Middle East: Yasser Arafat's high-maintenance wife, Suha, has become the Lady Macbeth of the saga surrounding him, Lara Marlowe reports from Paris.
Of all of the strange happenings surrounding the illness of Yasser Arafat, few surpass his wife Suha's early-morning telephone call to the al-Jazeera television office in Ramallah yesterday. "You must be aware of the extent of the conspiracy!" Ms Arafat screamed down the telephone line. "(Mahmoud) Abbas, (Ahmad) Korei and (Nabil) Shaath want to inherit his power! They want to bury Abu Ammar (Arafat) alive!"
The three Palestinian leaders had intended to fly to Paris yesterday morning to see Mr Arafat and President Jacques Chirac. After Ms Arafat's outburst, they cancelled their visit, demanded an apology (which was not forthcoming) then re-scheduled their departure for later in the day.
The incident confirmed Suha Arafat's role as the Lady Macbeth of the Arafat death saga. "Yasser Arafat is not the private property of Suha Arafat," an aide fumed on Israeli army radio. "She is not part of the Palestinian leadership," said another.
Before he lost consciousness last week, Mr Arafat designated his close friend and longtime Foreign Minister Farouk Kaddoumi to succeed him, Arab sources said. Mr Kaddoumi, who arrived from Tunis to sit at Mr Arafat's bedside, opposed the 1993 Oslo peace accords and is considered a hardliner. Ms Arafat is allegedly plotting to secure his position, hence the late-night call to al-Jazeera.
Ms Arafat left the Gaza Strip with the couple's daughter, Zahwa, now 9, in 2000, after the second Intifada started. She had not seen her husband for nearly four years, though in 2002 she said she was ready to return to Mr Arafat's side - "the minute I am asked to". Zahwa suffers from a form of leukaemia.
Ms Arafat arrived in Ramallah on October 28th to persuade her ailing husband to travel to France for medical care. In the eyes of her husband's associates, she "kidnapped" their leader.
Under French law, Ms Arafat alone decides whether her husband can be removed from life-support systems. She has imposed a news blackout on her husband's condition.
The Palestinian ambassador, Ms Leila Shahid, has not been heard from again since she used the word "coma" on Friday. Each time Gen Christian Estripeau, the head doctor of the Percy army training hospital, delivers one of his empty "updates" on Mr Arafat's condition, he is careful to note that the statement "fully respects the privacy that the family requested". For "family", read Suha Arafat.
From the time Suha became an adviser to Yasser Arafat in the late 1980s, she clashed with his entourage, who could not forgive her for being an upper middle-class Christian.
Mahmoud Abbas prevented her from attending the signing of the Oslo accords on the White House lawn in September 1993. "It's her or me," Mr Abbas told Arafat.
The unlikely couple met in 1989 when Mr Arafat made his first official visit to Paris. Suha Tawil had just completed political science studies at the Sorbonne, and volunteered to act as an interpreter. She is one of three daughters of an Oxford-educated banker and Raymonda Tawil, the founder of the Palestine Press Agency. As a teenager, she carried placards with Mr Arafat's picture in demonstrations in Ramallah. In her autobiography, Daughter of Palestine, Suha says she replied cautiously to Mr Arafat's proposal of marriage, saying, "Yes, I think I love you too." He was 62, she 28, when they married in his bunker in Tunis in July 1990. The marriage was kept secret for 15 months.
Life was not easy for the new Ms Arafat. In 1993, she told an Austrian magazine, "Every night we change our home. I do not know where we shall sleep tonight, where we will get up in the morning."
Suha Arafat accompanied her husband on his triumphant return to Gaza in 1994. Though she devoted herself to charity and started a foundation for children in Gaza, she was reproached for driving an expensive BMW and for shrinking from physical contact with refugees. Susan Joyce, the couple's Irish nanny, described the house as modest.
In 1997, Mr Arafat sent Suha to Rome to seek Pope John Paul II's intervention in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Though Ms Arafat had allegedly converted from Greek Orthodox Christianity to Islam, she asked the Pope to bless baby Zahwa.
Later, she caused her husband embarrassment by telling interviewers she hated Israelis, and by appearing to support suicide-bombers. She has also accused the Israelis of using toxic gas against Palestinians.
In Gaza, she criticised her husband's associates for building ostentatious villas within sight of refugee camps. Now her own taste for luxury draws fierce criticism. She dismisses reports on her extravagant lifestyle as Israeli propaganda.
There may be some truth to that, but the allegations (that she receives a monthly stipend of €100,000 or more; rented an entire floor of the five-star Bristol Hotel for a year; owns property in the expensive 16th arrondissement, or district, of Paris, and also in the luxurious suburb of Neuilly) have taken hold. Her fondness for the designer boutiques of the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré are well documented.
So is the fact that between July 2002 and September 2003, a Swiss bank transferred €9 million to two of her accounts in Paris. She never denied receiving the funds, telling the Arab newspaper al-Hayat: "What is so strange for the Palestinian President to send any amount of money to his family and his wife who is protecting Palestinian interests abroad?"
French authorities are investigating the bank transfers. Now al-Jazeera reports that she has demanded a full list of her husband's assets from his financial advisor, Mohamed Rashid.
Mr Rashid allegedly refused, saying he would give the list only to the Palestinian Authority.