Yasser Arafat. Photo: Wiki Commons.

JNS.org – French forensic scientists said Tuesday that former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat did not die from radioactive polonium poisoning, as was suggested by a recent Swiss report.

While the official cause of Arafat’s 2004 death was a stroke, Swiss forensic experts claimed last month that samples they had tested from Arafat’s body indicated polonium poisoning, though not definitively.

Arafat’s widow, Suha Arafat, said in a statement from Paris, “You can imagine how much I am shaken by the contradictions between the findings of the best experts in Europe in this domain,” according to Reuters.

Senior Palestinian Authority (PA) and Fatah leader Jibril Rajoub recently claimed that the U.S. and Israel were involved in the death of Arafat, falling in line with what Palestinian Media Watch (PMW)calls a “libel”  frequently featured on PA television.

“It’s not surprising that the PA would like to present the U.S. as co-conspirator in the so-called poisoning of Arafat, because inciting hatred against the U.S. is a consistent PA policy over many years,” Itamar Marcus, director of PMW, recently told JNS.org.