Arafat Laid to Rest as West Bank Mourns
By
Mohammed Daraghmeh
The Associated Press
12 November 2004
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Ramallah,
West Bank - Yasser Arafat was laid to rest in a marble-and-stone grave
today after his flag-draped coffin was borne through a sea of emotional
Palestinians who swarmed the helicopter that brought him from a state
funeral in Egypt.
Police fired
wildly into the air to keep back the surging crowd at the West Bank
compound known as the Muqata, where Arafat spent his last years as a
virtual prisoner.
After
Arafat's body was lowered into the ground, Muslim clerics read Quranic
verses and the late leader's bodyguards wept and embraced each other.
Frantic
mourners surged toward the tomb, trampling the olive tree saplings that
were planted around the grave according to Islamic tradition. One
policeman knelt on the marble and kissed the stone.
A
black-and-white checkered keffiyeh was planted on a stick in the soil of
the grave, arranged in the way Arafat habitually wore his traditional
headdress. The Palestinians consider the gravesite temporary - a place for
Arafat's body until they can honor his request to be buried in Jerusalem.
Palestinian
legislator Hanan Ashrawi said the pandemonium was a sign of love.
"President
Arafat would have wanted it this way, with exhilaration, feelings of
loyalty, pain, sadness and love all at once," she said. "The people
reclaimed him. They wanted to say goodbye without distance."
An Egyptian
helicopter carrying Arafat's coffin landed at the Muqata at midafternoon
and was immediately rushed by tens of thousands of mourners.
Hundreds of
Palestinian security guards tried for 25 minutes to open the helicopter
door to remove the coffin onto a jeep that had plowed through the crowd to
clear a path.
Mahmoud
Abbas, the new head of the PLO, and Omar Suleiman, Egypt's director of
intelligence, tried to get out of the helicopter, but were kept back at
first by the huge, chaotic crowd.
As the
coffin was carried toward the gravesite, police jumped on top of it, waved
their arms and flashed the victory sign. People chanted, "With our blood
and our soul we will redeem you Yasser Arafat!"
Stretchers
carried away two people who were trampled in the melee.
Under the
crush of screaming mourners, plans were hastily scrapped for a stately
ceremony with Palestinian officials filing past his coffin.
Some
mourners were disappointed they could not properly pay their respects.
"I wanted to
say goodbye and I didn't get a chance. I didn't get a glimpse of his
coffin," said Hadeje Abu Sharif, 52, a diabetic who fainted during the
frenzy. "We have no organization. If we had it, we would have a state."
The failure
of police to control the pandemonium augured poorly for Palestinian hopes
to maintain order in the wake of Arafat's death.
Hours
earlier, mourners had burst through the gates of the Muqata and climbed
over the walls of the compound, thwarting attempts by armed police to hold
them back. Police scrambled to keep them off the landing pad.
As Arafat's
helicopter touched down, the crowd cried out, "Welcome, welcome Abu Ammar!"
using his nom de guerre. "Welcome, welcome old man!"
Buildings
and windshields in the West Bank and Gaza were plastered with Arafat's
photo and people waved black and white scarves, the colors of his Fatah
movement. In Gaza City, hundreds gathered on rooftops, streets and
apartment balconies in hopes of catching a glimpse of Arafat's helicopter.
Barred from attending the burial, many Gaza residents held symbolic
funerals across the strip.
A small
group of masked gunmen marched into the Muqata, ignoring calls from
official Palestine TV not to carry arms or mask faces, as is common in
Palestinian funerals during times of crisis. However, the gunmen calmly
submitted to inspection by plainclothes security who ensured there were no
bullets in the chambers.
The
cooperation between militants and policemen was a likely reflection of
Palestinians' desire for consensus in the wake of Arafat's death.
The
75-year-old Arafat, who led the Palestinians for four decades, died
Thursday at a Paris hospital from an undisclosed illness that had plunged
him into a weeklong coma. He had spent his final three years confined to
his headquarters, never leaving out of fear the Israelis wouldn't allow
him back in.
Today,
teenage boys climbed onto the walls of the compound chanting, "Whoever
poisoned Arafat, we will drink his blood." Others cried out, "Allahu akbar,"
Arabic for "God is great," and "We want to see Abu Ammar."
Top Arafat
aide Tayeb Abdel Rahim asked the crowd to stop chanting.
"The whole
world is watching us now on television and we have to reflect our real
picture," he said.
Israeli
police, ordered to stay on the sidelines of the burial, were on their
highest state of alert and canceled all leaves, worried that the prayers
for the last Friday of the holy month of Ramadan, together with mourning
for Arafat, would get out of control. In Jerusalem, hundreds of
Palestinian youths who were barred from prayers at the al-Aqsa mosque -
Islam's third-holiest shrine - scuffled with police.
Egypt gave
Arafat a state funeral in Cairo, even though he never realized his dream
of Palestinian statehood.
The service
began amid heavy security with humble prayers at a mosque in a military
compound and ended with a procession, his flag-draped wooden casket set on
a horse-drawn gun carriage and followed by presidents and kings.
Egyptian
President Hosni Mubarak, Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah as well as Abbas and
Farouk Kaddoumi, the newly chosen leader of the Fatah organization, were
among the dignitaries who marched behind the casket on a residential
street a short distance toward a military airfield. Doors and shutters of
homes along the route were closed, and the street was sealed off.
Arafat's
veiled widow, Suha, and their rarely seen 9-year-old daughter, Zahwa, wept
as the Palestinian and Egyptian national anthems were played by a band
before the casket was loaded aboard an Egyptian military plane. The jet
flew to el-Arish, in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, where the casket was
transferred to the helicopter.
Among the
dignitaries who attended the Cairo ceremony were Syrian President Bashar
Assad, Sultan Hasanal Bolkiah of Brunei, South African President Thabo
Mbeki, European Union Foreign Policy chief Javier Solana and Pope Shenouda
III, head of Egypt's Coptic Orthodox Church.
The United
States, which had labeled Arafat an obstacle to peace, sent Assistant
Secretary of State William Burns. Israel sent no delegation.
"Yasser
Arafat was more important for Palestinian identity than their flag and
their national anthem," said Terje Roed-Larsen, U.N. envoy for the Middle
East and a key player in the talks that led to the 1993 Oslo peace accord,
in an interview with the AP at the funeral service.
He said he
hoped the new Palestinian leadership would return to peace negotiations
with Israel.
Bulatlat
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