Israel Insists It Didn’t Poison Palestinian Leader Yasser Arafat
Image by getty images
Israel said on Thursday it did not poison Yasser Arafat, making the denial after the Palestinian leader’s widow said Swiss forensic tests had proven he died from radioactive polonium poisoning in 2004.
“We never made a decision to harm him physically,” Energy Minister Silvan Shalom, who in 2004 served as foreign minister and as a member of Israel’s security cabinet, told Israel Radio.
“In my opinion, this is a tempest in a tea cup. But even if it was (poisoning), it certainly was not Israel. Maybe someone else inside had thoughts or an interest to do it.”
In the occupied West Bank, a senior member of the Palestine Liberation Organization issued a new call for an international investigation into Arafat’s death.
The Palestinian appeal was made after the Al-Jazeera news channel on Tuesday published a Swiss scientific report based on bone samples taken from his grave last November revealing unusually high levels of the deadly polonium isotope in his body.
“This matter warrants the formation of an international judicial body to look into it and hold accountable the perpetrator,” Wasel Abu Yousef told Reuters.
“The one who had an interest in his death was the occupation (Israel),” he added.
Chief Palestinian peace negotiator Saeb Erekat made an appeal for an international tribunal over Arafat’s death last year, when the Qatar-based news channel first disclosed the presence of the polonium on the late president’s clothing.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
