matters.

Israel and the US strongly preferred Mr Abbas’s approach, even forcing Arafat for a time to reduce his own influence by appointing Mr Abbas to a newly created post of prime minister.

Israel’s primary concern was that, however much of a prisoner they made Arafat, he would remain a unifying figure for Palestinians. By refusing to renounce armed struggle, Arafat managed to contain – if only just – the mounting tensions between his own Fatah movement and its chief rival, Hamas.

With Arafat gone, and the conciliatory Mr Abbas installed in his place, those tensions erupted violently into the open – as Israel surely knew they would. That culminated in a split that tore apart the Palestinian national movement and led to a territorial schism between the Fatah-controlled West Bank and Hamas-ruled Gaza.

In Israel’s oft-used terminology, Arafat was the head of the “infrastructure of terror”. But Israel’s preference for Mr Abbas derived not from respect for him or from a belief that he could persuade Palestinians to accept a peace deal. Mr Sharon famously declared that Mr Abbas was no more impressive than a “plucked chicken”.

Israel’s interests in killing Arafat were evident after his death. Not only did the Palestinian national movement collapse, but the Palestinian leadership got drawn back into a series of futile peace talks, leaving Israel clear to concentrate on land grabs and settlement building. Contemplating the matter of whether Israel benefited from the loss of Arafat, Palestinian analyst Mouin Rabbani observed: “Hasn’t Abu Mazen’s [Abbas] exemplary commitment to Oslo over the years, and maintenance of security cooperation with Israel through thick and thin, already settled this question?”

Mr Abbas’ strategy may be facing its ultimate test now, as the Palestinian negotiating team once again tries to coax out of Israel the barest concessions on statehood at the risk of being blamed for the talks’ inevitable failure. The effort already looks deeply misguided.

While the negotiations have secured for the Palestinians only a handful of ageing political prisoners, Israel has so far announced in return a massive expansion of the settlements and the threatened eviction of some 15,000 Palestinians from their homes in East Jerusalem.

It is doubtless a trade-off Arafat would have rued.

Jonathan Cook is an independent journalist based in Nazareth

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| Murder, mystery, mayhem: Arafat’s Death – There’s really no mystery!

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Arafat’s Death – There’s really no mystery ~ Alan Hart.

Yasser Arafat

 

For once Israel is telling a part of the truth. It was impossible for any of its own (Israeli-Jewish) agents to get into the rubble of Arafat’s compound to administer the poison that killed him. But they didn’t need direct access. Israel’s role was to provide the radioactive polonium for one of its collaborators in Fatah’s leadership.

 

I was convinced that Arafat was as good as dead before he died. What I mean is this.

I was watching live on television as Israel prepared to announce that it was going allow Arafat to leave by helicopter for Jordan and then on to a military hospital in Paris. Up to this moment Israel’s position was that if ever Arafat left Israel-Palestine, he would not be allowed to return.

The announcement that Israel was facilitating his departure was made by government spokesman Ranaan Gissin. One member of the assembled press corps asked him a question. “Will you allow Arafat to return?”

Gissin, who normally had to struggle to control the anger in his anti-Palestinian rhetoric and was often close to foaming at the mouth, responded with a big, warm and obviously false smile. Then he said: “Of course we’ll allow him to return. He’s the president of Palestine.”

I turned to my wife and said: “Gissin is only saying that because he and his masters know that Arafat will be coming back in a coffin.”

As to who the actual assassin was, there’s no mystery about that either as far as many Palestinians are concerned.

Here is a clue.

He is the man who, with American endorsement and Israeli military back-up as necessary, was going to lead Fatah’s security forces in what he thought would be a short, sharp war to destroy Hamas in the Gaza Strip. It didn’t happen because Hamas got wind of the impending attack and launched an Israeli-like pre-emptive strike against Fatah’s forces and drove them out of the strip.

He is also the man who, today, is plotting and scheming to replace Abbas as Fatah’s leader and “President” of Palestine.

My own view is that Abbas should not be replaced by anybody and that the discredited, corrupt and collaborator PA should be dissolved in order to hand back to Israel complete responsibility for its occupation. That might make it less than a mission impossible for Israel to be called and held to account for its crimes.

FOOTNOTE

On other and current matters…  I have reached the stage where I have to turn the sound down to off when Netanyahu and his spokesman Mark Regev are talking about Iran. I can’t take any more of their propaganda nonsense. In Regev’s case his body language suggests to me that he is inwardly uncomfortable with having to speak such rubbish.

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Zio Mafia

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| Yes… Arafat was poisoned and Israel killed him, but what can we do?

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Yes… Arafat was poisoned and Israel killed him, but what can we do? ~ Abdel Bari Atwan, MEMO.

