Arafat Confirmed Poisoned: Who Else Could Have Done it but the Israelis?

Tarafat-gravehe news from a Swiss laboratory that scientists have found at least 18 times the normal levels of radioactive element polonium in the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s bones has clearly shown that he was murdered—and the only possible suspects in the case with the motive and the ability could be the Israelis.

Ariel Sharon, Israeli prime minister in 2004, viewed Arafat as a “terrorist” and called his death “a turning point in Middle Eastern history.”

A year earlier, then-Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said killing Arafat ”is definitely one of the options.”

According to reports, Swiss scientists who conducted tests on samples taken from Yasser Arafat’s body have found at least 18 times the normal levels of radioactive polonium in his remains.



The Swiss scientists, along with French and Russian teams, obtained the samples last November after Arafat’s body was exhumed from a mausoleum in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.



The Swiss report examined only the question of what killed Arafat. It did not address or point toward who killed him or how.

However, the Israelis are the only ones with the motive and the ability to have committed the murder.








By 2011, when Al Jazeera began an investigation, Arafat’s death was a cold case. During the investigation, his wife Suha Arafat gave the network access to her late husband’s full medical records and a bag of his belongings, including clothing he wore during his final days.



In July 2012, Al Jazeera broadcast the results of its investigation in “What Killed Arafat?” The documentary triggered a French murder investigation and led to the exhumation of the leader’s remains. Sixty samples of his body tissue were taken, and 20 each distributed to the Swiss team; a French team of judges and forensic experts assigned to the murder investigation; and a Russian group invited at the request of the Palestinian Authority.




Polonium-210 is extremely rare and would be difficult to obtain without the help of a government or access to a nuclear reactor. It also requires considerable scientific know-how to handle in a safe manner, as it can only be manufactured by bombarding the isotope bismuth-209 with neutrons in a nuclear reactor.