Tag: israel/palestine

Arafat’s medical files released, but not public yet

Some recent developments on the causes of Arafat’s death story:

  • The French government has said that Arafat was not poisoned.

    “If the doctors had had the slightest doubt, they would have referred it to the police. I note that permission was given for him to be buried,” government spokesman Jean-Francois Cope said after the weekly French cabinet meeting.

  • The Palestinian leadership has been wondering publicly about the cause of his death, but brushed aside allegations that he was poisoned by Israel:

    “The conditions surrounding the death of President Yasser Arafat raises questions,” Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurie’s office said in a statement.

    Palestinian leaders have dismissed speculation among ordinary Palestinians that Arafat was poisoned by Israel, which has also denied any involvement. No evidence has been provided to back the allegation of poisoning.

    France’s Le Monde newspaper quoted doctors on Wednesday as saying Arafat, 75, a longtime symbol of Palestinian nationalism, suffered from an unusual blood disease and a liver problem.

  • Our favorite Zionist hack, Daniel Pipes, is pushing for the AIDS theory in this ridiculous post where he suggests that Arafat dying of AIDS is “what is really on the minds of serious people” and praises the tabloid for covering this issue while the broadsheets haven’t mentioned it. It continue to boggle the mind that this guy has any credibility.
  • Suha Arafat dashed from Paris from her hideaway in Tunisia (she’s been living between Tunisia and Paris for the past few years and is very close to Tunisian President Ben Ali’s wife — one of the most corrupt Arab first ladies, by the way) to beat Yasser Arafat’s nephew to get the medical files:

    Suha Arafat has been given copies of the medical files of her late husband Yasser Arafat and then flew to Tunisia, as the late Palestinian president’s nephew was expected in the French capital to pick up the same documents amid some controversy.

    Defence ministry spokesman Jean-Francois Bureau said Arafat’s nephew, Nasser al-Qidwa, who was travelling to Paris, had the right to access to the information if he requested it.

    But the Paris lawyers of Suha Arafat had said the dossier should only be given to “the children and the widow.”

    Bureau told AFP that it was not up to the ministry to confirm or deny what the lawyers believed but in any case Qidwa had the right to see the file if he so wished.

    • So hopefully this will mean she’ll make the causes of his death public soon — unless there’s something embarrassing to hide.

    PA officials still don’t know why Arafat died

    There have been a few responses on the recent post on the causes of Arafat’s death, so I thought I’d post this here rather than in the comments:

    Palestinian prime minster Ahmed Qorei has asked France to provide him with a medical report detailing the cause of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s death, his office said.

    “We officially demand that the Palestinian leadership be informed about the medical report on the death of the president and the reason for his death,” Qorei’s office said in a statement.

    Arafat died in a French military hospital last Thursday at the age of 75 after sinking into a coma, but no information has been released about the exact cause of death.

    The veteran Palestinian leader was admitted to a French hospital on October 29 with a “blood disorder” and the lack of any clear explanation has sparked speculation that he was poisoned by Israeli agents.

    His personal physician Ashraf al-Kurdi is among those who have called for an investigation into the death.

    “I demand an official inquiry and an autopsy… so the Palestinian people can learn in all transparency what caused the death,” he said, although Islam forbids autopsies out of respect for the sanctity of the dead.

    He said his suspicions were aroused by the absence of any information about Arafat’s health after he was admitted to hospital given that he had been conscious when he left his Ramallah compound.

    The French have said that under their laws, Arafat’s medical files can only be handed over to family members. So, what is Suha Arafat waiting for?

    What did Arafat die of?

    As I watched today his funeral on TV and then went to see the protests after the Friday sermon at Al Azhar mosque (which were surprisingly small, but then again the mood of the day was sadness rather than anger), this question kept coming back: what is the cause of Arafat’s death. As this story on the rumors that he was poisoned by the Israelis — a rumor started by Hamas — shows, we still don’t know. I wouldn’t give much credence to the poison theory, but I think we need to know what happened. Did they pull the plug on him? Who made that decision? Or was it simply the result of the brain hemorrhage he was suffering from? If these questions aren’t answer, the rumors are just going to keep spreading.

    Fisking Arafat

    When Fisk is good, he’s good:

    Sitting like an old and dying owl in his Ramallah headquarters, it must have struck Arafat that he had one unique distinction. Some “terrorists” — Khomeini, for example — die of old age. Some — Gaddafi comes to mind — become statesmen courtesy of mendacious folk like Tony Blair. Others — Abu Nidal is an obvious candidate — get murdered, often by their own side. But Arafat is perhaps the only man who started off as a “super-terrorist”, was turned overnight by the Oslo agreement into a “super-statesman” and then went back to being a “super-terrorist” again. No wonder he often seems to be losing attention, making factual errors, falling ill.

