The Nobel Prize that Yasser Arafat received in 1994, in recognition of his efforts to bring peace to Palestine, was stolen late on Saturday.
MUMBAI: The Nobel Prize that Yasser Arafat received in 1994, in recognition of his efforts to bring peace to Palestine, was stolen late on Saturday amid the chaos of the territory’s internecine conflict. Enraged Fatah leaders accused Hamas militiamen of looting Arafat’s home in Gaza City.
“They stole almost everything inside the house, including Arafat’s Nobel Peace Prize medal,” said Ramallah-based Fatah spokesman Ahmed Abdel Rahman. “Hamas militiamen and gangsters blew up the main entrance to the house before storming it.”
The incident represents the second instance this month of thieves conferring the Nobel Peace Prize on themselves. On June 10, South African Desmond Tutu, who was awarded the prize in 1984 for his anti-apartheid campaign, lost his medal when five men broke into his Johannesburg home on a weekend heist. But the police tracked down the prize-pilferers the next day and the medal was restored to Tutu.
The raid on Arafat’s home, however, was apparently sustained by political ill-will rather than conventional felonious intent. “Most of the looters were ordinary citizens,” a witness told the local media. “They stole almost everything, including furniture, tiles, closets, and beds.”
The desolation caused by Gaza City looters is reminiscent of the brazen 2004 clean-up of Rabindranath Tagore museum at the Uttarayan complex in Shantiniketan. The pillagers emptied the museum of its most significant treasures: Tagore’s Nobel Prize medallion, the citation, memorabilia, and art objects. The museum was looted in March.
Curiously, in March this year, another museum was broken into and another Nobel Prize was stolen, albeit briefly. The scene of crime was a science centre established in the University of California, Berkeley, in honour of Ernst Lawrence, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1939. The medal was stolen, apparently as a prank, by a 22-year-old student from an unprotected glass cabinet.
The Fatah, however, did not discern any venial mischievousness in the attack on Arafat’s house.
Fatah spokesman said the break-in exemplified a flagrant breach of faith because it occurred despite promises from Hamas to prevent such attacks.
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