Palestinian lawmaker accuses PA officials of passing poison to Arafat

Hassan Khoraisheh, who serves as the second deputy speaker of the Palestinian parliament, affirmed on Monday that some Palestinian officials are complicit in the assassination of late Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat.

Speaking to Al-Aqsa satellite television, Khoraisheh said: “It is not difficult to know who has served the poisonous substance to Arafat because the number of people who visited him during the blockade were very few.”

He noted that the Palestinian Authority did not take the appropriate measures in comparison to the size of the crime. Khoraisheh explained that “Arafat was not less important than Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Al-Hariri, who was assassinated in 2005,” pointing out that, “All the world has moved to know who killed him.”

Nine years after his assassination, Khoraisheh has called upon the PA to accelerate investigations into the issue.

Commenting on what was said about the documentary broadcast by Al-Jazeera on Sunday, he said: “Arafat does not belong to his own family, but to all the Palestinian people. All of them have the right to know who passed the poison to him.”

Nasser Al-Qedwa, a prominent relative of Yasser Arafat, observed that the Al-Jazeera documentary was full of “falsifications”.

Previous investigations launched by the PA were suspended due to political reasons. But many prominent Fatah officials, who oppose the policy of the current PA leadership, now accuse PA executives of being complicit in the crime.

Khoraisheh warned that: “Israel has used Palestinians to kill Palestinians on many occasions, but we cannot directly accuse anyone of being an Israeli killing tool without being 100 per cent certain.”