A poisoning claim by the head of the ruling Fatah faction has strengthened a widely held belief among Palestinians that Yasser Arafat's death eight months ago was due to foul play. Farouq Qaddoumi became the most senior Palestinian figure to endorse the poisoning theory. "I can categorically confirm that Abu Ammar [Arafat] was poisoned. The poison was administered in the food and in the medication he swallowed," said the Tunis-based Qaddoumi, who was appointed Fatah chief after Arafat died but refuses to visit the occupied Palestinian territories. His comments are a variation of a theory put forward by Arafat's former Cabinet secretary, Ahmed Abdelrahman, who has said the Palestinian leader was poisoned more than a year before his death on November 11 at the Percy military hospital on the outskirts of Paris. "The president was exposed to something (on September 25, 2003), and I'm inclined to believe it was maybe gas or something else," Abdelrahman told a newspaper interviewer in December. Neither man has produced any medical evidence to back up their claim. One doctor who treated Arafat for many years simply laughed at Qaddoumi's comments when contacted by AFP. "He should not come out with comments such as this unless he has any concrete proof," the doctor said on condition of anonymity. Arafat's nephew, Nasser Qidwa, who has been handed a medical report into the death, has acknowledged that French doctors who carried out tests on his late uncle discovered no trace of any known poison.
France's strict medical secrecy laws mean the exact cause of death has never been made public, but Qidwa, who is Palestinian foreign minister, was entitled to receive a copy of his medical file as a close relative. The lack of evidence has not prevented many Palestinians from forming the view that the man who symbolised their quest for independence was killed by Israeli agents, having long been branded by his arch enemy Ariel Sharon as "an absolute obstacle" to peace.