Who poisoned Arafat? About the possible customers of the murder of one of the most mysterious leaders of the XX century
The leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization, the first president of the Palestinian Authority, Yasser Arafat, died on November 11, 2004, at the age of 75 years, in the Percy military hospital near Paris. Several examinations of the body of Arafat were conducted, the cause of his illness was not made public. All this gave rise to numerous rumors, among which were mentioned both poisoning and death from AIDS ...And the results of a nine-month study conducted by Swiss scientists showed that an abnormal level of polonium is contained in Arafat’s body and things. Dr. Francois Boshud, director of the radio-physics institute in Lausanne, said: "I can confirm to you that we measured and found a completely inexplicable, increased amount of polonium-210 in Arafat's things that contained spots of biological fluids." The question of the causes of death is removed. Arafat was poisoned. But now the main question arises: who would benefit from his death?
Naturally, Tel Aviv was appointed the main suspect. “We argue that Israel is the main and only suspect in the case of the murder of Yasser Arafat, and we will continue to investigate in order to clarify all the circumstances of this case,” said the head of the Palestinian Investigation Committee Taufik Teravi.
Tel Aviv has always denied any involvement in the death of Arafat, but, forgive me, who will believe him. In the logic of "who benefits" Israel seems to be in the first place. But precisely that “seemingly”.
Too many, and in addition to Israel, wanted Arafat’s death, too many, he interfered in the last years of his life, so that he could be blamed for his sworn enemies, the Israelis, whom he regarded as targets for the rest of his life.
Yes, and how many he had these lives? Officially - "the most dangerous international terrorist of the twentieth century", the president of the Palestinian Authority, a multimillionaire, a Nobel Peace Prize winner ... But these are only official "lives." The same was his “lives” of the secret, for each of which he could well become a target?
“Who could have poisoned Yasir Arafat?” Asked Bloomberg, an American news agency analyst, Jeffrey Goldberg. I will join him: “Is the“ Israeli trace ”in his death so clear?” Indeed, attempts to settle scores with Arafat - the head of the organization that killed many Israeli citizens - were the official policies of several Israeli leaders in the past. The same Goldberg recalls his conversations with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and quotes his own essay in the American magazine New Yorker twelve years ago: “According to the calculations of Arafat himself, Sharon tried to organize his assassination 13 times. Sharon did not focus on the quantity, but said that the opportunity was tugged down repeatedly. All the governments of Israel for many years - the Labor Party, "Likud" - they all made attempts, I want to use a softer word for American readers, to remove it from our society. We have not been successful. ”
As the leader of the Palestinian resistance, Arafat "took place" precisely on the terrorist war with Israel, which he fought for forty-six years, from 1948 to 1994.
In 1948, militants from the Irgun organization led by Menachem Begin attacked the Palestinian village of Deir Yassin, where Arabs were killed near 200. Arafat, then a student at Cairo University, dropped out and went with an armed group of about 50 people to avenge the Jews for those killed. And although the group did not make it to Palestine, the Egyptians disarmed it, but Arafat has already made his choice in life.
It makes no sense to retell the stages of the “big way” of this anti-Israeli part of his life. The terror of the seventies was replaced by the organization of the “war of stones” - “intifada” - in the Gaza Strip, which caused Israel much more damage than all previous years of open military confrontation and terrorist attacks. The “Intifada” caused a split in Israel; its army really was not ready for such a war. In the end, Tel Aviv made concessions to its sworn enemy: behind-the-scenes negotiations with the Palestine Liberation Organization had been fought by Israelis since the end of 1980. Israeli President Ezer Weizman was even dismissed when rumors spread about his meeting with Arafat in Amsterdam in 1989.
But here is a paradox. By this time, Arafat was no longer the main enemy of Tel Aviv. Compared to the fundamentalists - Hamas, “Islamic Jihad” and others - living and “secular” Arafat at the head of Palestine was the preferred option for Israel. The tone of his speeches began to change; in 1988, from the podium of the UN General Assembly, the Palestinian leader said that under certain conditions, the PLO could recognize Israel and overturn the death sentence on this state. Five years later, on 1993, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Arafat signed a treaty in which the Palestinians gained autonomy covering the Gaza Strip and the Jericho area in the West Bank. In 1994, Arafat, along with Rabin, become Nobel Prize winners for peace, and two years later, the “main terrorist of the twentieth century” is elected president of the Palestinian Authority.
