Pressure for peace after Arafat death
The body of Yasser Arafat, revered as the champion of Palestinian statehood and reviled as an opportunistic terrorist, was flown to Egypt tonight as the Middle East attempted to move forward in the search for peace.
His death marked the end of an era in modern Middle East history, leaving the Palestinians without a strong leader for the first time since Arafat took charge four decades ago,
It sparked fears of a chaotic power struggle that could lead to fighting in the streets.
In a hurried effort to project continuity, the PLO elected former Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas as its new chief, virtually ensuring he will succeed Arafat as leader of the Palestinians, at least for an interim period.
The Palestinian legislature also swore in Parliament Speaker Rauhi Fattouh as caretaker president of the Palestinian Authority until elections can be held in 60 days.
The EU immediately tried to get the peace process moving again and the Middle East will take up much of President Bush’s summit with Tony Blair in Washington tomorrow.
Arafat, 75, died at 2.30 Irish time after being in a coma for a week at a French military hospital outside Paris.
Neither his doctors nor Palestinian leaders said what killed him. Palestinian terror group Hamas accused Israel of poisoning him
“He closed his eyes and his big heart stopped. He left for God but he is still among this great people,” said senior Arafat aide Tayeb Abdel Rahim, who broke into tears as he announced Arafat’s death.
A wave of grief quickly swept across the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Thousands ran into the streets, clutching his photograph, crying and wondering how they would survive without the man who embodied their struggle for statehood.
“He is our father,” Namia Abu-Safia, 48, said sobbing in the Jebaliya refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. “He is Palestine.”
Black smoke from burning tyres rose across the Gaza Strip, gunmen fired into the air in grief.
Palestinian flags at Arafat’s battered compound in Ramallah were lowered to half staff. Sombre music played on the radio, church bells rang out, and Koranic verses were played for hours over mosque loudspeakers.
The Palestinian cabinet declared 40 days of mourning for Arafat, and the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades in Gaza, a militant group linked to Arafat’s Fatah movement, decided to change its name to the Martyr Yasser Arafat Brigades.
Fearing the grief could rapidly turn into rioting, Israel quickly moved to seal of the West Bank and Gaza Strip and increased security at Jewish settlements.
Arafat’s health began deteriorating last month. Palestinian officials initially insisted he had a lingering case of the flu, but they grew increasingly concerned when he did not recover.
He was rushed to France on October 29 for emergency medical treatment, marking the first time in nearly three years he had left his West Bank compound – where he had been held virtual prisoner by Israel.
The image of the ailing leader being evacuated on a Jordanian helicopter convinced many Palestinians he would never return alive.
A French Airbus tonight flew Arafat’s body to Cairo for an airport mosque funeral service tomorrow to be attended by dignitaries from around the world. Arafat’s controversial wife Suha, said to be living on a €77,100 a month stipend from her husband, was on the flight
His body will then be flown by helicopter to his Ramallah compound for burial in a concrete coffin later in the day.
The Israeli military said all West Bank Palestinians would be allowed to attend, though they would have to pass through checkpoints. Only VIPs will be permitted to come from Gaza, a military official said, adding that Israel had information that terror groups would use the funeral to plan an attack.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who has shunned his long-time nemesis as a conniving terrorist and obstructionist, said his death can serve as a “historic turning point in the Middle East” and expressed hope the Palestinians would now work to stop terrorism.
In a sign of the enmity the two men shared even in death, Sharon refused to mention Arafat by name.
Nabil Shaath, the Palestinian foreign minister, called on Israel to resume implementation of the road map peace plan, saying Israel had used its dislike for Arafat as an excuse for avoiding obligations to withdraw from West Bank towns.
President George Bush, who had also marginalised Arafat, described his death as a “significant moment” in Palestinian history and expressed hope the Palestinians would achieve statehood and peace with Israel.
“During the period of transition that is ahead, we urge all in the region and throughout the world to join in helping make progress toward these goals and toward the ultimate goal of peace,” he said.
French President Jacques Chirac arrived at the hospital to pay his last respects. He hugged Arafat’s widow Suha before leaving.
He eulogised Arafat as a “man of courage and conviction”, but others were more tempered, reflecting the vastly different images of the Palestinian leader.
As much of his life was filled with controversy, so too was Arafat’s death.
The Palestinians had demanded he be buried in Jerusalem on the disputed holy site that once held the biblical Jewish temples and now holds Al Aqsa Mosque, Islam’s third holiest shrine.
Israel refused, fearing a Jerusalem burial would strengthen Palestinians’ claims to a city they envision as a capital of a future Palestinian state.
In a compromise, the Palestinians agreed to bury him at his compound, battered and strewn with rubble from repeated Israeli raids.
But they plan to line his grave with soil taken from the Al Aqsa compound and he is to be interred in a bare concrete box, so his body can be moved to Jerusalem at the first opportunity.
Revered by his own people, Arafat was reviled by others. He was accused of secretly fomenting attacks on Israelis while proclaiming brotherhood and claiming to have put terrorism aside.
Many Israelis felt the paunchy five foot two inch Palestinian’s real goal remained the destruction of the Jewish state.
Arafat became one of the world’s most familiar faces after addressing the UN General Assembly in New York in 1974, when he entered the chamber wearing a holster and carrying a sprig.
“Today I have come bearing an olive branch and a freedom fighter’s gun,” he said. “Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand.”
Two decades later, he shook hands at the White House with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin on a peace deal that formally recognised Israel’s right to exist while granting the Palestinians limited self-rule in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
The pact led to the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize for Arafat, Rabin and then-Foreign Minister Shimon Peres.
But the accord quickly unravelled amid mutual suspicions and accusations of treaty violations, and a new round of violence that erupted in the fall of 2000 has killed some 4,000 people, three quarters of them Palestinian.
“The biggest mistake of Arafat was when he turned to terror. His greatest achievements were when he tried to build peace,” Peres said.
The Israeli and US governments said Arafat deserved much of the blame for the derailing of the peace process. Even many of his own people began whispering against Arafat, expressing disgruntlement over corruption, lawlessness and a bad economy in the Palestinian areas.
A resilient survivor of war with Israel, assassination attempts and even a plane crash, Arafat was born Rahman Abdel-Raouf Arafat Al-Qudwa in August 1929, the fifth of seven children of a Palestinian merchant killed in the 1948 war over Israel’s creation.
There is disagreement whether he was born in Gaza or in Cairo.
Educated as an engineer in Egypt, Arafat served in the Egyptian army and then started a contracting firm in Kuwait. It was there that he founded the Fatah movement, which became the core of the PLO.
A long-time bachelor, in 1991 Arafat married his secretary, Suha Tawil. He was 62 and she was 28.
A daughter, named Zahwa after Arafat’s mother, was born in July 1995.
After the Arabs’ humbling defeat by Israel in the six day war of 1967, the PLO thrust itself on the world’s front pages by sending its gunmen out to hijack airliners, machine gun airports and seize Israeli athletes at the 1972 Summer Olympics.
“As long as the world saw Palestinians as no more than refugees standing in line for UN rations, it was not likely to respect them. Now that the Palestinians carry rifles the situation has changed,” Arafat explained.
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