PALESTINIANS MOURN ARAFAT'S DEATH
RAMALLAH, WEST BANK, November 12, 2004 (STAR) Palestinians rushed into the streets yesterday to mourn Yasser Arafat, clinging to flags, clutching his photograph and waving the trademark headscarf of the leader considered the national patriarch.
Arafat, who triumphantly forced his people’s plight into the world spotlight but failed to achieve his lifelong quest for Palestinian statehood, died in a military hospital in Paris yesterday at age 75.
Palestinian flags at Arafat’s battered compound in the West Bank city of Ramallah were lowered to half staff. Television broadcast excerpts from the Quran, the Muslim tradition on the death of leading figures, with a picture of Arafat in the background.
Arafat was to the end a man of many mysteries and paradoxes — terrorist, statesman, autocrat and peacemaker.
Palestinian parliament speaker Rauhi Fattouh was sworn in as acting head of the Palestinian Authority at noon local time (6 p.m. in Manila). He pledged elections would be held within the 60-day time frame mandated by Palestinian law.
Fattouh also hailed Arafat as the "father of Palestinian nationalism — the first fighter and a great martyr."
Deputy speaker Hassan Khreisheh was also sworn in as acting speaker for a 60-day period.
The little known Fattouh, 55, is not seen as long-term replacement for Arafat, lacking widespread support in the dominant Fatah faction while he also lacks a seat on the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) executive committee.
Palestinian Cabinet minister Saeb Erekat said "we can be certain transition will be smooth, and the Palestinian people deserve to have free and fair elections."
Former prime minister Mahmoud Abbas was officially installed as head of the PLO, while the group’s Tunis-based politburo chief Faruq Qaddumi was surprisingly named as head of the dominant Fatah faction.
Prime Minister Ahmed Qorei was to stay on his position as head of government.
Arafat’s passing marked the end of an era in modern Middle East history, and some hoped it could spur new efforts at Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking.
But it also left the Palestinians without a strong leader for the first time since Arafat took charge of the Palestinian national struggle four decades ago, raising concern that the scramble to claim Arafat’s mantle could fragment the Palestinian leadership or spark chaos and factional fighting in the streets.
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 Oct. 29 for emergency medical treatment, marking the first time in nearly three years he left his 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.
Top Palestinian officials flew in to check on their leader while Arafat’s 41-year-old wife, Suha, publicly accused them of trying to usurp his powers. Ordinary Palestinians prayed for his well-being, but expressed deep frustration over his failure to improve their lives.
There has also been uncertainty over the fate of the hundreds of millions of dollars Arafat is believed to have controlled.
Arafat died at 3:30 a.m. in the Percy Military Training Hospital. Neither his doctors nor Palestinian leaders would say what killed 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 Palestinian people.
Thousands ran into the streets, clutching his photograph, crying and wondering how they would survive without the man who embodied their struggle for a state.
"He is our father," Namia Abu-Safia, 48, said sobbing in the Jebaliya refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. "He is Palestine."
Fearing the mourning could rapidly turn into rioting, Israel quickly moved to seal off the West Bank and Gaza Strip and increased security at Jewish settlements.
Arafat’s remains are to be flown Thursday from Paris to Cairo, where a funeral service attended by foreign dignitaries will be held for him Friday morning. His body will then be flown by helicopter to his Ramallah compound for burial later in the day.
The Israeli military said it would restrict access to the burial, allowing only Palestinians with permits to attend, but will allow mourners to hold processions in towns and refugee camps.
Just hours after his death, starkly different visions of Arafat’s legacy were clear.
French President Jacques Chirac eulogized him as a "man of courage and conviction who, for 40 years, has incarnated the Palestinians’ combat for recognition of their national rights."
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said he was deeply moved by Arafat’s death.
"For nearly four decades, he expressed and symbolized in his person the national aspirations of the Palestinian people," he said.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who has shunned his longtime 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.
Insisting that with Arafat at the helm it was impossible to discuss peace with the Palestinians, Sharon pushed forward with his "unilateral disengagement" plan. Under the plan, Israel will evacuate the Gaza Strip next year and continue building a West Bank barrier to separate Israelis from Palestinians.
Israeli officials have said Arafat’s death would have no effect on the plan. And, since Arafat steadfastly refused to groom a successor, it was unlikely any Palestinian leader would emerge in the near future with the clout to make a peace deal with Israel.
United States President George W. Bush sent his sympathy to the
Palestinians.
"We express our condolences to the Palestinian people. For the Palestinian people, we hope that the future will bring peace and the fulfillment of their aspirations for an independent, democratic Palestine that is at peace with its neighbors," he said.