By the way, Arafat’s sworn enemy, Menachem Begin, at the reproach that he is a terrorist like Arafat, exclaimed: “Yes, I am a terrorist! But he is a gangster! ” Apparently, we will never be able to understand the fine line that in the Middle East separates these two concepts. Actually, both of them - Begin and Arafat - became the heads of state and Nobel Peace Prize laureates, and this is quite eloquently confirmed by the hackneyed “East is a delicate matter” ...
As head of the Palestinian Authority, Arafat was extremely beneficial to Tel Aviv, because, although inconsistently, even with his inherent treachery, he still held back the terror of the fundamentalists against Israel. And this circumstance makes you distract from the “Israeli trail” and more closely consider the other, “hidden” part of his biography: relations with the “older Arab brothers” who had a huge number of complaints about Arafat by the beginning of 2000's.
After graduating from Cairo University, Arafat went to work in more favorable Kuwait. There, in 1956, he became the head of the El Fatah terrorist organization he had created - “Opening the Gates of Glory”. The goal - the seizure of Palestine through armed struggle.
However, the role of Arafat in the organization of the Palestinian resistance was quite secondary. The initiator and puppeteer here were the "elder Arab brothers".
First of all, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, on whose initiative at the Arab Summit in Cairo in 1964, the Palestine Liberation Organization was founded.
Initially, the PLO was considered solely as an instrument of the “big game” of the Arab world against Israel, the USA, the USSR and in the inter-Arab “clashes”. Neither Nasser nor the monarchs of the Persian Gulf took any active, let alone independent role. Of course, Arafat did not like this state of affairs at all, and the entire period of his anti-Israeli activities was at the same time fighting the “elder Arab brothers”. The methods of this struggle on both sides were more than not fraternal, it suffices to recall history the first Fatah attack - the Movement for the National Liberation of Palestine - in 1964.
At the end of this year, Arafat planned the invasion of a Fatah militia detachment from the territory of the United Arab Republic to Israel in order to undermine the water station. However, the secret services of the Arab countries thwarted the planned action. Three days after the failure, the Fatah guerrillas tried to repeat it. The station was mined, but for some reason the clock mechanism did not work. It happens. And on the way back, when crossing the border, the Palestinians were fired upon by the Jordanian border guard. In the battle, one of the Fatah militants was killed: the first Palestinian "shahid", ironically, did not die from an Israeli but from an Arab bullet. There is some symbolism here, if we talk about the “Arab trail” in Arafat’s poisoning.
Then, 18 March 1968, near the Israeli city of Eilat on a mine, established by Fatah guerrillas, a bus hit. In response, the Israelis attacked the Fatah base in Jordan. With the support of the army of Jordan, the attack was repelled, the event was presented as a great victory, and Arafat’s photographs adorned the world's newspapers. Fatah gained credibility, new forces poured into it, and Arafat himself confidently took the place of the leader of the Palestinian resistance.
His “operational base” was the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Arafat himself was a young Jordanian king Hussein, a descendant of the Prophet, and did not give a penny.
Palestinian “refugees” installed their own roadblocks on the roads, checked vehicles, replaced the police and security services, in a word, behaved like the owners of the country. On the territory of the kingdom regularly hijacked passenger aircraft of European airlines. On one day, September 6, 1970, the PLO-controlled militants captured three aircraft: English, American, and Swiss. Two liner planted in Jordan, and the third in Egypt. Then the planes blew up. Arafat responded to Hussein’s completely natural indignation by preparing for a coup d'état, for which he even promised Syria part of the kingdom’s support. But the Jordanian army had already healed the wounds inflicted on it by the Israelis during the Six Day War, and in September 1970, Hussein’s troops, consisting of his Bedouin tribesmen, defeated the militants of Yasser Arafat and drove them out of the country. These events have gone down in history as Black September.
