The widow of late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat told Israeli TV in a rare interview that Palestinian Authority leaders are attacking her for apologizing to the United Arab Emirates on behalf of the Palestinians for their burning of the UAE flag in protest over the Gulf state’s recently signed U.S.-brokered normalization agreement with Israel.
She warned she could “open the gates of hell” on PA leaders if the attacks against her do not stop, saying she would expose their dirt to the world.
Suha Arafat, who today lives in Malta, wrote an Instagram post on August 21 saying she wished to apologize “in the name of the Palestinian people” for their “irresponsible behavior” in burning UAE flags, as well as effigies of Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi Mohammed bin Zayed and insulting the Emirates over the deal with Israel.
“This is not our morals, our customs, or our traditions,” she wrote.
She described Emirates as a “gracious” people and said the Gulf nation always supported the Palestinian people.
She also slammed the Palestinian Authority’s response to UAE-Israel deal, which it called “a despicable stab in the back to the Palestinians.”
Since the post, Arafat has received widespread threats on social media, some from elements within the Palestinian leadership itself, she said.
She slammed the PA’s “thought police” who were going after her.
“All because I said not to burn flags?” she told Israel’s KAN public broadcaster.
“The Palestinian security forces are paid just to threaten me?” she went on.
“There are directives to turn me into a traitor and these orders come from the head of the [Palestinian Authority] president’s office,” Arafat said, referring to PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s private secretary Ent’sar Abu Amarah. Amarah, she claimed, was “feeding the president false information and is the person controlling Palestine via the president.”
“Those who are around [Abbas] want to ruin the Arafat family,” she said.
“I demand protection from Abbas,” she said.
Regarding the UAE deal, Arafat asserted that were her husband alive he would have told UAE leader “’help me with [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu, I can’t deal with him.’”
“But to go and say an Arab nation is a traitor? Enough with the slogans. We collaborate with Israel, we collaborate with the Shin Bet and Mossad,” she said, referencing Israel’s security cooperation with the Palestinians, which was recently stopped in protest over Israel’s plan to apply sovereignty over the West Bank. “Who are you kidding?”
She also slammed the PA over threats to cease her monthly payments as the wife of the late leader, amounting to some €10,000 ($12,000) per month.
“They threaten me over millions? I don’t have millions that they can threaten me over,” she said.
Yasser Arafat diverted nearly $1 billion in public funds, and a lot more was unaccounted for.
“We are strong. The Arafat family is strong,” she concluded. “If they want to open the gates of hell on me, I’ll open the gates of hell on them as well. And I have Yasser’s personal diary. He wrote about every single one of them. If I publish even a tiny part of what Yasser wrote about them, it will expose them to their people for who they really are.”
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