DANIEL ESTRIN
JERUSALEM – A former Israeli official on Wednesday denied suspicions that Israel poisoned Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat as France prepared to begin an investigation into his possible murder following a Swiss lab’s claim that it found traces of a deadly substance on his belongings.
Dov Weisglass, chief of staff to then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon at the time of Arafat’s death in 2004 and a key participant in deliberations surrounding Arafat’s worsening health, said Israel had no reason to physically harm the Palestinian leader. For the last two years of Arafat’s life, Israel confined him to his headquarters in the West Bank town of Ramallah, accusing him of encouraging a violent Palestinian uprising at the time.
“Israel did not have any hand in this,” Weisglass told Israel’s Army Radio station on Wednesday, even while calling Arafat “one of Israel’s worst enemies.”
“We did not physically hurt him when Arafat was in his prime … so all the more so we had no interest in this kind of activity when he was politically sidelined,” he said.