Hamas hands over Arafat’s house, minus some of its belongings
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Hamas handed over the house of late President Yasser Arafat, the founder of the Fatah movement, west of Gaza City, to the Yasser Arafat Foundation on the evening of Nov. 11. Al-Monitor was there when some Fatah members posed with an Israeli Uzi submachine gun that was among Arafat’s belongings.
Hamas handed over the late President Arafat’s house to the Yasser Arafat Foundation, which some see as good step toward ending internal division, although some of the president’s belongings are missing.
Author Asmaa al-Ghoul Posted November 23, 2015
TranslatorPascale Menassa
Zakaria al-Agha, a member of Fatah’s Central Committee and a representative of the Yasser Arafat Foundation’s board of trustees, said during the handover ceremony that Arafat’s house was important because of its national symbolism. He added, “Our hearts are open to our Hamas brothers to overcome the Palestinian people’s division.”
The attendees, including politicians and journalists, took photos of the house and of images of the young Arafat and of his travels. The house seemed new and tidy, although it had been deserted for eight years after Hamas seized it in June 2007 when it took over the Gaza Strip by force. Arafat died in 2004.
However, Hamas refuses to consider its acquisition of the house a form of seizure or confiscation. Hamas representative Sami Abu Zuhri told Al-Monitor on the sidelines of the house handover, “It was not a seizure. We were just keeping the house to fulfill the wishes of Suha Arafat, the late president’s wife. We have wanted to hand it over for years, but Mrs. Arafat asked for the procedure to be delayed until she sent us an official memo to hand it over to the Yasser Arafat Foundation.”
Hamas leader Ghazi Hamad, also at Arafat's dwelling, told Al-Monitor, “We maintained the house until we handed it over.”
Hanging on the wall in a modest ground floor room containing red sofas embossed with yellow drawings was a big picture of the president, his wife and daughter Zahwa. In this room, Al-Monitor met with a member of Fatah’s Revolutionary Council, Ibrahim Abu al-Naja, who said, “This is an important step in the series of steps to be taken to end the division. But it is eight years late. The house should have been handed over from the first moment because [Arafat’s] family should keep it.”
“How can we not call what happened a confiscation? The house was deserted all these years, and nobody was allowed to visit it,” he said.
Arafat’s sister Khadija Arafat was the last member of the president’s family to live in Gaza in her own home, before she moved to Ramallah in 2014.
The house where Arafat lived during the 1990s is located near his office in the presidential compound (Al-Muntada). It is a two-story modest, old house surrounded by a small garden.
Photo albums of Arafat and world leaders were on the dining table on the second floor, in addition to the Uzi submachine gun. In the president’s room, there was a closet containing several of his military uniforms. The local media published these photos and celebrated the handover of Arafat’s house and its belongings.
However, not all that glitters is gold. People close to the late president denied that the military uniforms were his. A colonel from the Presidential Guard told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity, due to the sensitivity of the situation, “Clearly, the uniforms were not Arafat’s. The symbol of the Presidential Guard appeared on some sleeves. The president did not have the symbol on his clothes — only the guards’ uniforms were embossed with it.”
As for the weapon that Fatah officials took photos with and claimed was Arafat’s, the same source told Al-Monitor that the president did not have this Israeli weapon.
Brig. Gen. Mosbah Bohisi, former leader of the Presidency’s Security Forces, commented on a picture of Agha holding the Uzi.
Bohisi wrote, “Arafat had a Russian Kalashnikov and a French Steyr machine gun, and he carried a loaded gun on his waist. May your soul rest in peace sir. Many talk without knowing what they are saying.”
Retired Gen. Hassan al-Najjar, in Khan Yunis, told Al-Monitor over the phone, “I never saw this weapon throughout the quarter of a century I spent alongside President Arafat, aka Abu Ammar. It might have been in a private place, but I do not recognize it.”
In June 2007, Hamas took over Gaza by force, unlike the current handover process. Hamas occupied the house at the time, and the presidential residence was seized amid chaos, shootings, killings and escapes. At that time, some of Arafat’s belongings disappeared. These include the Nobel Prize Arafat won in 1994 and its certificate, in addition to gifts from world leaders.
Al-Monitor’s correspondent tried to find out what became of belongings moved by the Presidential Guard from Al-Muntada in west Gaza in December 2001 when Israeli aircraft shelled it, according to several official sources from the guard. The guard was in charge of the house before Hamas took it over.
The general director of Yasser Arafat’s Foundation, Ahmad Sobeh, who resides in Ramallah, told Al-Monitor over the phone, “These national belongings were later returned by the Presidential Guard to Al-Muntada and stayed there until June 2007, when the official staff of the Presidential Guard left.”
He added that Arafat’s belongings are on a list established by the Yasser Arafat Foundation, containing over 300 items such as missing gifts, pens, prizes, glasses and furniture. He wondered, “Where did all these belongings go?” and asserted that although the house was handed over, not all of Arafat’s belongings were.
“We considered the house handover a step on the right track, but someone should tell us about the fate of the other belongings to compare them with the lists we have and verify them,” he noted.
Regarding the fate of the Nobel Prize, Sobeh said that in May 2014, Azzam al-Ahmad, a member of Fatah’s Central Committee, restituted the Nobel Prize through political means. He added, “From June 2007 until May 2014, the prize was passed on from one person to another until we located it and gave it to Mr. Azzam. But the certificate is still missing and we cannot locate it.”
Sobeh called on any citizen in the Gaza Strip who knows where any of Arafat’s belongings are to hand them over to the foundation, as they are public property and have national value. They should be added to Arafat’s museum in Ramallah.
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