Thursday, November 4, 2004
So Suha is keeping the machines pumping oxygen into her hubby while they figure out how to decipher the treasure map? The old pirate probably has the Swiss account numbers written on the back of a sheet of human skin with little blue numbers tattooed in the corner. Any of my taxpayer dollars in that lock-box? There's plenty of American blood on it.
So the announcement may come on Friday? Expect loads of riot police on the Temple Mount this weekend.
World Tribune.com--Mrs. Arafat keeps husband on life support - Where's his money? (via Jihad Watch):
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."
The problem is that Arafat is still the only Palestinian official who can pay the bills. 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.
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...
...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. "It is amazing that some U.S. officials still see the Palestinian Authority as a partner even after U.S. congressional records revealed authenticated PLO papers signed by Arafat in which he instructed his staff to divert donors' money to projects benefiting himself, his family and his associates."
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." ...
I wish I could get the same health care as Yasser Arafat.
I suspect (hope?) that the helicopter bearing the body will be permitted to land in the Gaza Strip, where Arafat's family owns a burial plot. Not in Ramallah or anywhere else without a large, inhospitable desert between it and Jerusalem.