Suha Arafat (Arabic: سهى عرفات, Sʋeıª Oɑrɑfát), née Suha Daoud Tawil (Arabic: سهى داود الطويل, Sʋeıª Dáuʋd alƟ̑ɑuíl) (born 17 July 1963), is the widow of former Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat.
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Suha was born in the West Bank in 1963 into an affluent Christian family who lived in Nablus and then Ramallah (both cities under Jordanian authority at the time). Suha's father Daoud Tawil, an Oxford-educated[1] banker,[2] was born in Jaffa (now part of Tel Aviv). Suha's mother, Raymonda Hawa Tawil, born in Acre, was a politically-active Palestinian militant, poet and writer.
Suha attended a convent school, Rosary Sisters' School, in Beit Hanina, Jerusalem and the Sorbonne in Paris. As a student, Suha was a leader in the General Union of Palestine Students (GUPS) in France, where she organized demonstrations for the Palestinian cause.
Suha, her mother, and her sisters met Arafat for the first time in 1985.[3] When he visited France in 1989, she acted as an interpreter at the meetings with visitors and French government officials. Soon after his departure from Paris, Arafat asked Suha to come and work with him in Tunisia (where the Palestinian Liberation Organization had set up a haven).[2]
Suha converted to Islam and married Arafat on July 17, 1990, when she was aged 27 and he was 61. Their only child, daughter Zahwa, was born on July 24, 1995 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France.
In 2004, when Arafat was dying she went to his Paris hospital and attempted to talk to him to bring him out of his coma. He died November 11, 2004.[4]
Suha and Zahwa lived in Tunisia from 2004 to 2007. Suha had also lived in Tunisia before marrying Arafat. They obtained Tunisian citizenship in September 2006. Zahwa went to the American Cooperative School of Tunisia. From 1998 onward she lived in Tunisia and France on and off.[4]
On 7th August 2007, Tunisia without warning Suha, revoked her citizenship but not her daughter's. Suha claimed her Tunisian property was also frozen. Rumors suggest there was a discord between Suha and Leïla Ben Ali, wife of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.[5]
On 31 October 2011, the Tunis Court of First Instance issued an international arrest warrant for Suha, relating to corruption in a business deal that involved the former Tunisian first lady, Leila Ben Ali, in 2006. Initially, Suha proclaimed her complete cooperation with the Tunisian prosecutors.[6] But shortly thereafter she denounced the prosecution as a Tunisian scheme to defame her and the Palestinian cause.[7] She was, at the time, living in Malta. She also denied reports that she had any money or property belonging to the Palestinian national cause, and she said that she opposed normalization of relations with Israel.[8]