Suha Arafat, who pocketed millions of dollars from her husband’s Yasser Arafat’s estate, now says the arch-terrorist Nobel Peace Prize winner denied her a divorce several times.
“I know there were a lot of women who wanted to marry Arafat. However, it was my fate … I tried to leave him hundreds of times, but he wouldn’t let me,” Suha told the Turkish newspaper Sabah, quoted by the Beirut Daily Star. “Everyone knows how he wouldn’t permit me to leave. Especially those in his servitude, they know very well what it was like.”
The poor downtrodden Suha said she was the victim of vicious gossip that, according to her inexplicable reasoning, “began due to the uprising [intifada] against Israel.”
Her logic: “Yasser was fighting against the strongest lobby, media and nation, in other words Israel. I was the weakest link.
“If I had known what I would have to go through, I definitely would not have gotten married. I was with a great leader, but I was all alone.”
Suha somehow managed to get by with money as a companion, once staying at a Paris hotel where she rented an entire floor for herself and her staff for a paltry $16,000 a night, not including tips.
Suha, a Christian, was 34 years younger than her Muslim hubby. The gossip started when Suha began to work in Yasser’s Tunisian office in 1989. Following several rumors that they were more than “just friends.” they secretly married. Suha became a Muslim out of political practicality, but Mahmoud Abbas, now Palestinian Authority chairman, was vehemently against Yasser Arafat’s marriage to a Christian-born, free-spending blonde, and he made sure that Suha was kept out of the 1993 peace treaty ceremonies at the White House.