The scandal surrounding allegations made by Farouq al Qaddoumi against the Palestinian Authority (PA) leadership continues to make waves across the Palestinian political landscape.
Qaddoumi heads the PLO politburo and Fateh’s Central Committee. Last week he released a document that implicated current PA president Abu Mazen and his henchman Mohammed Dahlan in Israeli intentions to poison former PA president Yasser Arafat. The damning allegations were a frontal attack on the legitimacy of Abu Mazen and Dahlan, who remains a powerful, albeit controversial figure in its backrooms, despite not currently holding any governmental position. Qaddoumi’s allegations have weight to them because he is one of the last remaining, heavy-hitting Palestinian revolutionary figures from the era when the PLO was established, and one of a handful of surviving founders of Fateh. The allegations also cast a shadow over the upcoming August 4 Fateh Conference to be held in Bethlehem, raising questions about the extent to which the matter will genuinely be investigated internally, and if needed, whether Abu Mazen and Dahlan will be held accountable by the party’s base.
It is first necessary to update developments in this case to see where things have been heading.
The pan-Arab satellite channel Al Jazeera conducted a live interview with Qaddoumi on July 16 in which he reiterated that the document he presented was indeed genuine. Qaddoumi claimed he had hoped to release the document at the upcoming Fateh Conference but was forced to release it now because Abu Mazen decided – in an illegitimate and unilateral manner, according to Qaddoumi – to hold the conference in the West Bank. Qaddoumi argues that this essentially prevents members from Fateh who live outside of Palestine from participating in the conference. Elements of the diasporic Palestinian leadership, including Qaddoumi, refused to return to Palestine in 1993 after the signing of the Oslo Accords, because they fundamentally disagreed with them. Qaddoumi also objects to holding the conference in areas where Israeli occupation troops essentially do as they please – entering and arresting who they want – though nominally Bethlehem is under PA control. The concern over holding the conference in Bethlehem extends beyond Qaddoumi though, as elements of the movement are still wanted by Israel and fear arrest if the conference is actually held there. Rumors have circulated that Abu Mazen is extending invitations and using his influence with Israel to have his loyalists who reside outside Palestine, return for the conference, as a means to consolidate his supporting camp within the party.
A couple of other pieces of information have also been thrown into the mix.
Qaddoumi still refuses to reveal how he obtained the minutes of the secret meeting in which the plan to poison Arafat was supposedly hatched. But he does claim to have spoken to Arafat about it, confirming receipt of the document. Qaddoumi apparently tried to convince Arafat to leave the country, but the latter insisted on dying like a martyr without turning back on his beliefs.
Other Arabic news sources are reporting separate interviews with Qaddoumi in which the latter has threatened to release more information, saying, “Now I say to them [the Fateh Executive Committee and the Central Committee, who have harshly criticized Qaddoumi for airing the document:] ‘what would be your response if I released an audio recording in the voice of President Arafat based upon his [posthumous] request, in which he says the same things that I have said?’”
Qaddoumi has yet to release any new evidence. But if he indeed has an audio recording of Arafat, it would certainly raise the stakes for all concerned, adding weight to his allegations, which by nature are difficult to substantiate. Rather than clarify matters, Qaddoumi’s allegations have tended to throw up a lot of other questions surrounding how he got the meeting minutes in the first place, why he waited so long to release them, and what he intends to get out of the whole affair.
In this regard, Qaddoumi’s allegations appear to re-enforce pre-existing divisions in the Palestinian political theater, with PA stalwarts defending Abu Mazen, and the political opposition, primarily Hamas, believing they have credence.
Inside Fateh – where it really matters - the picture is murkier. Five branches of the Al Aqsa Martyr Brigades, Fateh’s armed wing in the West Bank and Gaza, released a joint statement on July 18 in which they pledge allegiance to Qaddoumi and support maneuvers to remove Abu Mazen and Dahlan from the leadership of the party and the PA. But the party’s main organs remain in the hands of Abu Mazen, who has used them to paint Qaddoumi as a senile relic of a bygone era. The PA leadership has also been supported by more independent figures who defend the innocence of the current Palestinian leadership.