By the way, the victory would not have been possible without the active participation of the Pakistani military adviser and veteran of the British Indian colonial army, Colonel Zia ul-Haq, sent to the local military academy in Black September. Yes, the very future president of Pakistan, who will be one of the main initiators of the war against Afghanistan and the USSR in 1979, and a little later - the “parent” of the Taliban movement.
Events in Jordan, Arafat’s friends in the ruling Arab elites were not added, but were forced to change their attitude towards him and try to reach an agreement. In October, the PLO, led by Arafat, was recognized by the Arab leaders as the legitimate spokesman for the interests of the "Palestinian people" in October. In exchange for his own loyalty and guarantees that the PLO will no longer be anyone and overthrow, and will direct the edge of the struggle in the direction of the West and Israel, Arafat secured stable funding. The oil sheikhs of the Gulf countries and Saudi Arabia pledged to deduct Palestinian 1974 percent from their salaries of every Palestinian worker in their territory as a compulsory “collection for the needs of the PLO” and, moreover, to make sponsor contributions to the Fund of the Palestinian People’s Control, which personally controlled Arafat, regular .
The growth of Arafat’s personal well-being and corruption in the ranks of the PLO did not disturb his Arab sponsors; payment for loyalty does not involve interference with the internal distribution of financial flows.
The “oil cats” were more worried about Arafat’s fulfillment of his obligations, but this was, to put it mildly, difficult.
Arafat’s corporate identity has always been “multi-vector”, which should be explicitly called treachery and frank scam. That is exactly what Arafat acted in relation to the USSR, without disdaining to get any help. It will take - Palestinian militants surround the Soviet embassy and seize our diplomats in Lebanon, demanding to put pressure on Syrian President Hafez Assad. It will take - Arafat becomes a dear guest in the Moscow Patriarchate. At one time, the rector of the Antioch monastery in Moscow was Archimandrite Vasily Samaha, who awarded the clergy with the Orders For Contribution to the Struggle of the Arab People.
Needless to say, that Arafat behaved in exactly the same way with respect to the monarchies of the Persian Gulf? In 1990, at the time of the exacerbation of the “Kuwaiti issue”, Arafat played along with Saddam Hussein, calling for an “intra-Arab” solution to the conflict. Meanwhile, his entourage supplied Saddam with intelligence that allowed Iraq to plan the invasion. The gratitude of Saddam Hussein was not long in coming: he declared that he was ready to leave Kuwait if "Israel liberates Palestine and a Palestinian state will be created there." In December 1990, Arafat justifies the annexation of Kuwait and states that the PLO "does not have the moral right to be in the same coalition with Egypt and Saudi Arabia, as they spin in the American orbit of influence."
In Tunisia, 14 January 1991, was destroyed by Abu Iyad, Arafat’s deputy. The killer was a Pakistani. Arafat was still needed, its elimination did not meet the interests of Israel, or the interests of the United States, for which Arafat was a "negotiable figure", or the interests of Saudi Arabia. But people who were loyal to anyone, but not Arafat, have already entered his circle. Now he was given only the role of a symbol of Palestinian resistance, the only thing left to play was to sign a treaty with Israel, and the need for Arafat disappeared. Palestinians recognized Israel’s right to exist, and Israel committed itself to promoting the gradual establishment of the state of Palestine.
After that, in the mid-nineties, Arafat had already become a burden, and first of all for Islamic fundamentalists.
His speeches against terror, his approval of the antiterrorist campaign of the United States and NATO against Al-Qaida and the Taliban, against extremists in the Palestinian movement itself made the question of his “departure” only a matter of time. The symbol is more convenient to have in the dead, no matter how cynical it sounded: less hassle.
The “Arabic” and “Islamist” trail in Arafat's poisoning, therefore, looks like a far more logical assumption than the “Israeli” version. The attempts to declare Arafat a Moroccan Jew, as was done in YSir Arafat and the Zionist solution to the Palestinian crisis, published in 2004 year, shortly before his death, serve as an indirect confirmation of this. Written, by the way, by Dr. Razi Hussein, secretary of the Fatah legal and political office.
