A report by a
respected British medical journal the Lancet, has supported
the possibility that late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat
was poisoned with the radioactive element polonium 210.
The
journal published a peer review of last year’s research by
Swiss scientists. It backed their work, which found high
levels of the highly radioactive element in blood, urine,
and saliva stains on Arafat’s clothes and toothbrush.
The
Palestinian leader died in 2004 in a French hospital near
Paris, after being effectively confined to his West Bank
compound for two years.
In
November 2012, experts from Switzerland, France and Russia
exhumed his remains and took samples to examine for possible
poisoning. It was prompted by a documentary aired on Al-
Jazeera, that claimed there were traces of polonium in
Arafat’s personal belongings.
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The Lancet: Arafat Poisoned With Polonium 210 - 0 views
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Almost without doubt, Israel's Mossad is responsible if this report is accurate. The original article is on CCTV, but I couldn't get Diigo to highlight the article there. See http://english.cntv.cn/program/newsupdate/20131013/103230.shtml
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shared by Paul Merrell on 03 Jun 14
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"Top secret" Shin Bet memo suggested dead Arafat would benefit Israel | The Electronic ... - 0 views
electronicintifada.net/...ad-arafat-would-benefit-israel
war & peace Israel Palestine Arafat assassination Shin-Bet
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A “top secret” Israeli intelligence memo from 2000 concluded that the “disappearance” of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat would be beneficial to Israel. The memo, revealed in a book to be published this week by British-Israeli political scientist Ahron Bregman, adds evidence to support the thesis that Arafat, who died in November 2004 in a French military hospital, was assassinated. The Electronic Intifada obtained an advance copy of Bregman’s book, Cursed Victory: A History of Israel and the Occupied Territories (Penguin).
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Bregman himself is circumspect about whether Israel had a hand in Arafat’s death, but sees a number of clues, including public statements by then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon that Israel wanted him dead and was prepared to kill him. Yet Bregman finds a “clear indication that the Israelis did intend to kill Arafat” in a “Top Secret” document dated 15 October 2000 – a few months before Sharon came to power and a few weeks into the second Palestinian uprising – from the Shabak, Israel’s General Security Service (also known as Shin Bet).
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Bregman then describes the document’s reasoning and conclusions: After going through “why Arafat is necessary,” and then “why Arafat is not necessary,” the document says that “the damage [Arafat] causes is bigger than his benefits….” And the subsequent conclusion is straightforward: “7. Arafat, the person, is a serious threat to the security of the state. His disappearance outweighs the benefits of his continuing existence.” And yet, even this Shabak “Top Secret” report does not provide us with enough evidence of assassination and we will probably have to wait for more information to ascertain what really killed Arafat.
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Al Jazeera English investigative reporting since 2012 has revealed that Arafat’s personal effects contained high levels of the radioactive element polonium. Independent Swiss scientists later conducted tests on Arafat’s exhumed remains and concluded there was “moderate” support for the theory that Yasser Arafat was poisoned. While separate French and Russian scientific reports, also based on samples of Arafat’s remains, cast doubt on the conclusions by the Swiss radiation scientists at the Radiophysics Institute in Lausanne, the Swiss have hit back explaining why the French conclusions were flawed.
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The French and Russian reports – unlike the Swiss findings – were never made public, but the Swiss scientists obtained copies and have explained, in an article in the Swiss magazine Le Temps last month, why the French and Russian test results actually support their conclusions. All three reports found high levels of polonium-210 in Arafat’s body. “Not only were the levels of polonium of the same order” in all three reports, Le Temps says, “but the scientists also noted similar differences” among the samples from different parts of Arafat’s remains. The key difference was not therefore in the test results, but in the interpretation.
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The French concluded that the high level of the radioactive element was caused by radon, a naturally occurring element in the environment, but had not taken any measurements from the surrounding area to support this thesis. According to the Swiss, the French conclusion amounts to speculation. The more thorough Swiss, by contrast, did take samples from the surrounding area. Le Temps reports: “The Swiss anticipated the possible interference of radon. In their report they demolish the hypothesis. Not only was the level of radon in the sealed tomb very weak, but the soil situated under [Arafat’s] abdominal cavity, and therefore in contact with the body, was 17 times more ‘contaminated’ than soil situated far from the body.”
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The presence of radon, which would be the same throughout the area, could not possibly explain such concentrations. While the Swiss findings look stronger than ever, the debate continues. Bregman’s revelations add a new, albeit circumstantial element, showing that Israeli intelligence, which has assassinated many Palestinian leaders, saw a rationale for eliminating Arafat as well.
