Arafat; Do Palestinians Still Remember How He died?

Ghassan Bannoura – Bethlehem – PNN/exclusive – Today Palestinians marked the sixth anniversary of President Yasser Arafat death, the question I am asking, do they still remember how he died?

President Arafat Days before his death - Archive

To be honest I am not a fan, I respected him as a leader. I grew up in the 80s with him leading the Palestine Liberation Organization, and of course Israel considered him a terrorist leading a terrorist organization. A few years later, the 1993 Oslo peace deal will be signed between Arafat and Rabin, the Israeli Prime Minister killed by Israeli right-wingers two years later.

This article is not a biography on Arafat; but to understand how he died we must look in the past. I am not sure this great mystery will be solved, but let’s dig deep.

Arafat had a lot of enemies; not Palestinians only, but Arabs and Westerns. He was the only Palestinian leader to reach a deal with Israel.  Palestinian groups opposing this deal argued that it was a bad deal, to be honest the Oslo Peace Accords only made things worse, but that is just my opinion.

In 2002, Israel decided to invade all major Palestinian West Bank cities; I was starting my career as a journalist based in Bethlehem. Israeli tanks implemented a siege on Arafat and for 40 days they bombed his HQ in Ramallah and even tried to kill him. In Bethlehem things were not much better; Israeli tanks controlled the city and nearby towns and implemented a siege on the Church of Nativity, shelling it more than 20 times in an attempt to kill the 49 fighters along with families who were hiding inside.

Back in Ramallah the Israeli army was demanding that Arafat give them four men, Palestinian leftists who managed to kill Rehavam Zeevi in October 2001. Zeevi was the Israeli tourism Minister at the time, he was known for advocating the expulsion of Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza.

The siege ended after the Americans cut a deal, the Palestinian Authority will jail the four men in Jericho, a prison supervised by the Americans and the British. 

President Arafat - Archive

The siege ended all right, but Arafat was not allowed to leave his headquarters in Ramallah; people close to him say he was sick and his condition got worse until he died in France two years later.

I met Arafat twice, the first time back in 1999 when I was part of my Scottish Bagpipes corps who played for him when he came to Bethlehem. The second time was in same year but this time I was part of the Hotel Management Facility students at Bethlehem University who catered for him when he came during Christmas to visit the city.

Looking back at those two encounters I regret one thing, I was not able to get a photo with him; bad luck I guess, something Americans would say.

World media investigated his death, some claimed he was killed, some reported he died due to cancer, but one thing that I was hopeful about was that Fatah leaders announced that they were going to investigate his death, then six years later no word, the investigation died and every year we mark his death as if nothing have happened.

Last night I was watching Oliver Stone’s hallowed production, “JFK.” This movie was made about a district attorney who tried to open an investigation and claimed that the US government had killed the President. I am not trying to say there are similarities, but one line was said in that movie by the lead character “Please do not forget your dying king.”

One again I am not a fan of Arafat, but I want to ask some questions: why we do not investigate his death and why do we have to wait to read about it in some book years later, do not we owe the man that much, shouldn’t we try and find out who killed him, or at least how he died?

I hope I will live to see the day this question get answered; I am not a fan, but Arafat was a Palestinian leader he was elected President, we owe him the truth.