Mahmoud Damra, one of Arafat’s personal body guards during his besiegement in the Muqata’a and currently a prisoner in Israel, and Arafat’s former political adviser Bassam Abu Sharif, have both rejected the claim that Abu Mazen had anything to do with Arafat’s death.
Abu Sharif suggested the intriguing theory that Arafat was indeed poisoned, but the work was all Israel’s. He claims that Israel knew Arafat was taking medication at the time and at one point stopped an ambulance headed to deliver his serum. After briefly detaining the ambulance staff, Israel replaced Arafat’s authentic medication with one that contained poison, eventually leading to its ingestion by the leader and his eventual death. Abu Sharif has referenced similar Israeli assassination methods in the past, including the killing of the legendary Palestinian guerrilla figure Wadi’ Haddad in Iraq in the 1977 with a box of poisoned Belgian chocolates, passed through an Israeli collaborator. The poison resulted in a degenerative blood illness, which eventually killed Haddad in similar mysterious circumstances. There is also the well-known case of how the Israeli Mossad tried to use poison to kill Hamas chief Khaled Mishal in Jordan in 1997. Mishal survived the assassination only because the Israeli operatives were embarrassingly caught, and Israel was forced to provide an antidote in exchange for their release.
The volley of PA counter attacks against Qaddoumi has been incessant. Al Jazeera reports that Abu Mazen is preparing to gather the existing members of the PLO Executive Committee to remove Qaddoumi from his post in the PLO. Further preparations are underway to use the convening of Fateh’s conference to remove him from Fateh’s Central Committee. There are even reports that the PA pressured Jordan to expel Qaddoumi from the country, to Syria.
The PA also ordered Al Jazeera closed for three days for publicizing the Qaddoumi affair, though it was by no means the only television station to do so. It seems that Abu Mazen wished to send Al Jazeera a message not to use its broad and powerful reach to sway opinion in the run up to the conference, while also sending a forceful message to local Palestinian media, not to investigate and report on the affair. Most local media (besides those associated with Hamas) have toed the line, resulting in much of the Arabic media discussion on the matter deriving from outside the borders of territorial Palestine.
Indeed Abu Mazen, together with his Prime Minister Salam Fayyad (a former World Bank and IMF official) are trying to run a tight ship in the West Bank, cracking down on any buds of dissent to their control over the territory. They are aided in their task by a new PA crack force trained in Jordan under U.S. General Keith Dayton. Each member is vetted by Israel to make sure they have a “clean” resumé. Hamas claims that more than 1100 of its members are currently held in PA detention facilities – about a tenth the number of prisoners held in Israeli jails.
The content of Qaddoumi’s document is indeed difficult to verify. Many of the basic elements of the document are not in fact new: we know the PA leadership meets on high levels to discuss “security matters,” and that this issue became of primary importance to the Palestinian leadership after the Intifada began, and especially since Hamas took control over Gaza in June 2007. “Security” is a euphemism for the PA monitoring Palestinian political factions and ensuring that no militant activity takes place against Israel and its occupation. Many Palestinians already see this as a form of collaboration with Israel, not only because Israel fails to recognize any Palestinian national rights, while continuing its occupation, building Jewish settlements, demolishing homes, confiscating land etc., but also because Israel has simply killed over 6000 Palestinians since the Intifada began, and it is hardly the time to cooperate on “security matters” with those who are killing the Palestinian popular leadership.
One way to parse what’s going on is to read Qaddoumi’s document carefully. Abu Mazen’s participation in the discussion is not actually as incriminating as one might think.
Former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is the one who raises the issue of killing Arafat and other resistance leaders. Abu Mazen plays a kind of restraining role to Sharon, essentially arguing that neither the marginalization of Arafat nor brute force will deter the resistance or help anyone. The only way to control the situation is to have Palestinians control their affairs and to get the Israeli army out of Palestinian cities.
This raises the possibility of tactics in negotiations, which could be playing out here as well, if the document is genuine.
