Reports emerged late yesterday that Jibril Rajoub – a senior Palestinian official and for decades a top figure in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process – had earlier this month accused the United States of permitting Israel to assassinate former Palestinian President Yasser Arafat:

In an interview given to official PA television earlier this month, Fatah leader Jibril Rajoub said that the “fool known as [George] Bush took away Yasser Arafat’s protection and gave [then-prime minister Ariel] Sharon the green light to liquidate Yasser Arafat.”

Conspiracy theories regarding the 2004 death of the Palestinian leader received new life earlier this month when a Swiss lab published a 108-page report that some media outlets characterized as concluding that Arafat was “probably poisoned with polonium.”

Analysts and scientists rolled their eyes at the suggestion that tests conducted in 2012 could detect polonium poisoning committed in 2004 – there are exactly zero plausible scenarios under which that could be the case – but the controversy has shed light both on internal Palestinian divisions and now on the posture of long-time Palestinian diplomats toward the United States.

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