(Continued...)

As Arafat lay dying at Percy Hospital in Paris, Rizk reportedly negotiated with the PLO on behalf of Arafat's widow Suha for a $20 million cash payment and an ongoing monthly allowance. He helped Suha shrewdly leverage her power of attorney and next-of-kin access to the ailing leader's hospital bedside. The rumor has also been widely reported that Rizk and Suha became lovers.

"It wouldn't surprise me," says fellow Maronite Ziad Abdel Nour, who heads the U.S. Committee for a Free Lebanon. "Pierre Rizk has zero principles whatsoever. He will cheat, lie, fuck, kill—whatever needs to be done."

"Where does this guy live?" I ask.

"Are you kidding? A guy like that doesn't live anywhere."

Suha, for her part, has relocated to Tunis, where she enjoys the protection of head of state Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali. "She stays out of politics," says Muhammad Abdullah Amireh, a family friend and confidante based in Nablus, reached by phone. "Her whole life is focused on her daughter Zahwa," Amireh said, "who now attends a top preparatory school in Tunis with the elites of the country." She had sparked controversy in 2002 for asserting that if she had a son, there would be "no greater honor" than his martyrdom for the Palestinian cause. But the outspoken first lady has not returned to the Palestinian territories since her departure in 2000.

Amireh added that the Arafat widow periodically returns to Paris to see family and friends and go shopping. European press reports assert that she manifests a preference for haute couture designer Louis Féraud and upscale shoemaker Christian Louboutin. Via Amireh, Mrs. Arafat declined an interview, citing her hectic schedule.

The Arafats' monied inner circle, which welcomed Lebanese Maronite Christian Pierre Rizk, also found room for some Israelis and Jews. Together with Arafat senior advisor Muhammad Rashid—by birth an Iraqi Kurd—the Palestinian leader tapped two ex-Israeli security officials to open doors for PLO money in elite Swiss banks, beginning around 1997. What has become known in the Hebrew press as the "Ginnosar Affair"—named after one of Arafat's Israeli business partners, ex-spook Yossi Ginnosar—sent shock waves through the Jewish state and Zionist diaspora. It wasn't just the enormity of the sums these erstwhile enemies were embezzling together while the peace process tanked—though $340 million is a lot of hummus—the alleged involvement of some senior members of the American Jewish peace camp in Arafat's corruption also cast a shadow on their efforts to help broker peace.

Take Stephen P. Cohen, a prominent Jewish freelance diplomat who spent much of the '90s jet setting between Israel and Arab capitals, often backed by Slimfast diet tycoon S. Daniel Abraham. A seasoned Israeli investigative journalist accused him in 2002 of having profited from business dealings with Ginnosar and Arafat. No evidence was offered to suggest that Cohen had behaved unlawfully—nor does he appear to have been as deeply involved with Arafat as Israel's Ginnosar, let alone PLO bagman Mohammed Rashid. Cohen's nuanced response to the accusation, however, seemed to raise more questions than it answered. "Cooperative business was not my primary focus," he explained, "but it was perfectly consistent with my attempts to bridge the societies." According to retired military intelligence colonel Lerman, the scandal only further detracted from Cohen's standing in Israeli political circles amid the demise of the peace process: "As the Oslo process collapsed," he observes, "many of the people who were Jewish go-betweens—Cohen, Abraham, and others—have lost their luster here."

Meanwhile in New York City, the shiny black bowling balls of Bowlmor Lanes in Greenwich Village bare rumbling witness to the long, strong arm of Arafat. Flush with cash during the bloody Palestinian intifada of 2000–2004, Arafat's Kurdish finance chief, Mohammed Rashid, deputized Palestinian American Zeid Masri to pour $1.3 million of Palestinian Authority largesse into the bowling alley's parent company, Strike Holdings LLC. A McLean, Virginia–based private equity fund controlled by Masri, SilverHaze Partners LLC, fronted the transaction.

After a US–mandated Standard & Poor's audit of the PA's investment arm exposed the wacky dealings in 2004, Strike CEO Thomas Shannon took immediate steps to return the funds. "The information was never disclosed to us previously," he told a reporter. "[H]ad we known the source of these funds, which represent approximately two percent of our company's equity, we would never have accepted them." How many strikes at Bowlmor Lanes inadvertently fed into Arafat's coffers, the world may never know. Tragically, it's a safe bet that none of the proceeds reached Palestinian 13-year-olds on the sludgy shores of Gaza Beach.

Photos, from top: Hussein Hussein/Getty Images; PPO/Getty Images; Hussein Hussein/PPO via Getty Images

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