Arafat Dead

[honeychile]

It's finally official - Yassar Arafat is dead.

So, where does that leave us? Has any one person stepped up as the "heir apparent" or can we expect yet another war in the Middle East?

The Palestinian constitution states that the Speaker of the Palestinian House of Representatives assumes temporary power until elections are held 60 days from now.

[AlphaSigOU]

Methinks there's gonna be a nasty power struggle over in the Palestinian Authority over who's gonna take over the HMFIC post Arafat just vacated. HAMAS and Hezbollah want a piece of the action big time, the Israelis are just waiting in the wings to see who's left after the bullets stop flying in Ramallah.

[Rudey]

The speaker is a figurehead without any power.

Ahmed Q. has the power now with Abbas.

http://www.honestreporting.com/m/legacy.asp

-Rudey

[Rudey]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/07/op...20L%20Friedman

November 7, 2004
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Footprints in the Sand
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

It is a sad but fitting coda to Yasir Arafat's career that the prospect of his death seemed to unlock more hope and possibilities than the reality of his life.

His corrupt, self-interested rule had created a situation whereby Palestinian aspirations seemed to have gotten locked away with him, under house arrest in Ramallah, well beyond the reach of creative diplomacy. Only human biology could liberate them again - and so it has.

In the early 1990's, I sided with those Israelis who, though no fans of Arafat, were ready to deal with him at Oslo in the name of normalcy for both Israelis and Palestinians. But once it became clear, after the collapse of the Camp David talks, that no deal was possible with Arafat, I wished for his speedy disappearance. He was a bad man, not simply for the way he introduced a whole new level of terrorism to world politics, but because of the crimes he committed against his own people. There, history will judge him very harshly.

Google is a wonderful tool. I spent time the other day Googling every variation I could of the words: "Yasir Arafat and Palestine and education." I couldn't come up with a single speech, or even full paragraph, in which Arafat laid out his vision for how Palestinians would educate their youth and nurture their talents. Maybe all his speeches on that subject were never translated from Arabic. Or maybe they just don't exist - because this was never his priority. His obsession was with Palestinian "land," not Palestinian "life." Google the words "Yasir Arafat and martyrdom and jihad," and the matches go on for pages.

After every defeat, Arafat stood on the ruins and flashed a victory sign. While his wife lived in Paris and his cronies lined their pockets, two generations of Palestinians remained in their poverty and displacement, because he never had the courage to tell them the truth: "Palestine will have to be divided with the Jews forever. We must make the best final deal we can over the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem - without double talk about getting the rest later - and then build the finest society that we can." Had he ever given that speech - in Arabic - had he ever adopted the nonviolence of Gandhi, Arafat would have had three Palestinian states by now - Israel's reckless settlements notwithstanding.

The fact that he didn't was not a mistake in judgment but an expression of character. For him, it was better to die in Paris, and have two generations of Palestinians die in exile, than be the Arab leader who officially and unambiguously agreed to share Jerusalem with the Jews. I can understand why stateless Palestinians would revere Arafat for the way he put their cause on the world map - but that became an end for him rather than a means, which is why his historical impact will be as lasting as a footprint in the desert.

Arafat's exit from the stage, combined with the downfall of Saddam Hussein, is a real moment of opportunity for the Arab world: Under Saddam and Arafat, Iraqi and Palestinian nationalisms were devoid of any positive agenda for developing all the men and women in those two societies. They were focused on the negative agendas of resisting outsiders and buying more weapons than computers - because that is what served their one-man rulers. This negative nationalism kept their people mobilized, externally focused and never able to ask about education budgets, let alone democracy. As the Arabic saying went, "No voice should be louder than the battle." And no voices were louder in insisting on that than Arafat's and Saddam's.

But if you have societies held together by a voluntary social contract among its constituent populations, and by institutions, you don't need one-man rule. You don't need to mobilize the whole society around resistance to outsiders. And you don't need the suppression of every group in the society, other than the tribe of the one-man ruler - with all the violence and extremism that such suppression brings.

And that's why so much is riding on how Palestinians and Iraqis replace the one-man rulers who so distorted their societies. Will they each use this moment to hold elections and build a bridge to a society of institutions and laws, or will they simply build a bridge to another one-man ruler? If it is the latter, then the U.N. is going to continue putting out reports about the lack of human development in the Arab world. If it is the former, I am certain that within a decade when you Google the words "Iraq, Palestine, educational innovation and scientific breakthroughs," you will actually come up with some matches.