There are three countries in the world that possess the radioactive polonium used to assassinate the Palestinian president Yasser Arafat; the United States, Russia and Israel. The two superpowers had no direct benefit from committing this war crime. So, fingers are now pointed at Israel, the country that has specialised in carrying out assassination operations against Arabs, Palestinians and international envoys over the past 60 years, since the beginning of the occupation of Palestine.

Ariel Sharon, the former Israeli Prime Minister who is lying comatose in hospital, had made several open threats to assassinate the Palestinian president. He had refused to surrender at the Camp David retreat in 2000 and abandon occupied Jerusalem and full sovereignty over it, as well as sparking the armed Intifada against the occupation, anticipating and waiting for his martyrdom.

President Arafat took all the necessary measures, within the limits of his basic capabilities, to thwart the attempts on his life while confined in his compound. He had no water, electricity, or official Arab visitors other than those who were mediating for him to go into exile (including Omar Suleiman), in addition to Arab and foreign solidarity delegations.

Arafat put up iron bars on the roof of his compound to prevent helicopters from landing and capturing him and locked his refrigerator that operated on a small electric current generated by a small motor; he was the only one with the keys. This refrigerator contained canned food, which was the only thing he ate out of fear of being poisoned. He also kept a gas mask and his small automatic gun near his bed in case gas bombs were thrown to kill him and in order to defend himself until he was martyred.

The only thing he had not taken into account was being poisoned by radioactive polonium and its lethal radiation. This type of poison was not discovered until November 2006 when it was used to kill Russian agent Alexander Litvinenko in a London hotel. It is hard to detect and it kills the victim a few days after being poisoned, leaving no trace.

We did not need a Swiss lab to confirm that President Arafat was poisoned. The report by Percy Military Hospital near Paris, his final stop, confirmed that he had been poisoned but the type of poison was unknown.

President Arafat himself realised during his final days in Ramallah that the Israelis had been able to poison him, and his farewell to his supporters, after arriving at Amman International Airport in a helicopter, where, he was not greeted by any senior Jordanian officials, was a farewell of a man who knew very well that he would not be back alive.

The last time I contacted him by telephone, just a few weeks before his death, he was the model of steadfastness, unafraid of death and reiterating his pride to belong to a powerful people. We all lent on him, even while he was confined by the Arabs and Israelis, to draw energy, strength and a boost in morale. He told me that in distress he had called the Arab leaders, but none of them had bothered to take his call.

Now the question is, what role the Palestinian Authority will play, what will their next move be and why have they remained silent all these years and not even tried to investigate his assassination?

They say that this authority, which is led by Arafat’s comrade in arms, does not have the money to finance criminal and laboratory investigations. This cannot be true because the examinations conducted by the Swiss Institute did not cost more than a million dollars. Can it be true instead that this authority, which has piled on a debt of over $4 billion on the Palestinian people, is unable to spare another million to reveal how the historic leader of the Palestinian jihad was martyred!

We are surprised by the silence of the PA and their continuation with the negotiations, not only after discovering this crime and Israel’s role in it. Especially as settlement activity continues at an unprecedented rate and Netanyahu insists on keeping the Jordan Valley, abolishing the right of return and recognising Israel as a Jewish state.

Calling for an international investigation should not be enough for the PA, it’s nothing but a speck in the corner of their eye. In fact, the PA needs to withdraw from negotiations, join the International War Crimes Tribunal and prosecute the Israelis. They need to maintain the late president’s legacy of resisting the occupation.

The most important investigation will be the internal investigation to expose the ‘political’ tools used by Israel to facilitate the assassination and the criminals who executed the crime.

Will the PA and its leader take these two investigations seriously and follow them through until the end without worrying about the negotiations or anything else? Despite our doubts, we hope so.

This is a translation of the Arabic text published by Raialyoum, 8 November, 2013

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| Israeli cabinet ordered Arafat Assassination: “We will choose right way + right time to Kill Arafat.”

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The Assassination of Yasser Arafat was Ordered by The Israeli Cabinet: “We will Choose the Right Way and the Right Time to Kill Arafat.” ~ Prof Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research.

The forensic tests on samples taken from Yasser Arafat’s corpse by a team of Swiss scientists exhibit high levels of radioactive polonium-210.  The exhumation of his body was implemented in November 2012. The samples revealed “levels of polonium at least 18 times higher than usual in Arafat’s ribs, pelvis and in soil that absorbed his bodily fluids.”

These developments raise the broader issue which the media has failed to address: Who was behind the assassination of Yasser Arafat? The Answer to that question was provided by the Israeli government in 2003, a year prior to his death. 

“We will choose the right way and the right time to kill Arafat.”

In September 2003, Israel’s government passed a law to get rid of Arafat. Israel’s cabinet for political security affairs declared it “a decision to remove Arafat as an obstacle to peace.”