    Like all dictators, he made sure that there was no succession. It might have been Abu Jihad, but he was murdered by the Israelis in Tunis. It might have been one of the militant leaders whom the Israelis have been executing by air attack over the past two years. It could still be, just, the imprisoned Marwan Barghouti. And, if the Israelis decide that he should be the leader — be sure the Palestinians won’t get any choice in the matter — then the prison doors may open for Barghouti.

    Yes, Arafat might die. The funeral would be the usual excruciating rhetoric bath. But the truth, I fear, is that Arafat died years ago.

    Arafat: “We are not Red Indians”

    The last few lines of this interview with Yasser Arafat, apparently the last before he was hospitalized, seem to capture his character well. He stubbornly refuses to accept any mistakes whatsoever, yet does make the moving point that by opting for active resistance the Palestinians avoided politicide:

    He uncoiled a little, sagging back in his chair. He drank his soup from the lip of the bowl, Arab-style.

    Did he make any mistakes?

    “No.”

    Did he make any tactical mistakes?

    He peered through the steam of his soup.

    “No.”

    What did he achieve?

    “We have made the Palestinian case the biggest problem in the world,” he said, with a grin. “Look at the Hague ruling on the wall. One hundred and thirty countries supported us at the General Assembly. One hundred and seven years after the [founding Zionist] Basel Conference, 90 years after the Sykes-Picot Agreement, Israel has failed to wipe us out. We are here, in Palestine, facing them. We are not red Indians.”

    Obama’s flip-flops

    Ali Abunimah, the Palestinian-American whose work I greatly admire (and whose daily press round-up on Palestine, Iraq and the Middle East is a must-read), has written a great editorial on the implications for the Middle East that Bush’s victory has. While I encourage you to read the whole thing, one of the most interesting parts of the article is about Barack Obama, the new superstar of Democrat politics, and how he has (like so many others before him) abandoned a nuanced stance on the peace process to endorse the Israeli position:

    Against this background, Bush has shifted the goal posts of the Palestine-Israel debate such that Likudist thinking is now viewed as centrist. This was demonstrated by Kerry’s campaign which warmly endorsed Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s policies. But the bankruptcy of the discourse was brought home in a most personally disappointing way.

    Illinois swept Barack Obama, a rising star in the Democratic party, into the United States Senate with a stunning 70 percent of the vote – a rare Democratic gain. Obama, whom I’ve met many times, has served as my local state senator in the Illinois legislature. I found him to be an inspiring politician, not least because he appeared to understand Middle East issues and take progressive views supporting Palestinian rights and opposing militarism. He participated in many events in the Chicago-area Arab community including a 1998 fundraiser with Edward Said as the keynote speaker. I even made contributions to his campaigns.

    But following Obama’s nationally-televised address at the Democratic National Convention everything seemed to change. In the campaign’s final weeks, Obama proclaimed his support for tough sanctions and military strikes against Iran if it refused U.S. demands to give up its nuclear programs. According to the Chicago Tribune, Obama now says that the onus of peace in the Middle East “is on the Palestinian leadership, which … must cease violence against Israelis and work ‘to end the incitement against Israel in the Arab world.” The unique fact about Obama’s campaign is that he did not need to parrot the pro-Israel lobby’s standard line to get elected. He ran effectively unopposed. Such a capable and ambitious man must have calculated that any hope of higher office requires that he not offend when it comes to Israel and its interests. This begs the question: If a man like Obama will not speak frankly when it comes to Israel, what hope is there for a change in U.S. policy coming from within the establishment?

    As they say in right-wing blogs, indeed.

    HRW on Gaza and Morocco

    Two important reports have been issued recently by Human Rights Watch. One is quite timely in light of yesterday’s vote in the Israeli Knesset to pull out of Gaza is about Mass Home Demolitions in the Gaza Strip:

    Over the past four years, the Israeli military has demolished over 2,500 Palestinian houses in the occupied Gaza Strip. Nearly two-thirds of these homes were in Rafah, a densely populated refugee camp and city at the southern end of the Gaza Strip on the border with Egypt. Sixteen thousand people — more than ten percent of Rafah’s population — have lost their homes, most of them refugees, many of whom were dispossessed for a second or third time.

    As satellite images in this report show, most of the destruction in Rafah occurred along the Israeli-controlled border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt.  During regular nighttime raids and with little or no warning, Israeli forces used armored Caterpillar D9 bulldozers to raze blocks of homes at the edge of the camp, incrementally expanding a “buffer zone” that is currently up to three hundred meters wide.  The pattern of destruction strongly suggests that Israeli forces demolished homes wholesale, regardless of whether they posed a specific threat, in violation of international law.  In most of the cases Human Rights Watch found the destruction was carried out in the absence of military necessity.

    HRW reports on Israel/Palestine are always extremely well researched because of the political sensitivity of the issues they address. This one includes some very revealing satellite imagery of Gaza that shows the extent of destruction that took place. What’s important about the report is that it highlights that

    Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s plan to “disengage” from the Gaza Strip holds little hope of relief to the residents of Rafah.  Under the plan, the IDF will maintain its fortifications and patrols on the Rafah border indefinitely.  The plan explicitly envisions the possibility of further demolitions to widen the buffer zone on the basis of vague “security considerations” that, as this report demonstrates, should not require a buffer zone of the kind that currently exists, let alone further mass demolitions.

