Yasser Arafat and polonium

Suspicion of poisoning with polonium

According to Israel Radio, a former Palestinian intelligence officer, attorney Fahmi Shabana, said that Yasser Arafat's political rivals were responsible for his death, and that he was poisoned with polonium. Shabana, who took part in the investigation into Arafat's death in a French hospital in 2004, also said that several months after his death, the same cell murdered the head of military intelligence in Gaza, General Moussa Arafat, a relative of the PLO leader, in order to prevent a blood feud. The lawyer called on Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas to reopen the investigation into Arafat's death."

On Newsnight on UK TV on 21 January 2016, during a feature on the assassination of Alexander Litvinienko, George Galloway claimed to have been with Yasser Arafat in Paris when he died of polonium-210 poisoning.

On 4 July 2012, Al Jazeera reported that a nine-month investigation by Al Jazeera had revealed that none of the causes of Arafat's death suggested in several rumors were true, as Arafat was in good health until he suddenly fell ill on 12 October 2004. Tests carried out by the Institut de Radiophysique (Institute of Radiation Physics) at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland found traces of polonium, a rare, highly radioactive element, on Arafat's personal belongings, which suggested that there was a high level of polonium inside his body when he died. The lethal element was found in quantities much higher than could occur naturally, and further, that 60%–80% of that polonium (depending on the item being tested) had not come from natural sources.