Amid volleys of wild gunfire and pitched battles between Palestinian security forces and frenzied mourners, Yasser Arafat was laid to rest Friday in the scruffy military compound where Israel had kept him under house arrest for the past three years.
The chaotic burial in the West Bank town of Ramallah was in stark contrast with the somber, formal funeral held earlier in the day in Cairo.
The Ramallah burial was meant to be solemn and dignified. Military bands and honor guards stood in formation for hours, waiting for Arafat’s arrival. But when the moment came, Palestinian security forces quickly lost control of a surging mob of young men and boys who had scaled the 10-foot walls of the Muqata compound.
Dozens were hurt in the melee, and Palestinian officials had to hustle the coffin into the ground to avoid more bloodshed.
Arafat died Thursday in a military hospital near Paris after a two-week struggle with an illness that has not been disclosed. He was 75.
Tens of thousands of Palestinians gathered in Ramallah to bid farewell to the leader who put their cause on the world’s political map. The crowds were not as large as those that greeted Arafat’s triumphal return from exile in 1994, but that was because Israeli authorities sharply restricted travel in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
An Egyptian military helicopter carried Arafat’s body from Cairo to the Palestinian town a few miles from Jerusalem. It was a journey of unmistakable symbolism. In death, as in his tumultuous life, Arafat, who was born in Cairo, fell short of his goal of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as it capital.
As two Egyptian helicopters escorted by two Israeli helicopters appeared in the sky over Ramallah, a great roar went up from the crowd. Thousands began chanting Arafat’s name. After circling once, the Egyptian helicopters came in low over the rooftops, their rotors drowning out the sound of the crowd and stirring up a huge cloud of dust.
When the dust settled, young men began firing assault rifles in the air and the crowd pressed forward. Palestinian security forces tried to push them back, but the mob broke through and swarmed the helicopters.
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Palestinian officials had hoped Arafat could lie in state for a few hours inside the compound, allowing members of the public to pay their respects before a sunset burial. Those hopes quickly evaporated.
It took baton-wielding soldiers 20 minutes to clear enough room so the helicopters’ doors could be opened and the dignitaries inside could emerge.
When Arafat’s flag-draped coffin popped out, it immediately was borne aloft by a thousand hands. It looked like a small boat afloat in sea of humanity. The coffin eventually was transferred to a jeep that slowly pushed its way through the crush of grieving Palestinians.
The gunfire was in tribute, but often it sounded as if an intense firefight had erupted.
Hours earlier, while teenage supporters of Arafat’s Fatah faction gathered outside the Ramallah compound and declared with noisy chants their willingness to die for the Palestinian cause, world leaders participated in the somber state funeral at a military officers club near the Cairo airport.
Head-of-state treatment
With phalanxes of high-stepping soldiers and a horse-drawn gun carriage to carry his coffin, Egypt provided Arafat much of the pomp accorded to the head of a sovereign state. In sharp contrast with the scene in Ramallah, the event was tightly controlled by Egyptian authorities, who closed it to the public to prevent any spontaneous displays of emotion.
The funeral was staged in the Galaa military officers’ compound in Cairo’s Nasser City neighborhood, near the homes of President Hosni Mubarak and other top officials.
While a Muslim cleric read from the Koran, several hundred officials from across the Middle East and around the world arrived in streams of black limousines. They filed into a huge tent made of brightly colored fabric, the usual arrangement for traditional Arab wakes.
At precisely 11 a.m., seven ebony horses emerged from the gates of the compound, towing a gold-trimmed carriage, topped with the coffin, draped in the red, white, black and green Palestinian flag.
With more than 200 soldiers marching in formation, the coffin was paraded along a lonesome stretch of road on the edge of Cairo, trailed by a procession of kings, presidents and diplomats, a vivid display of business suits and traditional African and Arab robes. Mubarak led the official contingent, surrounded by Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Abdullah, Jordan’s King Abdullah II and other Arab leaders.
The U.S., which gave up on Arafat as a potential peacemaker in his final years, was represented by Assistant Secretary of State William Burns.
The boulevard was empty except for a throng of reporters and the cameras from Egyptian state television, which broadcast the event live. Residents along the route said they were warned by police not to step out on their balconies for a view.
After the march turned back through the gates, Arafat’s veiled widow, Suha, and their 9-year-old daughter, Zahwa, wept as the Palestinian and Egyptian national anthems were played before the casket was loaded onto an Egyptian military plane. The plane flew to Al `Arish in Egypt’s northeastern Sinai Peninsula, where the casket was transferred to the helicopter for the trip to Ramallah.
The isolation of the event struck some attendees as an odd farewell for a man known for his vast popular appeal on the Arab street.
“I was surprised. I think they are shy, they are afraid of having the public, and it’s a shame because Arafat liked Egypt and Egypt liked Arafat,” said prominent Lebanese politician Walid Jumblatt, leader of Lebanon’s Druze minority.
Like others, Jumblatt remarked that the constrictions on the event reflect Arab leaders’ deep unease with their own people, who blame the leaders for chronic corruption and a failure to democratize.
“This is the irony of the Arab world,” Jumblatt said. “[Arafat], of course, will have a popular funeral in Palestine, in Ramallah, but why should we be afraid of the Egyptian people?”
In Jerusalem, Israeli security forces were on their highest state of alert. Palestinian youths clashed with police outside Al Aqsa Mosque after guards barred them from noon prayers amid fear of riots and unrest during Arafat’s funeral.
But aside from restricting travel in and out of the West Bank and Gaza, Israelis generally maintained a low profile in the Palestinian territories throughout the day.
A simple grave
Hours before Arafat’s coffin arrived in Ramallah, bulldozers still were working on the burial site. The grave, which Palestinian leaders insist is only temporary–Jerusalem remains their ultimate goal–is a simple affair of white limestone and polished black marble. It is in a corner beneath the only trees in the compound.
Dispensing with much of the formal ceremony that had been planned, Muslim clerics recited prayers over the grave and Arafat was laid to rest at 3:10 p.m.
For much of the world, Arafat was a deeply flawed political leader. Israel and its supporters saw him as little more than a terrorist. But for Palestinians he was a beloved father figure, the repository of their national aspirations and the only leader many have ever known.
“When a son loses his father, he has to step up and prove himself. Otherwise, he has wasted his father’s legacy,” said Kamel Husseini, a Palestinian official who attended the funeral.
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Husseini said the Palestinians were entering a period of transition and uncertainty.
“We never thought about the day after, but now it is here. It is time for some soul searching and some mature decisions by our leaders,” he said.