France falsified Arafat death certificate

israelinsider

Israel's ambassador criticised the French government for issuing a death certificate for Yasser Arafat stating his place of birth as Jerusalem.

"I cannot understand how the French government agreed to issue a death certificate based on false information," ambassador Nissim Zvili told a press conference in Montpellier.

Municipal officials at Clamart, the suburb of Paris where Arafat died on November 11, said they issued the document based of a family record book issued by the French foreign ministry in 1996, after Suha Arafat became a naturalized citizen of the Third Republic.

Arafat was born Mohammed Abdel-Rawf Arafat al-Qudwa al-Hussaini, on August 4, 1929.

While his official biography claims he was born in Jerusalem, numerous biographers agree that he was born in Cairo, where his Gaza-born father owned a business.

Zvili said the affair was "very badly perceived in Israel", adding that those responsible for issuing the "false document" could be subject to a legal process.

"I don't understand how when Arafat arrived in France he had been born in Cairo and when he left France he had been born in Jerusalem," he said.