Suha Daoud Arafat (Arabic: سهى داود عرفات), née Suha Daoud Tawil (سهى داود الطويل) (born 17 July 1963), is the widow of the late Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat.

Early life

Suha was born in the West Bank in 1963 into an affluent Christian family who lived in Nablus and then Ramallah (both cities under Jordanian authority at the time). Suha's father Daoud Tawil, an Oxford-educated banker, was born in Jaffa (now part of Tel-Aviv). Suha's mother, Raymonda Hawa Tawil, born in Acre, was a politically-active Palestinian militant, poet and writer.

Suha attended a convent school, Rosary Sisters' School, in Beit Hanina, Jerusalem and the Sorbonne in Paris. As a student, Suha was a leader in the General Union For Palestine Students (GUPS) in France, where she organized demonstrations for the Palestinian cause.

Marriage to Arafat

Suha, her mother, and her sisters met Arafat for the first time in 1985. When he visited France in 1989, she acted as an interpreter at the meetings with visitors and French government officials. Soon after his departure from Paris, Arafat asked Suha to come and work with him in Tunisia (where the Palestinian Liberation Organization had set up a haven).

Suha married Arafat on July 17, 1990, when she was aged 27 and he was 61. At the time of their marriage, she was a Greek Orthodox Christian. Their only child, daughter Zahwa, was born on July 24 1995 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France.

In February 2004, French prosecutors began an investigation of why large amounts of money were being transferred into her bank account. Israel suspected money had been diverted to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade.

November 1999 speech and embrace of Hillary Clinton

In November 1999, at a function inaugurating a new American-funded health initiative in the West Bank, Suha launched into a tirade against Israel, making unsubstantiated claims (in Arabic) that the Israeli government was responsible for cancer rates in Palestinian areas. Then-U.S. First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton (now a Senator from New York) was present at the ceremony and was sitting feet away from Arafat on the dais when the remarks were made. Unsure of how to handle the Palestinian first lady's unexpected outburst, Clinton accepted a hug from Suha and kissed her on the cheek. A senior Palestinian official later apologized to Washington for the embarrassment caused to Clinton and noted that Suha's claims could not be verified. Clinton herself later explained that she was not fully aware of the nature of the speech and that the English translation was difficult to follow.

Arafat's death and afterwards

As Arafat was dying in Paris in 2004, she accompanied him in his hospital room and was instructed to talk to him in an attempt to bring him out of his coma. He died November 11, 2004. According to Suha, the PNA pays her $10,000 (£5,000) per month, and the money is his pension. However, according to The Sunday Times, reports stated she pressed "senior Palestinian officials for millions of dollars to sustain her supposedly lavish lifestyle".

Suha and Zahwa moved to Tunisia in 2004, and gained local citizenship; however, in 2007, Tunisia's official register published a notification that Suha had lost this citizenship (the decree made no reference to Zahwa). No explanation was given. An Al Jazeera report speculated that the revocation of citizenship was due to a dispute between Suha and her business partners, but The Sunday Times stated that the revocation "apparently [came] after a dispute with the president’s wife over the establishment of a school".

With the loss of her citizenship, Suha departed for Malta. Maltese newspapers wrote that upon her arrival, Suha stayed in the Libyan embassy before moving into a new US$1.5 million Valletta home, and received the protection of a Libyan security detail, all paid for personally by Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi. Suha denied the claim and attacked the assumption that anything would be wrong with this if it were true, noting that al-Gaddafi was a friend of her husband's.

References

External links

• "Profile: Suha Arafat", BBC