Was Yasser Arafat Assassinated?

For at least two years before Yasser Arafat's death in 2004, Uri Avnery, a leading Israeli peace activist, had been warning of the possibility that the Palestinian leader could be assassinated and on the negative effect this would have on the peace process. Now, an investigation carried out by Al Jazeera reveals that Arafat's final personal belongings had abnormal levels of polonium, a rare, highly radioactive element, and that this was probably the cause of his death.

"While I am writing this, Yasser Arafat is still alive," Avnery wrote in 2002 for the Media Monitors Network. "But his life is hanging on a thread. When we visited him in his bombed out Mukata'a compound in Ramallah, I warned him that Sharon is determined to kill him... Now Sharon believes that he can achieve his aim. He needs only Bush's approval. Not necessarily a formal confirmation. A subtle hint will suffice. Half a word. A wink." Future findings and events have potentially proved him correct.

In 2006, Uri Dan, who had been Sharon's longtime confidant, published a book in France entitled "Ariel Sharon: An Intimate Portrait." The book accuses the former Prime Minister of Israel of assassinating Palestinian Authority (PA) President Yasser Arafat by poisoning him. According to Uri Dan, Sharon got President George W. Bush's approval to proceed with his assassination plan in 2004. At the time, Sharon told President Bush that he was no longer committed to "not" liquidating the Palestinian leader.

Writing for Global Research in 2007, Stephen Lendman, a recipient of a 2008 Project Censored Award from the University of California at Sonoma, stated that Dr. Ashraf Al Kurdi, Arafat's personal physician for 25 years, believed that Arafat had been poisoned. When Dr. Al Kurdi saw Arafat before he was taken to Paris, where he died on November 11, 2004, he saw a man who had los half of his body weight, had red patches on his face and a metallic yellow color all over his body.

Arafat's French doctors were unusually evasive about the cause(s) of his death. They described a very serious disorder called "Disseminated intravascular coagulation," (DIC) a pathological activation of the blood clotting mechanism that happens in response to a variety of diseases. It leads to the formation of small clots inside the blood vessels in the body, resulting in the disruption of normal blood flow to critical organs such as the kidneys.

DIC can occur in an acute way or chronically as a result of multiple organ failure leading to death. There are no effective treatment options. An interpretation of its acronym "death is coming" probably refers to this circumstance and to the high mortality associated with this condition. Arafat's French doctors refused to acknowledge the underlying cause of Arafat's death. Dr. Francois Bochud, director of the Institut de Radiophysique in Lausanne, Swizerland, where the analysis of Arafat's clothes took place confirmed that unexplained, high amounts of polonium-210 had been found in his belongings.

Arafat has not been the only political figure apparently killed by radioactive polonium. The most notorious victim was Alexander Litvinenko, a Russian spy who later became a dissident and who died in London of a lingering illness. An inquiry conducted by British intelligence later proved that he had been poisoned with polonium slipped into his tea.

There are so few recorded cases similar to these, however, that there is still no consensus about the typical symptoms. However, both Litvinenko and Arafat suffered from severe diarrhea, weight loss and vomiting in the days and weeks previous to their deaths. An American study conducted in 1991 found that the poison probably acts by activating the "vomiting center" in the brainstem.

Uri Avnery's writing in 2002 was premonitory. "The murder of Arafat is the murder of all chances for peace. That is a crime against the Israeli people. It will condemn us to making war for decades, perhaps for generations to come, perhaps forever. The moral, social and economic decline that we are experiencing now everywhere in Israel will drag Israel down to new depths and to the emigration of many." So far, events have proven him right.