As soon as Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, who was in good health, became ill after eating a meal at his compound in Ramallah in October of 2004, there were suspicions that he had been poisoned.

Responsibility for Arafat’s death was immediately and with justification attributed to Israel, which assassinated numerous Palestinian leaders, including Arafat’s closest collaborator, Abu Jihad.

Former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon publicly admitted to having tried unsuccessfully to kill Arafat. The PA leader’s assassination became official Israeli state policy.

In September 2003, Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert publicly declared that the Israeli government intended to assassinate the Palestinian president, claiming the cabinet’s decision to get rid of Arafat was “a decision to remove Arafat as an obstacle to peace.”

His death removed that obstacle and cleared the way for the installation of a more pliant leadership under Arafat's successor Mahmoud Abbas.

From virtually the beginning of the Second Intifada in September 2000, Arafat had been kept a virtual prisoner in his bombed-out offices in Ramallah, unable to exert more than minimal control over Palestinian life. The Bush administration backed Israel to the hilt, vetoing a United Nations Security Council resolution condemning Israel’s decision to get rid of Arafat.

Israel never repudiated the decision. Just weeks before Arafat’s final illness, Sharon reiterated the threat to kill him.

After years of denials from Israeli spokespersons, Israeli President Shimon Peres has admitted the truth. In an interview given to the New York Times some months ago, which was published only last week, Peres said Arafat should not have been assassinated and asserted that he had opposed the policy of murdering him. Peres stated he had “protected Arafat from several plots against his life.”

Responsibility for Arafat’s assassination, however, does not end with Washington and Tel Aviv. The manner of his death points to the complicity of elements within the Palestinian leadership, since someone within Arafat’s entourage in Ramallah must have administered the poison.

It has taken nine years to identify the cause of death only because the new Palestinian leadership under Abbas did everything it could to block the truth from coming out.

Nine years after Yasser Arafat died in a French military hospital on November 11, 2004, a Swiss team of toxicologists has found traces of the radioactive isotope polonium-210 in his exhumed remains, as well as in his shroud and the soil of his shrine.

A Russian team also found traces of polonium in the body of the leader of Fatah and elected president of the Palestinian Authority (PA). The Swiss scientists said there was an 83 percent probability that the late Palestinian leader was poisoned.

[Source: WSWS]