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JERUSALEM – Israeli forces and intelligence late on Monday stormed the Silwan Club in the neighborhood of Ras al-Amud in the holy city of Al-Quds (Jerusalem) and prevented Jerusalemites from commemorating the 9th anniversary of the death of former Palestinian President Yasser Arafat.
“The Israeli forces hung an order signed by Minister of Internal Security Yitzhak Aharonovitch to ban the memorial,” Jawad Siyam, the director of Wadi Hilweh Information Center in Al-Quds, told Anadolu Agency.
The Israeli ban order claimed that the memorial was organized “by the Palestinian Authority without a written permeation.”
“I am ordering to prevent this ceremony in Silwan or any anywhere in Jerusalem,” decreed the Israeli minister.
Jerusalemites who attendant the memorial ceremony were forced to evacuate Silwan Club after Israeli forces raided the building.
“Israel is trying to tell the world that it controls the city of Al-Quds, but we as Palestinians reject that,” Adnan Ghaith, secretary general of Fatah Movement in the town of Silwan, told AA.
“Al-Quds is an Arab-Islamic city, and we succeeded to commemorate the ninth anniversary in the main street of Silwan town in front of the Israeli forces,” he asserted.
Arafat died at the age of 75 in France under suspicious circumstances. At the time, doctors were unable to determine the exact cause of his death.
Palestinians have long accused Israel of being behind the leader’s death.
But a team of Swiss experts revealed last week that “unexpectedly high” traces of polonium-210, a highly radioactive substance, had been discovered in Arafat’s exhumed remains.
Polonium is found in miniscule amounts in food and is created naturally by the body, but can be fatal if ingested in large doses.
Leading Fatah member Tawfiq Tirawi, who heads up the Palestinian commission of inquiry into Arafat’s death, described Israel as “the first, primary and only suspect.”
By Anees Barghouthi