The PA was most interested at the time in winning time, and hopefully an Israeli withdrawal on the ground. Dahlan and Abbas’ interventions in the discussion, though cynical and seemingly treasonous, are consistent in pushing for this end. Perhaps they presumed that Sharon anyway would act as he pleased, defending what he saw as Israel’s interests. The PA needed to bring about an Israeli withdrawal, so they could reorganize their ranks, which were severely fragmented by Israel’s blows. I don’t even see it as beyond Arafat to have sent Abu Mazen and Dahlan to the meeting with these directives in the first place, allowing them to say what needed to be said to bring about this desired result. He couldn’t have done so himself. But Dahlan and Abu Mazen could. Such short term opportunism characterized Arafat’s leadership style, as long as the movement (and his leadership over it) was able to survive.
In any respect, Israel’s strategy to extinguish the Intifada relied upon shaking the Palestinian leadership, showing them ‘who’s boss’, eliminating any ‘rebellious’ nationalist figures through assassination or imprisonment, and simply playing on the contradictions that emerged within the Palestinian elite as it struggled for its survival.
In this regard, it is difficult to assess how seriously Abu Mazen and Dahlan aspired to take advantage of Israeli maneuvers to prepare the ground for taking power from Arafat. No doubt Abu Mazen and Dahlan both had interests in pushing Arafat out of the way. And the tension did spill over to the extent that Abu Mazen in fact did resign as Prime Minister, because he believed he was not getting enough power from Arafat. But the question remains whether the duo would go the length of cooperating with Israel towards that end. Israel’s maneuvers – including the assassination of resistance leaders from other factions, as well as from within Fateh – no doubt make Abu Mazen and Dahlan passive benefactors of Israel’s policies. But this is also not the same as participation in murder.
Time will tell what comes of the affair, and all eyes are set on what happens at Fateh’s conference. If Abu Mazen and his crew are able to assert leadership and control over the party, Qaddoumi and his allegations will be buried in history. But if elements of the party are determined to raise what happened in the waning days of Arafat’s rule, sticky questions will remain that threaten to split the party. Much will depend upon the composition of the conference itself, and to what extent Fateh opposition figures are allowed to participate. Additionally you have the movement’s most popular figure (Marwan Barghouti) sitting in an Israeli prison serving out a five-life term sentence, whose opinion is likely to have substantial weight in determining the trajectory of coming developments.
Toufic Haddad
Toufic Haddad is a Palestinian-American writer based in Jerusalem. He is the co-author and editor of Between the Lines: Readings in Israel, the Palestinians and the U.S ’War on Terror’ (Haymarket Books, 2007, co-written with Israeli author Tikva Honig-Parnass). His writings ...
Read more about Toufic Haddad ->
More on these topics:
abu mazen, arafat assassination, dahlan, farouq al qaddoumi, poison
mohammed jhad . says:
One of the security chiefs in the west wing of the Fatah movement:
Traditionally Arab intelligence in dealing with these matters to settle accounts among themselves and Jordan did not participate since 2005 in the factional talks in Cairo, so that Kaddoumi issued a note from Jordan's attempts to assassinate some leaders of the Jordanian intelligence repeatedly, including the role in which the deputy commander of Storm forces "in favor of a tiger," which was very late Mstaa life and Homassab, asthma, the role of both the Jordanian and Syrian regimes and their partnership in the liquidation of the Fatah movement of Yasser Arafat and the role of the conspirator in the interest of some, there is not any real evidence so far of the involvement of Dahlan and Abu Mazen This process only the diversion of some cards, counterfeit and which does not pass across the real evidence that the conversion of matter to the criminal lab, or an international English is necessary because it will be on the basis of knowledge of the killing of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri, because the same network, if any extensions are in the arenas of Lebanese, Syrian, Jordanian and British ??? .
From : dpras194@yahoo.com
Reveals details of future Arab Arafat had been poisoned by a former Palestinian security service
Future Arab
Information published by the "Arab future" Today, based on previously published agency "Quds Press" on 24/9/2007, as published at the time a very serious scientific report, disclosed the information and scientific analysis, how he was poisoned, the former Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, The that the head of a former Palestinian security apparatus, which is the poisoned.
