| World Tribune explains it bluntly... |
 Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat has died. He was 75 years old.
| Doorknob dead. Dancing with Himmler... |
Israeli and Palestinian officials said Arafat died on Thursday in a military hospital in Paris. They said Arafat was deemed clinically dead, but is still attached to life support systems on the insistence of his wife, Suha. "He is dead, but neither Arafat's wife nor the Palestinian leadership is ready to announce this," a PA official said. "The announcement could take place on Friday."
| I guess I'll take the Fat Lady down until then... |
The problem is that Arafat is still the only Palestinian official who can pay the bills.
| Guess they're poop out of luck, huh? |
And it is unclear who, if anyone, has access to the estimated $2-3 billion in his personal Swiss bank accounts, according to a report in the current edition of Geostrategy-Direct.com. Even his wife is said to be unaware of how to access the funds.
| Which means Suha's going to have to rely on the kindness of strangers, unless she's socked something away... |
Arafat continues to hold the purse strings to the Palestinian finances. For the last decade, he has been the final, and often only word on payment to everybody from the suicide bomber to the janitor. Not a dime was paid without Arafat's okay. Before he left for Paris, Arafat approved a three-member emergency committee to operate the PA and PLO in his absence. Officials said Ahmed Qurei was meant to run the PA's daily affairs while Mahmoud Abbas was appointed acting chairman of the PLO. Palestine National Council chairman Salim Zaanoun, the third member of the committee, was said to be a symbolic figure. Abbas and Qurei sought to acquire Arafat's power to allocate money during the absence of the PA chairman. But as he boarded a Jordanian Air Force helicopter for Amman, Arafat refused. "I'm still alive, thank God, so don't worry," Arafat was quoted as saying.
| "I'm going to a hospital in France. What could go wrong?" |
Israeli officials confirmed that Arafat died on Thursday. They said Arafat was termed brain dead and physicians have stopped attending to him.
"Pack him in ice, Jean-Pierre. I'm going to dinner."
"Oui, M'sieur le Docteur!" |
For Palestinians, the main question is where is Arafat's money? Issam Abu Issa knows how Arafat appropriated and concealed money. Abu Issa was the founder and chairman of the Palestine International Bank from 1996 until he fled to Qatar in 2000. "Rather than use donor funds for their intended purposes, Arafat regularly diverted money to his own accounts," Abu Issa said in a report for Middle East Quarterly. Arafat controls billions of dollars meant for the Palestinian people. In a word, he stole it, intelligence sources said, according to the Geostrategy-Direct report. His personal fortune has been estimated at between $2 and $3 billion, most of it in Swiss bank accounts. In 1997, the PA auditor's office said in its financial report that $326 million, or 43 percent of the annual budget, was "missing."
"Yasser, have you seen that $326 million?"
"Nope. Don't worry about it. It'll turn up!"
"Hokay." |
Neither Israeli nor PA officials have been told much about Arafat's condition, and the only one authorized to issue information from his hospital bedside is the chairman's wife, Suha. |