PA libel: Israel murdered Arafat by poisoning him with Polonium

Fatah Central Committee member and Chairman of the PA-supported Yasser Arafat Foundation Nasser Al-Qidwa: "Israel is the one that poisoned Yasser Arafat and that is the cause of his death… From the first moment, we as an organization and as the Palestinian leadership have said this death is not a natural death. This death is a political assassination that Israel decided to carry out. Afterwards we learned that the method of the political assassination was poison, and specifically polonium-210."

Yasser Arafat – Founder of the PLO and Fatah, former chairman of the PA. During the 1960s, 70s and 80s Arafat was behind numerous terror attacks against Israelis. Although he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994 together with then Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and then Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs Shimon Peres “for their efforts to create peace in the Middle East" after signing the Oslo Accords peace agreement, Arafat launched a 5-year terror campaign - the second Intifada (2000-2005) – in which more than 1,000 Israelis were murdered. Arafat died of an illness in 2004. However, following his death, the PA created the libel that Israel murdered Arafat, and it has been spreading it since. In 2012, samples were taken from Arafat’s remains and tested for poisoning by Swiss, Russian, and French teams of scientists. The Swiss team concluded that the tests were "coherent with a hypothesis of poisoning" - but a member of the team also stated that "our study did not permit us to demonstrate categorically the hypothesis of poisoning by polonium." The Russian scientists concluded that "there was insufficient evidence to support the theory that Yasser Arafat died in 2004 by polonium poisoning." [Reuters, Nov. 8, 2013] In March 2015, three French judges ruled that "it has not been demonstrated that Mr. Yasser Arafat was murdered by polonium-210 poisoning." The French prosecutor stated that there was "not sufficient evidence of an intervention by a third party who could have attempted to take his life." [France 24, Sept. 2, 2015] The French prosecutor also explained that the polonium and lead found in Arafat’s grave were “of an environmental nature.” [Jerusalem Post, March 17, 2015]. Despite these results, the PA continues to blame Israel for Arafat’s death without any proof or backing for this claim. Links to the libel on PMW website: https://palwatch.org/database/10 https://palwatch.org/page/12313 https://palwatch.org/page/5505