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Sick
to death: Even if he recovers physically, politically Yasser Arafat
is dead
Khaled Abu Toameh, THE JERUSALEM POST
Nov. 4, 2004
'Inshallah - by God's will - I will return soon."
These were the last words uttered by ailing Palestinian leader
Yasser Arafat before he left his battered headquarters in Ramallah
last Friday morning en route to a medical facility in France.
Thirty-six hours earlier, on Wednesday night,
Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei and PLO
Secretary-General Mahmoud Abbas rushed to the Mukata compound and
found Arafat surrounded by doctors. The old man looked at them
blankly, unable to recognize the two men who had been with him
through thick and thin for more than four decades.
Arafat, 75, was drinking chicken soup at the iftar -
the meal that breaks the daily Ramadan fast - when he began
vomiting. Aides rushed him to his room where he fell on his bed,
breathing heavily. He collapsed and lost consciousness for several
minutes.
A team of Tunisian doctors, who had been conducting
medical tests on the Palestinian leader for several days, quickly
moved him to a makeshift clinic set up in a nearby wing of the
Mukata. There they managed to stabilize his condition. After
regaining consciousness, Arafat opened his eyes and, with a wide
smile on his face, murmured to the medics: "God bless you!" But
outside the clinic, chaos prevailed.
Hysterical Palestinian officials, some openly
weeping, started phoning colleagues outside the compound. One
minister called the Israeli Defense Ministry, seeking permission to
transfer Arafat to the intensive care unit at the nearby local
hospital.
"For a while we thought he was dead," said a top
Palestinian official who was present when Arafat collapsed. "It was
a big shock for all of us, though we were aware he had been ill for
two weeks."
As word spread about Arafat's deteriorating
condition, many foreign diplomats and journalists phoned Palestinian
officials to inquire whether the rumors of his death were true. But
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Jordan's King Abdullah were the
only Arab leaders who called to offer medical assistance.
At the peak of the mayhem, some of Arafat's
bodyguards, armed with Russian-made AK-47 assault rifles, blocked
the entrance to the clinic, preventing even the most senior
officials from entering.
Within minutes, the compound was filled with dozens
of journalists and camera crews hungry for any scrap of information
about the chairman's health. They snapped Qurei and Abbas as they
walked out an hour later, ashen-faced and refusing to talk about
what had happened inside the sandbagged presidential block.
Their body language and gloomy features triggered a
wave of rumors that Arafat was already dead. Attempts by Palestinian
officials to dispel the stories fell on deaf ears. The rumors were
further enhanced by the decision to order all journalists out of the
compound and the arrival of two ambulances and more doctors.
The pictures of Qurei and Abbas that night speak for
themselves. The two erstwhile rivals had emerged, grim-faced, into a
new reality: The children of the Palestinian revolution no longer
had a father. As one Fatah official put it, "We feel like orphans
who have lost their father. We are lost."
WHATEVER THE doctors in Paris decide, and whether or
not Arafat recovers from his physical indisposition, politically he
is dead.
This, at least, is what many Palestinians believe.
One of them is Imad Shaqour, a top Arafat adviser, who said that
even if Arafat returns to Ramallah, "it will never be the same
because of his health condition."
His view is shared by many officials in Ramallah and
Gaza Strip, who nevertheless refuse to speak out in public.
"We know that Arafat's image has been seriously
harmed as a result of his illness," said a legislator from Gaza
City. "He's now being seen as a weak and fragile man. But the past
week has proved that there is life after Arafat and that our
leadership is capable of continuing to function without him."
Arafat's image was carefully constructed from a
potent mix of ruthless leadership, real courage and revolutionary
myth-making. He was the man who returned from fedayeen attacks on
Israel in the 1960s; who emerged from the chaos of Jordan's Black
September in 1970; who survived Israel's invasion of Beirut in 1982,
and who returned triumphant to the Gaza Strip in 1994.
In his combat fatigues and black-and-white keffiyeh,
a pistol strapped to his hip and accompanied by a phalanx of
Kalashnikov-toting bodyguards, Arafat inspired his people and
captured the imagination of the world as a cross between Che Guevara
and Saladin.
It didn't matter that he wasn't even born in
Palestine, or that he gleefully "took" the millions of aid dollars
needed to build a state for his people. He had the walk of a
homeless refugee and the talk of a charismatic leader and he ruled
his beloved Fatah with an iron fist verging on dictatorship.
But last Wednesday, all that disappeared. Nabil Abu
Rudeineh, the Christian functionary who started out as his
spokesman, turned into his adviser and gradually amassed the power
of the palace gatekeeper, was forced to admit that Arafat was very
sick. The president's "flu" vanished like the emperor's new clothes,
his military fatigues replaced by a pair of blue pyjamas and a
ridiculous woolen hat.
And then came the final humiliation - the return of
Suha Arafat, the Yoko Ono of Palestinian politics. Suha, a Christian
from a well-off family in Ramallah, married Arafat in a secret
ceremony at his former headquarters in Tunis more than a decade ago.
She returned with him from exile in 1994 to live in a modest
two-story house in the impoverished Gaza Strip, home to 1.3 million
Palestinians, the majority of whom are refugees. Mrs. Arafat was
never accepted by Arafat's inner circle and she was often accused of
having a bad influence on him.
In January 2001, after increased tensions with
Arafat's aides, the Sorbonne-educated Suha packed her bags and went
back to Paris, where she lives with her daughter, Zahwa, and mother,
Raymonda Tawil, a renowned poet and journalist. Her lavish lifestyle
and shopping sprees have often been criticized by many Palestinians.
