Suha Triggers Power Struggle
Amir Taheri • Arab News —
arabnews.com
JEDDAH, 9 November 2004 — As the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat continued to fight for his life, his wife Suha and his closest aides were engaged in an acrimonious power struggle over his financial and political heritage.
“It is an ugly explosion,” said Tayeb Abdul-Rahim, a senior Arafat aide. “Suha wants to dictate who is going to be leader in case Arafat, God forbid, is no longer able to do his work. But Abu Ammar belongs to the whole Palestinian nation not to a small family.”
According to Palestinian sources, Suha’s choice is Farouq Kaddoumi, a veteran of the Palestine Liberation Organization. Kaddoumi is also backed by Nasser Al-Kidwah, Arafat’s cousin and PLO representative to the United Nations, and several of Arafat’s brothers and cousins who wish to keep the leadership and its resources in the family.
The Palestinian leadership in the West Bank and Gaza, however, has picked Mahmoud Abbas, alias Abu Mazen, to head the PLO while Prime Minister Ahmed Qorei will take over Arafat’s executive responsibilities in a period of transition.
Kaddoumi was in Paris earlier this week reportedly to see the will that Arafat is supposed to have signed giving Suha full authority over the family’s fortune estimated at between $4.5 billion and $6.5 billion.
Qorei, however, has denied that there is a will, raising speculation about the possibility that members of Arafat’s close entourage may well have asked him to sign something at a time he would not have been in possession of his full faculties.
Kaddoumi left Paris in some haste, apparently to avoid the trio of leaders coming from the occupied territories. The trio, Abbas, Qorei and Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath, were due in Paris yesterday but delayed their visit after Suha launched a public attack on them through the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera television.
A spokesman for the PLO said Suha “wanted to destroy the Palestinian leadership’s decision and to be the lone decision-maker.”
In a screaming telephone call from Arafat’s hospital bedside, Suha told Al-Jazeera that Arafat’s aides were conspiring to usurp her husband’s four-decade-long role as Palestinian leader.
“Let it be known to the honest Palestinian people that a bunch of those who want to inherit are coming to Paris,” she shouted in Arabic in her first public comments since Arafat left his West Bank compound for France.
“I tell you they are trying to bury Abu Ammar alive,” she continued, using Arafat’s nom de guerre. “He is all right and he is going home.”
Suha said she was calling from Arafat’s bedside at the French military hospital, where the 75-year-old leader has been in intensive care since Wednesday.
Her insistence that Arafat was doing fine came a day after French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier called his condition “very complex, very serious and stable right now.”
Palestinians have been making contingency plans in the event of Arafat’s death. The trio was sent to Paris to assess Arafat’s condition and decide whether or not he should be declared legally incapacitated.
Early today, the trio jetted into France, but hospital officials at Clamart said visiting rights were restricted. This sets the stage for a dramatic showdown between the delegation and Suha.
Qorei and Abbas have been working together to run Palestinian affairs in Arafat’s absence, and to prevent chaos and violence if he dies. Qorei has taken on some of Arafat’s executive and security powers, while Abbas has been chairing meetings of the PLO’s executive body. Some Palestinians have complained Suha has gained too much power. She controls the flow of information about Arafat’s condition and has taken charge of access to her husband.
“She is not part of the Palestinian leadership,” Arafat security adviser Jibril Rajoub said. “She should behave with the dignified posture of a wife at her sick husband’s bedside.”
Suha Arafat, 41, lives in a $5 million penthouse apartment in Paris, and has not been to the West Bank nor had seen her husband since 2000.
She is also believed to have control of vast funds collected by the PLO.
In the past few days, Suha has been working the phones accusing Abbas and Qorei of trying to turn her “into a widow” before Arafat dies. “Abu Ammar is not dead,” Suha told a member of the Palestinian National Assembly in a midnight phone call Sunday. “The three men sent to Paris come to kill Arafat as part of a political conspiracy to say that he cannot function. But I am not a widow, and my daughter is not an orphan.”
Palestinian and other Arab sources say the fight between Suha and the PLO leadership is mostly about money.
Arafat has always kept tight control of the organization’s finances. Until last year, he insisted that he should sign any check above $10,000. A European Union audit report in 2002 accused Arafat’s administration of “widespread corruption.” Because the EU provides a good part of the Palestinian Authority’s budget, it insisted Arafat’s control of the funds be limited.
After months of negotiations, the then EU Foreign Affairs Commissioner Chris Patten persuaded Arafat to release one of the many accounts he controlled. The signature in that account is now shared by three Palestinian leader, including Prime Minister Qorei.
But no one quite knows the extent of Arafat’s fortune that includes several companies, hotels, real estate in several European and Arab capitals, and revolutionary bank accounts in Switzerland, Austria and the Cayman Islands.
According to Palestinian sources, Suha’s family, including her mother Raymonda Tawil, controls some of Arafat’s businesses.
Qorei has already assumed some emergency financial and administrative powers that Arafat normally would wield. Abbas, considered a more likely successor, has chaired a series of meetings of the PLO executive committee in Arafat’s absence in an effort to project unity.
Neither politician has much grassroots support among Palestinians or important militant groups. “We hope to be able to see him (Arafat) and to get real information,” Shaath said before the group headed to Amman where they took a flight to Paris.
It was not clear who would be officially in charge of Palestinian affairs in the absence of the leadership.
Most Palestinians denounced Suha as a “gold digger” and “deserter”.
“Where was she when the bodies of martyrs were piled up by the dozen in the morgue, when the Israeli bombs were falling on our heads?” asked Abu Dahduh, an ambulance driver at Gaza’s main Al-Shifa Hospital.“She just took to her heels and set herself up in Paris with her daughter to go shopping and multiply her bank accounts. She’s a deserter.”
Subeih Abu Marzuk, the owner of a cell phone shop, said Suha had played into the hands of the Israeli government by sowing discord in the Palestinian ranks. “She is playing the game of the Israelis by adding to the confusion. They must be over the moon now and rubbing their hands in delight, watching an internal Palestinian power struggle,” he said.
“And for what kind of power is she fighting? The Palestinian Authority hasn’t got any power.
“She’s just worried about money. She’s a gold-digger who wants to exploit the president’s ill-health.”
Mohammed Hourani, an MP in Arafat’s Fatah movement, tried to distance Suha from the veteran leader by referring to her by her maiden name Suha Tawil. “She’s not in a position to send any message to the Palestinian people. What she said is squarely rejected because she is not part of the Palestinian leadership, and one can question that she is even part of the Palestinian people,” he said in Ramallah.
“She should apologize to the Palestinian people.”
— Additional input from agencies
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