Suha Arafat says PLO chief forced her to stay with him

Suha Arafat, the widow of Yasser Arafat, said she tried to leave him “hundreds of times, but he wouldn’t let me.”

She also told the Turkish newspaper Sabah that she would not have married the Palestinian leader had she known how difficult life with him would be. She was 33 years younger than him when they eloped and she converted from Christianity to Islam.

“My life with him was hard. However, my life without him is even harder,” she said. “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 also all alone.”

Yasser Arafat died in November 2004. — jta