Suha at-Tawil

Suha at-Tawil ( Arabic سهى الطويل, DMG Suhā aṭ-Ṭawīl ; * 1963 in Jerusalem ) is the widow of the former Palestinian President Yasser Arafat .

Life

She was born into the wealthy banking family at-Tawil, baptized Greek Orthodox , and raised by Catholic nuns in Ramallah . Her mother, Raymonda Hawa-Tawil, is a well-known journalist and feminist in the Palestinian national movement, who received the 1981 Bruno Kreisky Prize . While Arafat was first received with full honors by the French government in Paris in 1989, he met Suha, who was studying international relations at the Sorbonne . She then became his economic advisor and lover in his exile in Tunis.

Marriage to Arafat

On July 17, 1990, when Suha was 27 years old, she married 61-year-old Arafat. The wedding was kept secret, however, as Arafat had always asserted beforehand that he could only be married to Palestine in his life . A few months earlier, Suha had converted to Islam.

The couple with their daughter Zahwa lived in a magnificent mansion in the Gaza Strip until the beginning of the second Intifada , although Suha was never accepted in the Palestinian territories and is clearly discredited and undesirable. She let herself be driven through the dusty and ruined streets of Ramallah in expensive German limousines and wore designer clothes from Paris and London. Arafat was never politically supported by his wife. She repeatedly turned the Palestinian leadership against her by making fun of the US-mediated peace that her husband and Benjamin Netanyahu signed in 1998. During a visit by then First Lady Hillary Clinton to Ramallah, she accused Israel of contaminating Palestinian territory with poison gas, which is the cause of an increased incidence of cancer. Clinton was then criticized for not responding immediately. She only distanced herself from these allegations the next day in Jordan.

Paris

From 2001 Suha and daughter lived in a suite in the Paris luxury hotel Bristol. During her stay there, she is said to have received monthly allowances from Arafat of approximately $ 100,000. However, this also paid for the entourage and personal protection. The hostility between Palestinian representatives and Suha reached its peak at the end of 2004 during Arafat's hospital stay in Paris. Expressions of solidarity from members of all national parties and organizations for the terminally ill president on the one hand and ridicule and malice for Suha on the other made the deep dislike of the Palestinians clear. The reason for the hostility is the PLO's assets in the billions, which Arafat managed until his death . It is unclear whether a will exists. In 2005 she accepted an invitation from King Fahd of Saudi Arabia and took part in a Hajj in Mecca for the first time .

Tunisia, Malta

After that she and her daughter lived mainly in Tunis. In September 2006, both were granted Tunisian citizenship by President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali . Together with his wife Leila Trabelsi she founded the International School of Carthage. A year later, the two women broke up in this connection, her citizenship was revoked on August 7, 2007 and she was expelled from the country.

In 2007 she therefore moved into a house in the Ambassador Quarter in Malta and lives there too. The funds for the house and its administration are provided by friends.

After the revolution in Tunisia, Tunis issued an international arrest warrant against her in October 2011 on suspicion of embezzling funds in the school project.

literature

• Suha Arafat: I am a daughter of Palestine . Goldmann-Verlag, Munich 1996. ISBN 3-442-12703-3

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Arafat's Wife Says She Felt `Rejected 'In The Arab World
2. ^ Revolutionary widow , the Tribune India, November 28, 2004
3. ↑ Hillary Clinton criticises Mrs. Arafat , BBC November 12, 1999
4. ^ Justice issues arrest warrant for Arafat's widow , Die Presse on October 31, 2011
5. ↑ International arrest warrant against Arafat widow , Der Spiegel on October 31, 2011

Web links

• Gérard Sebag on Suha Arafat in DIE ZEIT 48/2004