Yasser Arafat

The 2004 assassination of  Yasser Arafat was part of a broader military and intelligence agenda to destroy the Palestinian Authority.

What recent news reports fail to mention is that the extra-judicial assassination had been ordered by the Israeli cabinet in 2003. It was subsequently approved by the US which vetoed a United Nations Security Resolution condemning the 2003 Israeli Cabinet decision to “get rid of Arafat”.

The assassination of Yasser Arafat had been on the drawing board since 1996 under “Operation Fields of Thorns”.

According to an October 2000 document “prepared by the [Israeli] security services, at the request of then Prime Minister Ehud Barak, stated that ‘Arafat, the person, is a severe threat to the security of the state [of Israel] and the damage which will result from his disappearance is less than the damage caused by his existence’”. (quoted in Tanya Reinhart, Evil Unleashed, Israel’s move to destroy the Palestinian Authority is a calculated plan, long in the making, Global Research, December 2001. Details of the document were published in Ma’ariv, July 6, 2001.).

In August 2003, Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz declared “all out war” on the militants whom he vowed “marked for death.”

“In mid September, Israel’s government passed a law to get rid of Arafat.Israel’s cabinet for political security affairs declared it “a decision to remove Arafat as an obstacle to peace.” Mofaz threatened; “we will choose the right way and the right time to kill Arafat.” Palestinian Minister Saeb Erekat told CNN he thought Arafat was the next target. CNN asked Sharon spokesman Ra’anan Gissan if the vote meant expulsion of Arafat. Gissan clarified; “It doesn’t mean that. The Cabinet has today resolved to remove this obstacle. The time, the method, the ways by which this will take place will be decided separately, and the security services will monitor the situation and make the recommendation about proper action.” (See Trish Shuh, Road Map for a Decease Plan,  www.mehrnews.com November 9 2005)

The assassination of Arafat was part of the 2001 Dagan Plan.

In all likelihood, it was carried out by Israeli Intelligence.

It was intended to destroy the Palestinian Authority, foment divisions within Fatah as well as between Fatah and Hamas. Mahmoud Abbas is a Palestinian quisling. He was installed as leader of Fatah, with the approval of Israel and the US, which finance the Palestinian Authority’s paramilitary and security forces.

The above text was written in January 2009 as part of the following article:

The Invasion of Gaza: “Operation Cast Lead”, Part of a Broader Israeli Military-Intelligence Agenda – by Michel Chossudovsky – 2009-01-04.

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Swiss study: Polonium found in Arafat’s bones ~ Killing Arafat, Al Jazeera.

| Ziocolony Israel’s History of Assassinating Palestinian Leaders!

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| Ziocolony Israel’s History of Assassinating Palestinian Leaders!

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Israel’s History of Assassinating Palestinian Leaders ~ Institute for Middle East Understanding [IMEU].

On November 6, several news outlets reported that the widow of former Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Chairman Yasser Arafat announced that the results of a Swiss investigation into her late husband’s death concluded he was poisoned with polonium, a radioactive substance.

In November 2012, Arafat’s body was exhumed in order for medical examiners to take samples of his remains to test for polonium, part of a murder investigation launched by French authorities at the request of Suha Arafat following the discovery last summer of traces of the highly toxic substance on some of his personal effects. In October 2004, after enduring a two-year siege by the Israeli military in his West Bank headquarters, Arafat fell seriously ill. Two weeks later he was transported to a French military hospital where he died. Doctors concluded he died from a stroke caused by a mysterious blood disorder.

At the time, many Palestinians suspected that Arafat was murdered. Over the years, he had survived numerous assassination attempts by Israel, and just six months before his death then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said that an agreement he had made with US President George W. Bush promising that Israel wouldn’t kill Arafat was no longer valid, stating: “I released myself from the commitment in regard to Arafat.”

Two years prior to that statement, in an interview published in February 2002, Sharon told an Israeli journalist that he regretted not killing Arafat when he had the chance during Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982, stating: “I am sorry that we did not liquidate him.” In 2002, current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, then in the opposition following his first term as prime minister (1996-1999), told the Likud party Central Committee: “We must completely and totally eradicate Arafat’s regime and remove him from the vicinity… This one thing must be understood: If we do not remove Arafat and his regime, the terror will return and increase. And only if we do remove them is there any chance of turning a new leaf in our relationship with the Palestinians.” When Arafat died, Netanyahu was serving as Minister of Finance in Sharon’s government.