But there is another trace, which is absolutely necessary to say. And it is connected with another "secret" biography of Arafat - money.
In March 2003, the Palestinian leader ranked sixth in the “Rating of Kings, Queens and Rulers,” published by Forbes magazine. His personal fortune was estimated at 300 of millions of dollars, which caused specialists with malicious smiles and a desire to understand the question. A few months later, the International Monetary Fund published information that only with its financial assistance, Arafat received 900 million dollars in just 3 of the year - from 1997 to 2000. According to various sources, the USSR alone spent the “Palestinian cause” from 400 to 700 million dollars.
Well, when Arafat received recognition in the West as “the political representative of the Palestinian people,” it allowed him to expand the broadest economic activity.
And not only legal: South Lebanon, for control of which the PLO fought bitterly with other competitors, has always been one of the world's largest drug plantations.
One of the most mysterious figures surrounded by Arafat was the mysterious Syrian - however, did the Syrian? .. - Al-Kassar, who managed to shine in the most puzzling nodes of the secret trade weapons and drugs, secret diplomacy and terrorism. Starting with the Lockerbie affair, the explosion of a passenger Boeing over Scotland, organized by the secret service of Muammar Gaddafi, and ending with the dizzying American Iran-Contra scam, also known as Irangate.
In January, 1994, the Spanish authorities released Al-Kassar from preliminary detention for extremely humane circumstances - to visit a “seriously ill beloved brother” in Syria. But cynical analysts did not believe the dying brother in the delivery of soup version. They noted that the PLO’s money-laundering specialist, the “gun baron” and at the same time the mediator of the US Central Intelligence Agency, were actually released so that he could mediate in connection with the Palestinian-Israeli negotiations on the autonomy of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
The Manhattan Center for Studies on Corruption and the Power of Law published in the early nineties an 400-page study on the economic activities of the PLO. Judging by this work, back in July, 1991, this organization was the richest terrorist structure.
The PLO’s “laundry” alone, operating in the UK under the guise of the Pakistani Bank of Credits and Commerce, had about 10 billions in accounts, and in the early nineties, the PLO’s annual income, made up of racketeering, drugs and the arms trade, reached one to two billion dollars annually . An even louder scandal broke out in 2000: a group of British hackers broke into the PLO network and found out that its top had invested a total of 50 billions of dollars in various foreign firms.
A list of firms whose shares belonged to Arafat and his entourage was published. Among them are Mercedes-Benz, the airlines of the Maldives and Guinea-Bissau, the Greek shipping company, banana plantations and diamond mines in Africa. According to European sources, the PLO leader owned hotels in Spain, Italy, France, Switzerland and Austria. The piquancy of the case was also added by the information on the PLO leader’s investments in the Israeli economy. It is known, for example, that 4,6 million dollars Arafat and his entourage invested in the American group “Canaan Partners”, which specializes in investments in Israeli high-tech industries.
Six months before Arafat’s death, the French authorities announced a possible criminal investigation into the financial crimes of his wife Suha. According to the prosecutor of the Paris court, since the end of 2003, one of the French anti-money laundering government agencies have been actively collecting data on money transfers to two Paris accounts at Suha totaling 11,5 million dollars. They came from a certain company registered in Switzerland.
Arafat took the secrets of his own contributions with him. Or he was helped by those who, besides him, could dispose of them. They and the banks in which Arafat kept his “accumulations” won so much from the death of the leader of the Palestinian resistance that they are quite worthy to take first place in the list of suspects ...
We are unlikely to soon become aware of the true motives of Arafat's poisoning. It is the motives, because the performers do not matter, yes, by and large, and uninteresting.
The late Palestinian leader lived in all his “secret lives” in contact with such secrets, with such underside of the reality of international relations, intelligence games and secret diplomacy, that with his longevity he only confirmed his own reputation as one of the most extraordinary and mysterious figures of the past century.
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