Arafat laid to rest amid sighs and cries

By: Ahmed Hammadi

RAMALLAH, West Bank: Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was laid to rest in a marble-and-stone grave on Friday – when the Muslims throughout the world were observing Quds Day - 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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