Here is the text of the report which was published on 24/9/2007, which increased the need to re-read it after the bomb exploded by Farouk Kaddoumi Almrkazhoyp Secretary of the Committee of the Movement "Fatah", aligned along the popular sense, and previous scientific reports, based on this time to record a formal meeting :
Not too long ago, specifically on Thursday, 7/12/2006 arrived in the British team to achieve the highest level of Israeli security agencies to assist the British in the disclosure about the circumstances surrounding the poisoning of former Russian intelligence officer Alexander Litvinenko, in fact to cover up the involvement of Israel and its ambassador in Gaza Arafat had been poisoned. This was to be the natural and the emergence of one of the names of the Israelis in the records of the investigation, a Jewish billionaire Leonid Nevzlin is known as one of the biggest arms dealers in the world and as one of the largest contributors in the oil company Yukos, which was the prison director on the issue of Jewish Khodorkovsky embezzlement and tax evasion and others from the Department of that company because they have been physical liquidation of their competitors.
All those figures that are reported on the close relationship with British intelligence and the Jewish millionaire fugitive from Russian justice Berezovsky from London to make room for the exercise of special operations distort the image of Russia in general and in particular its President Putin ... And the strange thing is that all of them support the Chechen leadership, abroad and ally with them and led by the Chechen leader Ahmed Zakayev, who obtained political asylum is also a close friend of Berezovsky and his entourage.
We turn here to the Palestinian scene in that episode is that Leonid Nevzlin is a close personal friend of the President of Shaul Mofaz, a former Palestinian security apparatus loyal.
Period before the assassination of Arafat, the Palestinian security chief had earlier left for Britain as we learned of the study or the like, but in fact it was the President of the Palestinian security apparatus had left earlier in the task of a special kind of preparation for the assassination of Arafat and to obtain polonium and Litvinenko was held in London to coordinate and measure by arms dealer Leonid Nevzlin.
Problem in a half-life of polonium with radioactive and toxic material is very short, which is about 134 days and almost toxic dose sufficient to kill any human being is one millionth of a gram sense if we divide the grain of aspirin for five hundred thousand times it is this part enough to kill any human being, and it shows symptoms of poisoning after a week or so in the case of Litvinenko's poisoning was one swallow ten gram.
To use this poison in the assassination need to train so it does not catch performing the task, and so as not to show symptoms of radiation and is disclosed on the one hand and ordered him to follow the technical rules Ojoi in the conservation and use of that article the other hand, requires all of this time of the study to the President of the Palestinian security apparatus earlier in London.
This was the first point and second point is the emergence of symptoms of poisoning of President Arafat before the end of the half-life of polonium in the case if the head of a former Palestinian security received during his mission in London, and is very serious, polonium is difficult to detect the security checkpoints at airports and border posts, because radiation source must be at a distance of no more than 2 cm from the detection of radioactive materials to be able to capture most damage.
The third point is that the relationship between Litvinenko and Berezovsky, Nevzlin and Shaul Mofaz and Palestinian security chief and a former operating rooms required in London and Tel Aviv, and the truth about why the calculated Dahlan, the Egyptian government to account, without exaggeration, and why has all this love and affection to him by the tripartite Israeli forces in the country.
Here I would like to introduce the reader to note ...
First symptoms of polonium poisoning is not known only in Russia, America and Britain.
It was not being poisoned by that article, only one of Madame Curie Nobel Prize winner for the study of radioactive materials and also of poisoning her husband and her daughters in that article and this happened over a century ago .. If the symptoms of polonium poisoning is not known, however, the scope is too narrow.
In the case of President Arafat is believed to have been poisoned ppm per dose of polonium and radiation detectors can not detect radioactivity of that amount only in the case of close proximity of the article .. Before the end of half-life of the material.