PARTIAL LIST OF ISRAELI ASSASSINATIONS OF PALESTINIANS

2012 – On November 14, two days after Palestinian factions in Gaza agree to a truce following several days of violence, Israel assassinates the leader of Hamas’ military wing, Ahmed Jabari, threatening to escalate the violence once again after a week in which at least six Palestinian civilians are killed and dozens more wounded in Israeli attacks. Although Israeli officials know that Jabari is in the process of finalizing a long-term truce, and that he is one of the few people in Gaza who can enforce it, they kill him anyway, marking the start of a week-long assault on Gaza that kills more than 100 Palestinian civilians, including at least 33 children, and wounds more than 1000 others.

2012 – On March 9, Israel violates an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire and assassinates the head of the Gaza-based Popular Resistance Committees, Zuhair al-Qaisi, sparking another round of violence in which at least two dozen Palestinians are killed, including at least four civilians, and scores more wounded. As it usually does, Israel claims it is acting in self-defense, against an imminent attack being planned by the PRC, while providing no evidence to substantiate the allegation.

Following the assassination, Israeli journalist Zvi Bar’el writes in the Haaretz newspaper:

“It is hard to understand what basis there is for the assertion that Israel is not striving to escalate the situation. One could assume that an armed response by the Popular Resistance Committees or Islamic Jihad to Israel’s targeted assassination was taken into account. But did anyone weigh the possibility that the violent reaction could lead to a greater number of Israeli casualties than any terrorist attack that Zuhair al-Qaisi, the secretary-general of the Popular Resistance Committees, could have carried out?

“In the absence of a clear answer to that question, one may assume that those who decided to assassinate al-Qaisi once again relied on the ‘measured response’ strategy, in which an Israeli strike draws a reaction, which draws an Israeli counter-reaction.”

2010 – In January, suspected Israeli assassins kill senior Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in a Dubai hotel room. As in the past, the Israeli agents believed to have carried out the killing use forged and stolen foreign passports from western countries, including Britain, France, Ireland and Germany, causing an international uproar.

2009 – On January 15, an Israeli airstrike kills Said Seyam, Hamas’ Interior Minister and member of the Palestinian Legislative Council.

2009 – On January 1, an Israeli airstrike on the home of senior Hamas military commander Nizar Rayan kills him and 15 family members, including 11 of his children.

2006 – On June 8, Israel assassinates Jamal Abu Samhadana, founder of the Popular Resistance Committees and Interior Minister of the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority government, killing three other members of the PRC in the process.

2004 – On April 17, Israel assassinates Abdel Aziz Rantisi, a co-founder of Hamas and its leader since the assassination of Hamas spiritual leader Sheik Ahmed Yassin a month earlier. Rantisi is considered a moderate within Hamas.

2004 – On March 22, Israel assassinates the 67-year-old wheelchair-bound spiritual leader and co-founder of Hamas, Sheik Ahmed Yassin, as he leaves prayers at a mosque in Gaza, killing nine innocent bystanders in the process.

2003 – On March 8, Israel assassinates Ibrahim Maqadma, one of the founders of Hamas and one of its top military commanders.

2002 – On July 23, hours before a widely reported ceasefire declared by Hamas and other Palestinian groups is scheduled to come into effect, Israel bombs an apartment building in the middle of the night in the densely populated Gaza Strip in order to assassinate Hamas leader Salah Shehada. Fourteen civilians, including nine children, are also killed in the attack, and 50 others wounded, leading to a scuttling of the ceasefire and a continuation of violence.

2002 – On January 14, Israel assassinates Raed Karmi, a militant leader in the Fatah party, following a ceasefire agreed to by all Palestinian militant groups the previous month, leading to its cancellation. Later in January, the first suicide bombing by the Fatah linked Al-Aqsa Martyr’s Brigade takes place.

2001 – On November 23, Israel assassinates senior Hamas militant, Mahmoud Abu Hanoud. At the time, Hamas was adhering to an agreement made with PLO head Yasser Arafat not to attack targets inside of Israel. Following the killing, Israeli military correspondent of the right-leaning Yediot Ahronot newspaper, Alex Fishman, writes in a front-page story:

“We again find ourselves preparing with dread for a new mass terrorist attack within the Green Line [Israel’s pre-1967 border]… Whoever gave a green light to this act of liquidation knew full well that he is thereby shattering in one blow the gentleman’s agreement between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority; under that agreement, Hamas was to avoid in the near future suicide bombings inside the Green Line…”

2001 – On August 27, Israel uses US-made Apache helicopter gunships to assassinate Abu Ali Mustafa, secretary general of the leftist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. In response, PFLP members assassinate Israel’s Tourism Minister and notorious right-wing hardliner, Rehavam Ze’evi, who advocated the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza.

2001 – On August 15, undercover Israeli soldiers assassinate Emad Abu Sneineh, a member of the Fatah linked Tanzim militia, opening fire on him at close range.

2001 – On August 5, Israeli forces assassinate Hamas member Amer Mansour Habiri in the West Bank city of Tulkarem, firing missiles at his car from helicopter gunships.