-Rudey

[Rudey]

Now that Arafat is dead, will his fat wife keep the money he stole from the Palestinian people?

Nov. 9, 2004 14:10
Arafat- Where's the money?
By ASSOCIATED PRESS

In his four decades as Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat has run a murky financial empire that includes far-flung PLO investments in airlines, banana plantations and high-tech companies, and money hidden in bank accounts across the globe.

Jaweed al-Ghussein, a former PLO finance minister, told The Associated Press it was worth $3 billion to $5 billion when he quit in 1996. No one will say how much it's worth now - some estimates say as little as a few million. But as 75-year-old Arafat fights for life in a hospital near Paris, Palestinians fear that what's left will disappear or be pocketed by Arafat cronies.

"It's the money of the Palestinian people," said Palestinian legislator Hassan Khreishe, adding that he would urge a parliamentary investigation.

That could prove difficult.

Arafat has long resisted proper accounting for the funds, which include Arab payments to the PLO in the 1970s and 1980s, and Western aid to his self-rule government, the Palestinian Authority, after interim peace deals with Israel in the 1990s.

Arafat lived frugally, but needed large sums to maintain loyalties. He would register investments and bank accounts in the names of loyalists, both to buy their support and protect the holdings from scrutiny and seizure, said al-Ghussein.

Only Arafat had the full picture, he said, and it's not clear whether he left a will or financial records.

Arafat never divulged his finances. Pressed at a February meeting with leaders of his Fatah movement, he cut them short, saying "there are no assets," according to one participant.

Mohammed Rashid, Arafat's financial adviser, denied his boss was rich.

"Arafat has no personal property in any part in the world," he told Al-Arabiya television on Sunday. "He doesn't even have a tent, a house, an orchard or any account that we can call personal in the name of Yasser Arafat."

However, Forbes magazine ranked him No. 6 on its 2003 list of the richest "kings, queens and despots," estimating he was worth at least $300 million. Shalom Harari, a former top Israeli intelligence official, said Arafat may have stashed away up to $700 million, part of it for an emergency such as a new exile, especially with Israel threatening to expel him.

Two names frequently come up in connection with Arafat's money - Rashid and Arafat's wife, Suha.

In the past 10 years, Rashid has handled hundreds of millions of dollars in Palestinian Authority revenue Arafat diverted from the treasury - though a reformist finance minister, Salam Fayyad, said the money was invested on behalf of the Palestinian Authority and has since been restored to public control.

Suha Arafat, Arafat's wife of 13 years and mother of his daughter, lives in Paris and has received monthly payments of $100,000 from the Palestinian coffers, according to a senior official in Arafat's office. This year, French prosecutors launched a money-laundering probe into transfers of $11.4 million into her accounts. She has refused to talk to reporters about Palestinian finances.

Al-Ghussein, speaking by telephone from London, said the big money from the Arab world started flowing in 1979. For a decade, the PLO received about $200 million a year, $85 million of it from Saudi Arabia, he said.

Al-Ghussein, who headed the Palestinian National Fund, the PLO treasury, said during that period, he would hand Arafat a check for $10.25 million every month from the PLO budget, ostensibly for payments to PLO fighters and families of those killed in battle. He said Arafat refused to account for his spending, citing national security.

Much of the Arab money dried up after Arafat infuriated his patrons in 1990 by siding with Saddam Hussein during Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. But Saddam gave Arafat $150 million in three payments, Al-Ghussein said.

"It was handed to Arafat personally," said al-Ghussein, who left his job in 1996 after falling out with Arafat. In 2000, a court in the United Arab Emirates cleared him in a civil suit of stealing $6.5 million in Palestinian Authority funds.

The PLO investments are said to have ranged from an airline in the Maldives to a Greek shipping company, banana plantations, a diamond mine in Africa and real estate throughout the Arab world.

The holdings were registered in the names of dozens of Arafat loyalists, according to a retired PLO financier in Gaza and to a Palestinian economist in the West Bank who began following the money trail at the request of some Fatah officials this year. Both spoke on condition of anonymity.