The process of Arafat's coffin in the form of concrete in order to facilitate the transfer of his tomb to Jerusalem and buried them as recommended .. That ploy did not fool the experts in criminology and radioactivity .. But the fear that one doubts that Arafat had been poisoned by order of radioactive materials, and the state of the body of a close Bkashif of radioactivity found the truth .. As is known to all that concrete to isolate the degree of radioactivity as a nuclear reactor built with large concrete blocks Factory with isolators.
On that point I will at the end of the matter is purely scientific information to be a clearer picture of the reader.
Nevzielen one is required to Russia and accused of trying to assassinate Putin Nfazlin and also admitted in an interview with a German newspaper that he had met with Litvinenko in Britain and even odder that in September 2004 and is the poisoning of Arafat's closest friends died of President Putin Aaerati-known businessman and director of the Institute for the Baltic - Escort Tsepov Raman result of poisoning is not the time to know the causes and symptoms of poisoning similar to those which appeared on the Litvinenko and Arafat.
Here I would like to recall the statement of both the Israeli Foreign Ministry, which issued after the security cabinet meeting of the Council on 14/07 / 2004 it was announced that Israel is preparing for the death of Arafat, and participate in this preparedness of several ministries and the Israeli statement was issued two months before the poisoning in Arafat's almost time been given the green light to the process of poisoning.
Drawing attention to the corner and is the subject of polonium itself even without the offer of proof is the fact that every reader would an effort to link dates, interviews, events and up to those details, but did not discuss any of the past in this direction.
Returning to figure Nfazlin for clarifying the key to this puzzle more.
Nfzielen As is known, wanted in Russia, had not received Israeli citizenship, and Israel to extradite the Russian authorities, but for his Israeli citizenship prior to the period of legal requirements.
Dispute erupted in the Knesset, the Israeli legal waiver to grant Israeli citizenship Nfazlin. Silencing was a member of the Labor Party Knesset Colette Avital .. Demanded at a meeting of the Knesset clarification on the circumstances of speeding up access to the Leonid Nfzielen Israeli passport - Darcn.
According to information from a lawyer close to the famous Israeli Arnon Perelman that Sharansky has provided assistance to Nfazlin, which he submitted to Sharon that he is will help us to get rid of Arafat, but should help him not to fall into the hands of the Russians and give him sexual In overnight turned Nfazlin Sharon's view of the suspicious person to the political and patriotic, and after the poisoning of Arafat, has become the closest of friends of Sharon ..
It was in that Convention to be the subject of the management of poisoning Arafat, outside of Israel, with the participation of the parties to a Palestinian. Here, in a meeting with the President of Shaul Mofaz, a former Palestinian security apparatus has been to change the venue of the meeting, delegates Betoak ..
Herzliya Villa Nfazlin Betoak has paid 4 million dollars and was the meeting as a first step to realizing the dream of Sharon to get rid of the martyr President Yasser Arafat.
Some readers will say nothing to the President and a former Palestinian security apparatus is the subject matter was far from Arafat because of the deteriorating relationship between them, and here I would like to draw the attention of the reader that President Yasser Arafat met with the head of a former Palestinian security apparatus of reconciliation, since Monday 23 AH 07-07-1425 -08-2004 pm until Wednesday, 25-08-2004 m three times, was probably poisoned on Tuesday. On the day, followed by the Palestinian Legislative Council adopted a recommendation calling for the formation of a Palestinian government capable of achieving reform programs approved by the Legislative Council and the President talked about Yasser Arafat, where they began to show symptoms of poisoning on the president.
After the arrival of Scotland Yard investigation team to Moscow to discuss the circumstances of the former Russian intelligence officer, to question some of Litvinenko and Russian dignitaries who met him by poisoning .. Began to unfold many threads, including murder and poisoning of Roman Tsepov friend, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Arafat had been poisoned, after making sure of the involvement in one form or another Nfazlin these crimes .. To learn what the Israeli security services change the course of the investigation quickly so that an Israeli team to travel to London on Thursday, 7/12/2006 for talks with British intelligence and the known (MI6), which was in turn had been invited to the President of a former Palestinian security apparatus to receive the session in Britain responded and said that he had traveled to the study .. When Israel felt that the Russians and the British revealed the fact Arafat had been poisoned, and that there is evidence of involvement in the killing of Arafat and the President during the Nfazlin a former Palestinian security apparatus .. Quickly a deal with the Russians by the British, was a tentative agreement, which Nfazlin extradition to the Russian authorities and, by contrast, allow for four Israeli citizens are in Russian prisons that spend their sentences in Israeli prisons. It is known that Putin is ready to do anything to arrest the Nfazlin.