2001– On July 29, Israel assassinates Jamal Mansour, a senior member of Hamas’ political wing.

2001 – On July 25, as Israeli and Palestinian Authority security officials are scheduled to meet to shore up a six-week-old ceasefire amidst the violence of the Second Intifada, Israel assassinates a senior Islamic Jihad member, Salah Darwazeh in Nablus.

1997 – In September, the Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attempts to assassinate Khaled Meshaal, the chairman of Hamas’ political bureau, in Amman, Jordan. Israeli agents using fake Canadian passports attempt to kill Meshaal by injecting poison into his ear. The would-be assassins are quickly captured and in the ensuing diplomatic uproar Jordan’s King Hussein threatens to cut off relations with Israel and publicly try and hang the Israeli agents unless Israel provides the antidote to the poison. The Netanyahu government turns over the antidote, saving Meshaal’s life. As part of the deal, Israel also releases Hamas spiritual leader Ahmed Yassin from prison.

1996 – On January 5, Israel assassinates Hamas military commander Yahya Ayash, known as “The Engineer,” detonating explosives in a cell phone he is using. Over the next two months, Hamas responds by launching four suicide bombings that kill more than 50 Israelis. Israeli intelligence later concludes: “the attacks were most probably a direct reaction to the assassination of Ayash.”

1995 – In October, Israeli gunmen assassinate Fathi Shiqaqi, a founder of Islamic Jihad, in Malta, as he leaves his hotel in Valletta.

1994 – On November 2, Israel assassinates journalist Hani Abed, who has ties to Islamic Jihad, using a bomb rigged to his car.

1988 – On April 16, Israel assassinates senior PLO leader Khalil al-Wazir in Tunisia, even as the Reagan administration is trying to organize an international conference to broker peace between Israelis and Palestinians. The US State Department condemns the murder as an “act of political assassination.” In ensuing protests in the occupied territories, a further seven Palestinians are gunned down by Israeli forces.

1986 – On June 9, Khalid Nazzal, Secretary of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, is shot dead by Israeli agents in Athens, Greece.

1983 – On August 21, senior PLO official and top aid to Yasser Arafat, Mamoun Meraish, is shot and killed by Israeli agents in Athens, Greece. According to later Israeli press reports, future Foreign Minister (currently Minister of Justice) Tzipi Livni  is involved in Meraish’s killing.

1978 – On March 28, Wadie Haddad, a senior member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, dies in East Germany from slow-acting poison ingested several months earlier. It is later revealed that Israeli agents were behind his murder.

1972 – On July 8, Palestinian author and intellectual Ghassan Kanafani and his 17-year-old niece are killed in Beirut by a car bomb, believed to have been planted by Israeli agents. A member of the left-wing Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Kanafani was considered a major literary figure in the Arab world and beyond.

1972 – During the 1970s, Israel carries out a series of assassinations against Palestinians they accuse of being involved with the Black September militant organization, which is responsible for the hostage taking of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics in Munich, Germany, resulting in the deaths of 11 Israeli athletes and officials. On October 16, 1972, Wael Zwaiter, a renowned Palestinian intellectual and the PLO representative to Italy, is shot and killed by Israeli agents in Rome. Israel accuses him of being involved with Black September, a charge strenuously denied by PLO officials and those who knew him, who pointed out that Zwaiter was a pacifist.

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| Exclusive: Swiss study says Polonium found in Arafat’s bones!

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Exclusive: Swiss study says Polonium found in Arafat’s bones ~ David Poort and Ken Silverstein, Al Jazeera America.

Scientists find at least 18 times the normal levels of radioactive element in late Palestinian leader’€™s remains.

PARIS – Swiss scientists who conducted tests on samples taken from Yasser Arafat’s body have found at least 18 times the normal levels of radioactive polonium in his remains. The scientists said that they were confident up to an 83 percent level that the late Palestinian leader was poisoned with it, which they said “moderately supports” polonium as the cause of his death.

A 108-page report (PDF) by the University Centre of Legal Medicine in Lausanne, which was obtained exclusively by Al Jazeera, found unnaturally high levels of polonium in Arafat’s ribs and pelvis, and in soil stained with his decaying organs.

The Swiss scientists, along with French and Russian teams, obtained the samples last November after his body was exhumed from a mausoleum in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.

Dave Barclay, a renowned U.K. forensic scientist and retired detective, told Al Jazeera that with these results he was wholly convinced that Arafat was murdered.

“Yasser Arafat died of polonium poisoning,” he said. “We found the smoking gun that caused his death. What we don’t know is who’s holding the gun at the time.”

“The level of polonium in Yasser Arafat’s rib…is about 900 milibecquerels,” Barclay said. “That is either 18 or 36 times the average, depending on the literature.”

