“Des yeux qui font baisser les miens
Un rire qui se perd sur sa bouche
Voilà le portrait sans retouche
De l’homme auquel j’appartiens

Quand il me prend dans ses bras
Il me parle tout bas
Je vois la vie en rose……..“ Edit Piaf (La vie en rose)

“The widow of the late Yasser Arafat has said the resistance leader sacrificed their marriage and a relationship with the couple’s only daughter for the Palestinian cause. In a rare interview with CNN, Suha Arafat shed light on the difficulties of being married to a man she described as the “Nelson Mandela of the Arab world”, and said he pushed her away to focus on achieving an independent state. “Everyone was saying: ‘She left him’,” Mrs Arafat told CNN’s Connect the World show. “I had to leave because he obliged me to leave him because he said: ‘I am becoming the new revolutionary again’.” He paid for the cause, she said, “with his life”. “He did not see his daughter. He told us to go out because he did not want us to stay in Palestine.”…….”

I, and everyone I ever knew, always believed that Suha Arafat was the one who made the biggest ‘sacrifice’ in that marriage to Yasser Arafat. It was obvious (to put it delicately).
Just what the Palestinians need right now, another clown in the circus. There is the fundamentalist Hamas in Gaza, the impotent bickering PA in Ramallah, and now Suha Arafat representing the Palestinians from the comfort of maybe Paris (?). Yet she might liven things up a bit.  She should liven up the West Bank political debate (Gaza is too Islamist fundamentalist for a Christian used to la vie en rose). Come to think of it, there is no political debate among Palestinians, life is simple: PA and Israel control the West Bank, Hamas controls Gaza.
One thing is certain, she will be more outspoken than the tired men of Ramallah. Another thing for certain: she ain’t no La Pasionaria of Spain.
Cheers
mhg


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