Here we come to several facts:
The first: that Arafat was poisoned by order of the Sharon personally and Altoatie the U.S. (and as confirmed by the French writer, Uri Dan, Sharon, in his book).
The second fact: that Arafat was poisoned with polonium in view of the symptoms and facts presented above.
Third truth: that the implementation was by the dreamer Authority Palestinian security chief said.
Here you add some information on the radioactive material that some would find the answer to the questions may be relevant:
To reduce the gamma to ten (capacity of 2 million volts Electron), it is necessary thickness of 48 cm of water or 25 cm of armed concrete, or 6.7 cm of iron, 4.3 cm of lead. While 1 cm of aluminum to stop the collection of protons and electrons emanating from the radioactive elements. The damage to the gamma radiation is less harmful than the neutron b 50 times.
When we talk about plutonium, which is less radioactive than uranium, and the quantity of the article (which poisoned by the President) in the amount not to exceed one million by the gram, I think we understand what that means.
As for the incidence of radiation:
The impact of radiation associated with many age and health of the patient. Be more dangerous for the ray cells, newly formed, and constitute a greater danger to women in the period of adolescence, and some parts of the body more sensitive to radiation than others, such as: nerve cells, through the intestine, kidney, blood, genitals, liver, gene ... etc..
The danger of radiation is that they enter into the nucleus of a living cell and destroy the entire contents of the Register, particularly the genetic (DNA) and thus become the madwoman in the cell can be divided into new cells that could carry out its functions, the major risk of red blood cells that do not contain a nucleus and therefore when they die can not be renewed and, most seriously affected if radiation centers to generate the red cells in the spleen or bone marrow. The nerve cells are not inherently capable of division, causing a great danger, the white cells when they become lost and become immune human rights like the AIDS patient can not resist the bacteria.
Difficult to detect radiation, it is without color or smell or taste can not be recognized by the human touch, though, some people feel Bokhoz when it reaches the level of radiation to the skin over the 10 Rad.
Most of the radiation entering the human body through the mouth and breathing, it is difficult to enter via the skin. One of the most important consequences of the high-level radiation on humans are: nausea - vomiting - bloody - diarrhea - anemia - memory loss - weight loss - loss of appetite for food - Khawar forces - bleaching hair - visual impairment - an early age - twice the capacity of nationality -- redness of the skin .. Etc..
Been many studies and tests in the world on the impact of radiation doses to the various organisms and the development of standards and terminology, such as (LD-50) means the dose of radiation that lead to the death of 50% of the subjects under test and exposed to radiation, and a term (LD_50/30), which means radiation dose necessary to lead to the death of 50% of the organisms under the test set during the 30 days.
(ANI 24/9/2007)
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Bob Hougland says:
Regarding Farouq al Qaddoumi's scenario as to Yasser Arafat's demise, it is more likely that the Israeli tanks that had Arafat surrounded and trapped at his headquarters for days set up a radar triangulation pattern aimed directly on Arafat's office and desk. The adverse health symptoms manifested by Arafat before he died were those of a person who had been microwaved. This approach to killing Arafat would have been the choice strategy for the Israeli Defense Forces to use, as it eliminated the alternative of a direct armored attack to demolish the headquarters with Arafat trapped inside; and the surreptitious technological approach also precluded all the world criticism Israel would have gotten had it used a militarized wipeout of Arafat in his highly disadvantaged and vulnerable position at the time. The use of radar was efficient, effective, and surreptitious--just the way the Israelis like to operate, having gained such an advantage over any opponent who poses a major threat politically and otherwise to Israel's establishment of the Greater Israel and its imperial dominance over the Middle East and Islam.