Suha Arafat, the late Palestinian leader’s widow, received a copy of the report in Paris on Tuesday. “When they came with the results, I’m mourning Yasser again,” she said. “It’s like you just told me he died.”

The Swiss report only examined the question of what killed Arafat. It did not address or point towards who killed him or how.

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An illustration of Arafat’s tomb at the presidential compound in Ramallah before the exhumation CHUV

By Oct. of 2004, towards the end of the second intifada, Arafat had been holed up for more than two years in his Ramallah presidential compound, which Israeli troops had surrounded and partly razed. He was elderly and frail but his medical reports show he “was in good overall health and did not have any particular risk factors,” the Swiss report states.

On the evening of Oct. 12, Arafat suddenly fell ill after eating a meal. Based on his symptoms – nausea, vomiting and abdominal pain – his personal physician initially diagnosed flu.

But Arafat’s heath deteriorated swiftly and Egyptian and Tunisian doctors flown in to see him could not pinpoint the source of his sickness.

On Oct. 29, a wan and weak Arafat was carried in a wheelchair from his headquarters. He waved and blew kisses to the crowd surrounding his headquarters and was put aboard a helicopter and taken to Jordan. From there a French government plane carried him to Paris for emergency treatment at Percy military hospital.

French doctors were unable to diagnose or halt Arafat’s decline and he soon lapsed into a coma. On Nov. 11, Arafat, who symbolized the fight for Palestinian statehood, died at the age of 75.

Doctors at Percy hospital did not conduct an autopsy, announce the cause of death or release his medical records, which heightened speculation about the cause of his rapid demise. Many Palestinian officials close to Arafat believed he had been poisoned. In the West, rumors circulated that he had died of AIDS. Some doctors suggested leukemia or a food-borne illness had killed Arafat; others proposed that he had simply succumbed to old age.

By 2011, when Al Jazeera began an investigation, Arafat’s death was a cold case. During the investigation, Suha Arafat gave the network access to her late husband’s full medical records and a bag of his belongings, including clothing he wore during his final days. Tests conducted by the Swiss scientists who issued the new report found elevated levels of polonium-210, one of the element’s isotopes, in blood, sweat and urine stains on Arafat’s clothes.

In July 2012, Al Jazeera broadcast the results of its investigation in What Killed Arafat? The documentary triggered a French murder investigation and led to the exhumation of Arafat’s remains. Sixty samples of his body tissue were taken and twenty each distributed to the Swiss team, a French team of judges and forensic experts assigned to the murder investigation, and a Russian group invited at the request of the Palestinian Authority.

The Russians are expected to disclose their results soon. The French are not expected to release their results before the murder investigation concludes.

Saad Djebbar, Suha Arafat’s lawyer, said the Swiss report was a “significant piece of the jigsaw puzzle” that could help the French murder inquiry.

A rare but lethal poison

Polonium is a soft, silvery-grey metal found in uranium ore. The isotope polonium-210 emits highly radioactive alpha particles, but they don’t travel more than a few centimetres in air and “are stopped by a sheet of paper or by the dead layer of outer skin on our bodies,” according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

For that reason polonium-210 is not a risk to human health as long as it remains outside the body. But a dose of 0.1 microgram – the size of a speck of dust weighing less than a millionth of a snowflake – would be fatal if it were ingested in food or liquids or inhaled in contaminated air.

Only a handful of people are reported to have died from polonium poisoning. The most famous case involves Alexander Litvinenko, a former KGB officer turned dissident who received political asylum from the British government and lived in London.

Suha and Zahwa
Yasser Arafat’s wife and daughter awaiting the Swiss study’s results in Paris at Le Royal Monceau 
David Poort

Litvinenko died in Nov. 2006, three weeks after meeting several Russians, including a one-time KGB officer, at London’s Millennium Hotel. A British public prosecutor alleges that the Russians were acting at the behest of their government and poisoned Litvinenko by lacing his tea with polonium-210.

Polonium-210 is “one of the most obscure, most bizarre, and yet most merciless of poisons,” writes Alan Cowell in The Terminal Spy, a book about the Litvinenko case.

It was used as a trigger for early nuclear weapons and subsequently as a power source for satellites and spacecraft. However, polonium-210 is extremely rare and would be difficult to obtain without the help of a government or access to a nuclear reactor. It also requires considerable scientific know-how to handle in a safe manner.

Polonium-210 is manufactured by bombarding bismuth-209 with neutrons in a nuclear reactor. Only about 100 grams are produced each year, almost all in Russia.