As much of his life was filled with controversy, so too was Arafat’s death.
The Palestinians had demanded Arafat 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 here, the muqata, battered and strewn with rubble from repeated Israeli raids. But they plan to line his grave with soil taken from the Al Aqsa Mosque compound, said Ahmed Ghneim, a Fatah leader, and he is to be interred in a cement box, so he can be moved to Jerusalem for burial when the opportunity presents itself.
A visual constant in his checkered keffiyeh headdress, Arafat kept the Palestinians’ cause at the center of the Arab-Israeli conflict. But he fell short of creating a Palestinian state, and, along with other secular Arab leaders of his generation, he saw his influence weakened by the rise of radical Islam in recent years.
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 5-foot, 2-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 recognized 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 unraveled 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 on Aug. 4, 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.
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 airplanes, machine gun airports and seize Israeli athletes at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, Germany.
"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. Grief And Hate
Upon learning of Arafat’s death, some Palestinians fired into the air - some only 500 yards from Jewish settlements. No clashes were reported amid a mood more of grief than outrage directed at Israel.
Israel sealed the West Bank and Gaza Strip and sent troop reinforcements to the areas yesterday, the military said. Israel also beefed up security at Jewish settlements, fearing widespread Palestinian riots in the coming days.
Fears of violence were underlined when the radical Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed offshoot of Arafat’s Fatah movement, urged its fighters to attack Israel to avenge the "Zionist assassination."
"Zionist Israel and the government of Sharon are responsible for the assassination of our leader by putting him under siege," it said in a statement.
Israel, which has long accused Arafat of being the main obstacle to peace in the Middle East, did not try to mask its delight at his death.
"The sun is shining in the Middle East and around the world, as Arafat was not only the leader of terrorism against Israel, but also the founding father of the terrorism running rampant around the world right now, including that of al-Qaeda," Justice Minister Yosef Lapid said.
Jewish settler spokesman Yehoshua Mor-Yosef said Arafat’s death constituted the disappearance of a killer of Jews who had brought grief to thousands of Israeli families.
"The West Bank and Gaza strip Settlers Council hopes that the removal of Arafat will put an end to the mistaken concept that the uprooting of Jewish settlements will bring peace and security," he said, referring to Sharon’s plan to withdraw Israeli troops and settlers from Gaza and four West Bank settlements by next year.
Palestinians huddled around radios on street corners as loudspeakers from mosques amplified verses from the Quran. Loudspeakers mounted on trucks blared Arafat’s most famous quotes.
In the Jebaliya refugee camp, Gaza’s largest, university students and supporters of Arafat’s Fatah movement gathered in shock and sadness after learning of his death in a Paris hospital.
"Yasser Arafat is inside in our hearts — in the hearts of the real nation of Palestine," said Amar Muheisen, 22, from Gaza City as he beat his chest with his fists. "Yasser Arafat will never die."
Dozens of Arafat’s personal bodyguards also gathered around his seaside headquarters, picking over the rubble of the structure destroyed in an Israeli airstrike to lower a Palestinian flag to half staff. Some fired weapons in the air to salute him.
Children, already out of school for a Muslim holiday, ran through the streets, swept up in the frenzy.
One 14-year old named Ali, who refused to give his last name, wrapped a fist around a photograph of the late leader, who was waving his hand and smiling.
He shouted a famous Arafat quote, "the mountain cannot be shaken by the wind," and ran through the streets.
"This is Abu Ammar!" he said. "He said we will raise the Palestinian flag in Jerusalem - and we will."
Palestinian militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad, Arafat’s main political rivals, expressed sorrow and paid tribute.
Sami Abu Zuhri, Hamas’ spokesman in Gaza, called on the group’s supporters to honor Arafat and work toward national unity.
"We lost by his death one of our great symbols," Abu Zuhri said.
Islamic Jihad spokesman in Gaza Nafez Azzam said "with hearts full of belief in God’s will we mourn President Yasser Arafat who was a great leader for the Palestinian people."
Many Palestinians reacted with outrage and blamed the Palestinians’ nemesis, Israel, for Arafat’s death. One Hamas supporter Khaled Ismail, 35, a teacher, waved the green Hamas banner and vowed to carry on Arafat’s legacy.
"We are not going to allow Israel to take advantage of his absence," he said. "All of us, hand by hand, will fight the occupation and liberate Jerusalem." — AFP, Marichu Villanueva
Reported by: Sol Jose Vanzi
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by PHILIPPINE HEADLINE NEWS ONLINE
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