    The second report is about the crackdown on suspected Islamists that followed the May 16 2003 Casablanca bombings, which were a setback for due process and human rights in a country that was just beginning extensive reforms under the new king. But the report also notes some positive developments for Morocco, notably in the form of an “Equity and Reconciliation Commission” that is the first in the Arab world to be set up to look at past abuses. Still, the commission’s power is limited.

    If only

    Charles Krauthammer, neo-con editorialist extraordinaire, does his part for the Bush re-election campaign today in Sacrificing Israel, a piece that I suppose is meant to scare supporters of Israel into voting for Kerry. This is his premise:

    Think about it: What do the Europeans and the Arab states endlessly rail about in the Middle East? What (outside of Iraq) is the area of most friction with U.S. policy? What single issue most isolates America from the overwhelming majority of countries at the United Nations?

    The answer is obvious: Israel.

    In what currency, therefore, would we pay the rest of the world in exchange for their support in places such as Iraq? The answer is obvious: giving in to them on Israel.

    No Democrat will say that openly. But anyone familiar with the code words of Middle East diplomacy can read between the lines.

    Krauthammer then does some deconstruction of Kerry’s foreign policy, including his plans to re-energize the Middle East peace process. So when America will “re-engage” with the peace process, according to Krauthammer this really means turning your back on Israel, embracing Yasser Arafat and encouraging Palestinian terrorism. The entire argument is of course ridiculous, especially when you consider that the two candidates basically have no difference on Middle East policy and that Kerry has done everything to please American supporters of Israel. (See Kerry Tries to Out-Sharon Bush by Ron Chepesiuk and Bush and Kerry Dance to the Tune of Ariel Sharon by Simon Tisdall for some examples.)

    Incidentally, the Krauthammer piece may be part of a coordinated campaign by pro-Israeli right-wingers to discredit Kerry: take a look at this ridiculous editorial by Zev Chafets accusing Kerry of faking tears while visiting the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum in Israel. Chafets relies on base manipulation of the Holocaust to spread the idea that anyone who doesn’t fully support Ariel Sharon wants to see Israel destroyed. Take a look at the depths to which he goes:

    But the threat facing Israel now isn’t primarily military. Countries, including many Kerry prizes as members of “the international community,” are waging diplomatic war aimed at turning the Jewish state into a pariah. This is not a threat you can discern from the cockpit of a jet fighter, but it is real enough. And its desired effect is on display at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem.

    In a time of jihad, an American president who doesn’t see that – and feel it – is a dangerous friend to have.

    Joseph Lieberman has also raised the issue that Kerry is not taking a strong enough stance in Israel, particularly with the important Jewish population in Florida — the fourth largest outside of Israel.

    If only it were true that Kerry wanted to re-engage in the peace process and apply pressure on the Israelis to finally get out of the Occupied Territories that they’ve held for 37 years. The truth is Kerry’s Middle East policy is uninspiring at best and as criminally negligent as Bush’s at worst. The only hope is that a Kerry administration, at least, may not have neo-con Likudniks in positions of influence.

    Regional endorsements

    Micah Sifry tells us of a Bush campaign “Jewish outreach” message that “really made his blood boil.” It reported that John Kerry had received endorsements from the PLO. Here’s an excerpt:

    Last spring, John Kerry boasted that a number of foreign leaders supported his campaign, but refused to name them. This week he received his first foreign-leader endorsement — from the Palestinian Authority. Congratulations, Mr. Kerry. An organization known the world over as the linchpin of terrorism has now awarded you its support. When Kerry was talking about his popularity in foreign capitals, he said “you can go to New York City and you can be in a restaurant and you can meet a foreign leader” that supports him. Well, it’s unlikely that he met the leaders bestowing this week’s endorsement at Katz’s Deli.

    This was supposed to be based on something Nabil Shaath, the Palestinian Authority’s foreign minister, had said — according to the Jerusalem Post, which doesn’t actually quote him saying he supports Kerry, but rather lamenting the fact that the US elections were taking place at the Palestinians’ expense:

    “I keep saying that we have many times to pay for these American elections unfairly,” Shaath told a news conference. “During an American election and the three months after, allies of the United States should do more work than they would do otherwise.”

    This is what, for instance, Al Jazeera reported.

    Other news sources that have reported on this also give the impression that the Palestinians would prefer Kerry, but despite bold headlines never really back up their claims. And in general, the real story with Shaath’s statement is that he was unhappy with how much attention the Bush administration is giving the roadmap — which is to say, none. Realistically speaking, no foreign leader is going to express a preference for one candidate or the other — it’s bad politics, and especially so if you’re the Palestinian Authority.

    In fact, guess which Middle Eastern country has officially endorsed Bush in the region?

    The answer: Iran.