In terms of motive, the chief suspects would be Arafat’s Palestinian rivals or the Israeli government, his sworn enemy. Ariel Sharon, the prime minister in 2004, viewed Arafat as a “terrorist” and called his death “a turning point in Middle Eastern history.” A year earlier, then-Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said killing Arafat ”is definitely one of the options.”

However, Israel has always vehemently denied it had anything to do with Arafat’s sickness or death and to date no evidence has emerged that implicates it.

While Barclay expressed confidence in the cause of death, he said it would be a difficult case to solve.

“The main problem is the timeframe,” he said. “If this was a murder that happened yesterday you’d have witnesses and cell phone records, emails, bank transfers. In a nine-year-old case that type of information will be hard to obtain.”

“We can’t point a finger at anyone,” Suha Arafat said. “The French are conducting a serious investigation. It takes time.”

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| Breaking: Widow proves Arafat was poisoned with polonium!

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UPDATE 1-Palestinian leader Arafat was murdered with polonium – widow ~ Paul Taylor, PARIS.

(Reuters) – Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was poisoned to death in 2004 with radioactive polonium, his widow Suha said on Wednesday after receiving the results of Swiss forensic tests on her husband’s corpse.

“We are revealing a real crime, a political assassination,” she told Reuters in Paris.

A team of experts, including from Lausanne University Hospital’s Institute of Radiation Physics, opened Arafat’s grave in the West Bank city of Ramallah last November, and took samples from his body to seek evidence of alleged poisoning.

“This has confirmed all our doubts,” said Suha Arafat, who met members of the Swiss forensic team in Geneva on Tuesday. “It is scientifically proved that he didn’t die a natural death and we have scientific proof that this man was killed.”

She did not accuse any country or person, and acknowledged that the historic leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization had many enemies.

Arafat signed the 1993 Oslo interim peace accords with Israel and led a subsequent uprising after the failure of talks in 2000 on a comprehensive agreement.

Allegations of foul play surfaced immediately. Arafat had foes among his own people, but many Palestinians pointed the finger at Israel, which had besieged him in his Ramallah headquarters for the final two and a half years of his life.

The Israeli government has denied any role in his death, noting that he was 75 years old and had an unhealthy lifestyle.

An investigation by the Qatar-based Al Jazeera television news channel first reported last year that traces of polonium-210 were found on personal effects of Arafat given to his widow by the French military hospital where he died.

That led French prosecutors to open an investigation for suspected murder in August 2012 at the request of Suha Arafat. Forensic experts from Switzerland, Russia and France all took samples from his corpse for testing after the Palestinian Authority agreed to open his mausoleum.

“SMOKING GUN”

The head of the Russian forensics institute, Vladimir Uiba, was quoted by the Interfax news agency last month as saying no trace of polonium had been found on the body specimens examined in Moscow, but his Federal Medico-Biological Agency later denied he had made any official comment on its findings.

The French pathologists have not reported their conclusions publicly, nor have their findings been shared with Suha Arafat’s legal team. A spokeswoman for the French prosecutor’s office said the investigating magistrats had received no expert reports so far.

One of her lawyers said the Swiss institute’s report, commissioned by Al Jazeera, would be translated from English into French and handed over to the three magistrates in the Paris suburb of Nanterre who are investigating the case.

Professor David Barclay, a British forensic scientist retained by Al Jazeera to interpret the results of the Swiss tests, said the findings from Arafat’s body confirmed the earlier results from traces of bodily fluids on his underwear, toothbrush and clothing.

“In my opinion, it is absolutely certain that the cause of his illness was polonium poisoning,” Barclay told Reuters. “The levels present in him are sufficient to have caused death.

“What we have got is the smoking gun – the thing that caused his illness and was given to him with malice.”

The same radioactive substance was slipped into a cup of tea in a London hotel to kill defecting Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko in 2006. From his deathbed, Litvinenko accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of ordering his murder.

The British government refused to hold a public inquiry into his death after ministers withheld some material which could have shed light on Russia’s suspected involvement.

Barclay said the type of polonium discovered in Arafat’s body must have been manufactured in a nuclear reactor.

While many countries could have been the source, someone in Arafat’s immediate entourage must have slipped a miniscule dose of the deadly isotope probably as a powder into his drink, food, eye drops or toothpaste, he said.

BRIEF RECOVERY

Arafat fell ill in October 2004, displaying symptoms of acute gastroenteritis with diarrhoea and vomiting. At first Palestinian officials said he was suffering from influenza.

He was flown to Paris in a French government plane but fell into a coma shortly after his arrival at the Percy military hospital in the suburb of Clamart, where he died on Nov. 11.

The official cause of death was a massive stroke but French doctors said at the time they were unable to determine the origin of his illness. No autopsy was carried out.

Barclay said no one would have thought to look for polonium as a possible poison until the Litvinenko case, which occurred two years after Arafat’s death.