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shared by Paul Merrell on 25 Mar 14
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An Israeli takeover of the Palestine Authority…? - Alan Hart - 0 views
www.alanhart.net/ver-of-the-palestine-authority
war & peace Israel Palestine Egypt U.S.-foreign-policy Abbas Dahlan Palestinian-Authority
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On the face of it that’s a silly question and the speculation it represents – that Palestinian “President” Abbas could replaced by an Israeli agent or asset – is not worthy of discussion. But before dismissing it readers might do what I did and consider two things. The first is that Mohammed Dahlan, formerly one of the most powerful Fatah leaders and almost certainly the one who administered for Israel the polonium that killed Arafat, is now putting a big effort into getting rid of Abbas by one means or another and replacing him with – guess who? – himself. In passing it is interesting to note that according to a recent report in the Israeli newspaper Ma’ariv, Netanyahu’s special envoy, Yitzhak Molcho, is in a secret dialogue with Dahlan who spends his time shuttling between Cairo and the U.A.E. where he currently lives. One assumption has to be that Netanyahu is hoping that if Dahlan became “President” of the PA he would go much further than collaborator Abbas in delivering for Israel. (Also worth noting is that Dahlan speaks fluent Hebrew. He learned to do so during his 11 spells in Israeli jails between 1981 and 1986).
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The second consideration is Israel’s track record in successfully placing its agents inside Arab institutions and organizations at very high levels.
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My speculation (repeat speculation) is that if Mohammed Dahlan became the “President”, he would be prepared to use force as necessary to impose Israel’s terms for peace on the Palestinians. Dahlan demonstrated his enthusiasm for doing Israeli and American dirty work when, at the request of the Bush administration, he agreed to lead a military campaign to destroy Hamas after its election victory in 2006. The Bush administration provided Dahlan with money and arms and trained his Fatah fighters in a number of Arab countries. But it all went badly wrong for Dahlan and his sponsors. Hamas got wind of what Dahlan (fronting for the Bush administration and Israel) was intending and launched an Israeli-like pre-emptive strike. It destroyed Fatah’s security forces based in the Gaza Strip (which had been Dahlan’s base) and put Fatah politically out of business there. Commenting on what had happened in the Gaza Strip, Hani al-Hassan, for many years Arafat’s crisis manager and one of his two most trusted advisers, said it was “not a war between Fatah and Hamas but between Hamas and Fatah collaborators who served the Americans and the Israelis.”
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Subsequently the Bush administration exerted heavy pressure on Abbas (which he resisted) to appoint Dahlan as his deputy. And some Palestinian officials said that the U.S. and a number of European countries had made it clear that they would like Dahlan to succeed Abbas as head of the P.A. They presumably believed then, as Netanyahu might well do today, that Dahlan as “President” would use whatever means were necessary to compel the Palestinians to make peace on Israel’s terms. Shortly after his forces were expelled from the Gaza Strip, Dahlan re-established himself in the West Bank. And thereafter tensions between his Fatah supporters and opponents grew and grew. In June 2011 he was expelled from Fatah because of the assumption that he had delivered for Israel whatever it was that poisoned Arafat. Three months later Abbas ordered a raid on Dahlan’s house and the arrest of his private armed guards. Today in exile, and consulting with his allies in Sisi’s Egypt and some Arab Gulf states as well as Israel and America, Dahlan is plotting his comeback to replace Abbas by one means or another.
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The Ma’ariv article I mentioned above said that Dahlan has claimed that he and not Abbas can be counted on to bring peace, and that in 2010 he reportedly sent a letter to the Obama administration in which he said, “There is no choice but to replace Abbas with someone who can deliver results.” Because Dahlan must know that Israel’s leaders are not remotely interested in peace on terms the Palestinians could accept, I think it is reasonable to assume that the result he has in mind is peace imposed on Israel’s terms – effectively a Palestinian surrender to Zionism’s will. Is a Dahlan/Israeli takeover of the PA really possible? An indication that Abbas seems to think it cannot be ruled out was his request to President Obama that he press Israel to include Marwan Barghouti in the fourth and final batch of Palestinian prisoners due to be released at the end of this month. (Prisoner release was one of the inducements to secure Abbas’s green light for Secretary of State Kerry to launch his “peace process”. But today Netanyahu is under mounting pressure from the neo-fascist tendency to the right of him to say “No” to any further prisoner releases).
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Barghouti is by far the most popular Palestinian leader and would easily win an election to replace Abbas as “President”. And that, of course, is precisely why Israel won’t release him. So if Abbas can be bullied and bribed by Israel and the U.S. into lifting the ban on Dahlan’s return from exile to the occupied West Bank, he, Dahlan, could be in with a chance. In my view a victory for him would be the final betrayal of the Palestinian cause.