For more than three years, while her husband toiled
in Gaza and suffered his symbolic - and largely self-imposed -
imprisonment in Ramallah, Suha waited out out the rigors of the
current violence in the five-star surroundings of the Bristol Hotel
in Paris. Supposedly, they talked daily by phone. But even before
his helicopters were destroyed in December 2001, Arafat didn't
bother to visit her or their daughter, and she never came to visit.
There were rumors of lovers and talk that the couple was already
secretly divorced.
Then, last Friday, Suha swept in and carried off her
ailing cuckold to the fleshpots of Paris. She had come in person,
said officials, to demand he make a will before he died. It was the
final act in a truly Palestinian "tragedy."
Many Palestinians were clearly unhappy with the way
the first lady of Palestine handled the episode and according to
some eyewitnesses, her car was pelted with stones shortly before she
entered the Mukata compound on Thursday evening. Her critics have
long been referring to her as the "first lady of France."
NOW QUREI and Abbas have been left to pick up the
pieces. But the two quickly found themselves surrounded by
suspicious and jealous officials and activists monitoring every move
they make. Anxious to convey an air of normalcy, their aides rushed
to announce that Arafat had issued a "presidential decree"
entrusting them, together with Salim Zanoun, speaker of the
Palestine National Council (the PLO's parliament-in-exile) with
running the affairs of the Palestinian Authority during his absence.
The announcement drew sharp criticism and denials
from several Arafat loyalists, who argued that they were unaware of
such a decision. Moreover, they added, "How could Arafat have issued
the decree on Wednesday night when he was in a critical condition
and dozing?"
Veteran Fatah official Abbas Zaki said he did not
hear from any of the people around Arafat about the three-man
committee. "I don't know who's spreading these rumors, but they are
untrue," he said. "We have institutions and a parliament and only
they will decide on such matters."
Indeed, the "institutions" in Ramallah worked around
the clock this week in an effort to dispel fears of a political
vacuum. These bodies, all headed or controlled by Arafat, include
the National Security Council, the PLO executive committee, the
Fatah central committee, the cabinet and the Palestinian Legislative
Council. Although Arafat was not there, his "overwhelming presence"
could be felt in the air.
Qurei and Abbas took turns this week convening
meetings of the various institutions, trying to project business as
usual, but the empty chair at the head of the table spoke louder
than their official statements. Palestinian politics are in a deep
freeze until Arafat's condition is diagnosed. Meanwhile, his
officials are in shock and turmoil. His power was so centralized
that virtually nothing can function without him, certainly not as
long as he's alive.
Almost all the Palestinian officials who gathered in
Ramallah have gone out of their way to stress that in any case, a
new leadership would pursue Arafat's "legacy." If anything, this
means that no real changes should be expected in the post-Arafat era
because it is his longtime allies who are expected to run the show.
Hafez Barghouti, editor of the daily Al-Hayat
al-Jadeeda, emphasized this point when he said, "The post-Arafat era
will not be different from the period he was in power. That's
because Arafat was demanding international legitimacy. And as he
repeatedly said, 'We are not asking for the moon, we want the
occupied land.'"
AFTER FOUR years of violence and bloodshed and a
decade of Arafat's autocratic rule, most Palestinians are eager for
change. They want an end not only to Israeli occupation, but also to
corruption, anarchy, lawlessness and the rule of armed thugs. Many
of them have long been voicing deep disappointment with the corrupt
regime established by Arafat and his cronies.
The sudden reappearance of Muhammad Rashid, Arafat's
veteran adviser on economic affairs who fled abroad several months
ago, has raised questions about the Palestinian leader's secret
Swiss bank accounts. Arafat has run the Palestinian Authority as a
one-man show, maintaining full control over its finances and various
institutions. Earlier this year, Forbes magazine named him as one of
the world's wealthiest despots. He is believed to have at least $1.3
billion in a number of bank accounts whose details are known only to
Rashid and Arafat's wife, Suha.
It is ironic that Arafat had to be flown to a French
hospital for treatment because, according to his doctors,
Palestinian hospitals are not equipped to deal with cases like his.
Had Arafat invested the $6 billion he received in international aid
over the past 10 years for building new hospitals and buying
advanced medical equipment, it's possible that he could have been
treated at a local hospital in Ramallah or Gaza.
Earlier this week, Arafat's aides announced that he
had given orders from his hospital bed to pay the salaries of
thousands of PA employees. It was supposed to be reassuring.
Instead, it proved that for all the claims of transparency and
proper accounting by Finance Minister Salaam Fayyad, even the
payment of monthly salaries depends on the whim of the leader.
Arafat, who over the past four years has pledged to
liberate Jerusalem with the help of "one million martyrs," has
always envisioned himself as the modern version of Saladin, the
revered Muslim warrior who drove the Crusaders out of the city. But
as some Palestinians in Ramallah noted this week, instead of leading
an army of Muslim soldiers towards Jerusalem - a mere 20-minute
drive from his office - Arafat chose to fly to Paris, leaving behind
a confused and worried people. Perhaps that's the reason the masses
did not come out to say farewell to their national symbol on Friday
morning.
Whether or not he returns to Ramallah, the experience
of the past week has shown that Arafat's absence will not lead to
the creation of a "new" Middle East. The Palestinians have also
learned that life after Arafat is possible and that they can still
enjoy going out in the evening to the fashionable restaurants of
Ramallah for lamb chops and nargilas.
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