Some experts have questioned whether Arafat could have died of polonium poisoning, pointing to a brief recovery during his illness that they said was not consistent with radioactive exposure. They also noted he did not lose all his hair. But Barclay said neither fact was inconsistent with the findings.

Since polonium loses 50 percent of its radioactivity every four months, the traces in Arafat’s corpse would have faded so far as to have become untraceable if the tests had been conducted a couple of years later, the scientist said.

“A tiny amount of polonium the size of a flake of dandruff would be enough to kill 50 people if it was dissolved in water and they drank it,” he added.

The Al Jazeera investigation was spearheaded by investigative journalist Clayton Swisher, a former U.S. Secret Service bodyguard who became friendly with Arafat and was suspicious of the manner of his death.

Hani al-Hassan, a former aide, said in 2003 that he had witnessed 13 assassination attempts on Arafat’s life, dating back to his years on the run as PLO leader. Arafat claimed to have survived 40 attempts on his life.

Arafat narrowly escaped an Israeli air strike on his headquarters in Tunisia in 1985. He had just gone out jogging when the bombers attacked, killing 73 people.

He escaped another attempt on his life when Israeli warplanes came close to killing him during the 182 invasion of Beirut when they hit one of the buildings they suspected he was using as his headquarters but he was not there. In December 2001, Arafat was rushed to safety just before Israeli helicopters bombarded his compound in Ramallah with rockets.

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Al Jazeera exposes forensic results on Arafat’s death: http://aje.me/17MEioc

polonium2Al Jazeera exposes forensic results on Arafat’s death: http://aje.me/17MEioc

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| Arafat’s widow sets record straight on Russian analysis of husband’s body!

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Arafat’s widow sets record straight on Russian analysis of husband’s body ~ RT.

Suha Arafat poses next to a portrait of her late husband Yasser Arafat at her home in Malta (AFP Photo / Matthew Mirabelli)

Suha Arafat poses next to a portrait of her late husband Yasser Arafat at her home in Malta (AFP Photo / Matthew Mirabelli)

The widow of iconic Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat strongly denies claims that she has refused a Russian team of experts access to analyze the exhumed remains of her husband for radiation poisoning, she told RT in an exclusive interview.

Immediately after Arafat’s bone samples were passed on to a team of Russian, Swiss and French scientists for investigation on November 27, Figaro quoted Suha Arafat, the widow of the resistance leader, now living in Paris, as asking, “What do the Russian experts have to do with the case?”

She expressed quite a different view to RT. In regards to the quote in the French media, Mrs. Arafat says, “this is false – they aim to distort my name; on the contrary, I feel proud that there are Russian experts working on the case.” 

Furthermore, she denied Figaro’s claim that she had accused the Russians of poisoning her husband for hire. She has threatened to sue the newspaper, as she believes she was misquoted in order “to distort my name and my image before the Russian public.” 

Figaro also wrote that Mrs. Arafat claimed that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas‘ invitation for the Russian team to participate in the international investigation was a conspiracy to conceal the truth. Instead, the widow says that she “blindly trusts them,” referring to the Russian scientists.

The international team of experts will carry out a number of analyses on sixty samples obtained from November’s exhumation to find traces of Polonium-210, which is suspected of killing the Palestinian leader in 2004.

The investigation is headed by Tawfiq Tirawi, and relies on the help of scientists such as toxicologists, pathologists, judicial medical experts and radiation specialists to determine if foul play with deadly radiological material was involved in Arafat’s death.

The medical records of the Palestinian icon, who died at a military hospital in France, claim a stroke from a blood disorder as the cause of death.

Suha Arafat hopes that the latest probe will bring clarity into the cause of her husband death, as she refused to agree to the initial autopsy.

“It takes four to five months until the results of a DNA test can be shown, to see whether there are signs of radiation. We have to wait for the results, which will be provided by the greatest world experts – from Russia, Switzerland and France. I do hope the results will be shown very quickly,” she told RT.

Polonium-210 decays with half-life of 50 days, and chances of finding the levels of radiation are slim, especially given the fact that Arafat has been dead and buried for eight years. But the experts have been entrusted to find isotopes produced by Polonium’s radioactive decay.

If assassination is discovered in the case, Suha Arafat hopes to seek international justice. “If poisoning is proved, a complaint should be presented before the International [Criminal] Court, of which we are members now. I don’t know what are the exact steps – surely Palestine, which is a state now, can sue the culprit.”

Following Arafat’s death, Israel has been in the spotlight as the likely candidate for the Palestinian leader’s assassination. Tel Aviv denies involvement.

But as far as Mrs. Arafat is concerned, “I cannot accuse anybody or any party of standing behind the poisoning. The case is in the hands of justice, and in the hands of the Russian, Swiss and French experts.”

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