A senior Palestinian Authority official with detailed knowledge of financial transactions said much of the money has been lost. Some of the companies went bankrupt. In other cases, Arafat cronies absconded with the cash. Some frontmen for PLO investments died, and the holdings passed to their families.

Others insisted the PLO still has substantial assets.

Al-Ghussein said that when he left office the money was in "numerous accounts" worldwide, but he declined to elaborate.

The West Bank economist estimated the organization had $2.5 billion to $4 billion in assets and cash.

A new source of income opened for Arafat after he established limited self-rule in parts of the West Bank and Gaza.

The international community, protective of the fledgling peace effort with Israel, donated more than $6.5 billion to the Palestinian Authority from 1994 to 2003, in the beginning with few questions asked.

Last year the International Monetary Fund reported $900 million in Palestinian Authority income never reached the treasury during the first six years of self-rule. The money, including Israeli tax rebates and revenue from monopolies on cigarettes, fuel and cement, instead went into a Tel Aviv account controlled by Arafat.

Harari, the former intelligence official, said the prime minister at the time, Yitzhak Rabin, was offended by the arrangement but was told by his advisers that Arafat needed a slush fund to suppress opposition to peace deals with Israel.

International aid officials declined to discuss PLO finances, saying they were only concerned with the Palestinian Authority's bookkeeping. Karim Nashashibi, the IMF representative in the Palestinian areas, said the $900 million has been restored to the treasury under Fayyad, who has won international praise for his work.

In the last three years, Fayyad sharply curtailed Arafat's spending powers, cutting the budget for the "president's office" from $100 million in 2002 to $43 million this year.

-Rudey

[docetboy]

Originally posted by honeychile
It's finally official - Yassar Arafat is dead.

GOOD RIDDENCE!

[IowaStatePhiPsi]

From wikipedia:
His most enduring accomplishment to date has been stealing billions of dollars from the Arab residents in West Bank and squatting in a walled compound like a rotting turd expecting world leaders to come and worship at his feet. His death is most likely the result of an AIDS infection he picked up from one of the adolescent boys he cavorted with.

[cashmoney]

Thank god...the man was a terrorist. Israel should have taken him out long ago.

[Kevin]

France finally did its part in the war on terror letting that SOB die.

Thank you France.

[Love_Spell_6]

Originally posted by ktsnake
France finally did its part in the war on terror letting that SOB die.

Thank you France.

LOL!

It is believed he went to France to die because you don't have to list a cause of death there..though everyone is already suspecting it was AIDS. I believe Chirac called Arafat a "Great Man of Courage"

[Rudey]

Originally posted by ktsnake
France finally did its part in the war on terror letting that SOB die.

Thank you France.

It's funny because France was getting upset because Arafat was in a French hospital and his wife Suha (who has been living in Paris on a $100,000 a month stipend) was using French laws to refuse to even allow the Palestinian people the right to know anything about him or to release any details (analysts said it was a power play and also a play to get money). When Suha insulted the 4 Palestinian rulers who would take power after Arafat, they refused to come until France pushed them to come because of Suha. They finally offered her a $2 million amount to allow them to see him and to release details about him.

They still haven't released the cause of death even though it's medically impossible not to know after all this time. They say it's because it was something embarassing. I had heard the AIDS thing but I thought you became really, really skinny if that was true...no?

-Rudey

[ZTAngel]

Originally posted by Rudey
I had heard the AIDS thing but I thought you became really, really skinny if that was true...no?

I'm not exactly sure if what I'm going to say is right since I'm not a doctor but, people don't die from AIDS itself; they die from the complications that come with it (sorta like Alzheimer's). Some people lose a lot of weight and some people remain a normal weight depending on the infections and complications they end up with.

[XOMichelle]

Rudey-
I've only seen one man dying with AIDS and he was very skinny. Although with AIDS, you acutally die of opportunitstic infections. I imagine that would determine what you look like more than anything else.
-M

[Peaches-n-Cream]

I have known and seen a few people with AIDS, and they became incredibly emaciated. I think that it's called wasting syndrome. They had some, if not all, of these symptoms: skin cancer, pneumonia, blindness, thrush, and digestive problems. By the end, they were hallucinating or hearing things and slipped into a coma. The last person I knew with AIDS died in 1996 so the symptoms might have changed.