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Al-Ahram Weekly 29 July - 4 August 1999 Issue No. 440 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 29 July - 4 August 1999 Issue No. 440
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Profile Travel Living Sports Time Out Chronicles People Cartoons Letters Paying homage to King Hassan
By Dalal Abu Ghazaleh"It was a real nightmare," commented one Western security official who had the extremely difficult task of protecting his leader during the four-hour funeral ceremony of King Hassan II. The late king was laid to rest on Sunday after scenes of frenzied mourning by nearly two million Moroccans who swept through police barricades to mingle with world leaders paying homage to the departed monarch.
King Hassan, who died suddenly after a heart attack on Friday, was interred next to his father in the Mohamed V mausoleum in the capital Rabat. Hassan's death sent shock waves throughout Morocco and the Arab world. Observers and politicians are now speculating about the region's future after the death of yet another long serving Arab leader. King Hassan, like many of his Arab contemporaries, witnessed the early years of war against the Arab world's key enemy, Israel, and later played a major role in the movement towards making peace with Tel Aviv.
The three new faces in Arab politics -- King Mohamed VI of Morocco, King Abdullah of Jordan and the Emir of Bahrain -- will have to bear the difficult burden of leading their countries in totally different circumstances than those of their fathers.
The two million Moroccans who took part in Hassan's funeral lined the 4km funeral route. At one point, row upon row of white-robed palace officials, police and army troops failed to prevent hundreds of wailing Moroccans from trampling through the barricades and surging towards Hassan's coffin. The jostling crowd made the movement of the procession very difficult. King Mohamed walked directly behind his father's casket but both he and the leading foreign dignitaries, US President Bill Clinton and his wife, Hillary, President Hosni Mubarak, French President Jacques Chirac, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, King Juan Carlos of Spain and Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, were crushed together until bodyguards managed to force a way through for the principal mourners.
Hundreds of Moroccans were reportedly treated at emergency clinics located in tents throughout the city after they had fainted or suffered minor injuries in the crowds of people watching the funeral cortege.
"There is no god but God, and Mohamed is his prophet," the crowd chanted throughout King Hassan's funeral, in an emotional farewell to the man who had ruled them for 38 years. Many also waved the red and green Moroccan flag. The king's coffin was draped in a red and black silk cloth embroidered with verses from the Qur'an woven in gold thread. The funeral procession was led by regimented rows of palace officials wearing white robes and bright red fezzes. An empty royal carriage drawn by four white horses preceded the open-topped military vehicle which carried the monarch's coffin.
Earlier expectations that King Hassan's funeral would turn into a stage for dramatic developments in Arab-Israeli peace negotiations were dashed, however, when Syrian President Hafez Al-Assad failed to show up at the last minute. Expectations had been raised by frequent reports coming out of Israel and the Arab world indicating that a meeting would take place between Israel's new Prime Minister Ehud Barak and President Assad. Statements from US, Israeli and European officials stressed that a meeting between the two would be the best way to honour the late Moroccan king and acknowledge his pivotal role in mediating between the Arabs and Israel.
Arab diplomatic sources said that Assad had cancelled his plan to take part in the funeral at the last minute and had sent Syrian Vice-President Zuhair Masharqa instead. The sources added that Assad had taken this decision following statements made by Israeli Foreign Minister David Levy who had predicted that a meeting between Assad and Barak was possible.
Assad reportedly felt that this would have been an undeserved reward for Israel's Barak before he had proved his seriousness and commitment to meet Syrian demands of a complete Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights.
US President Clinton said he was upset that Assad had not attended the funeral but suggested that he might be unwell. "I am slightly concerned and don't quite understand why he did not come," Clinton was quoted as saying by Israeli newspapers on Sunday. "I have had ongoing contact with him and was hoping to see him here and perhaps have him and Ehud Barak meet each other," he added.
In the absence of a significant breakthrough both the Israeli and Western media played up the brief encounter between Barak and Algerian President Abdel-Aziz Bouteflika. This was the first ever handshake or meeting between the head of the Algerian state and an Israeli official. Bouteflika did not disguise his feelings. While shaking hands with former Israeli premier Shimon Peres, Bouteflika told him that "this is the first time in my life I have met Israelis". Bouteflika wished Barak well and told him that there were high expectations that he would carry out his pledges to make peace . He also offered his help whenever it was needed. "I promise you we will need it," replied Barak.
Bouteflika, Algeria's former foreign minister in the 1960s, also met Clinton, Chirac and King Mohamed, all for the first time since he assumed office in May. These meetings indicate that Bouteflika is intent on restoring Algeria's position in world politics and in so doing freeing his country from the legacy of the last seven years of bloody civil conflict in which more than 100,000 people have been killed.
While in Rabat, Clinton chaired another brief meeting between Arafat and Barak and reportedly advised the Palestinian leader to keep "an open mind" in his talks with Israel's prime minister which took place on Tuesday.
The US president said Morocco's King Hassan had been one of a number of regional leaders committed to peace and compared him to Jordan's late King Hussein, who died in February, and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was assassinated in 1995. This generation of leaders, he told US Embassy personnel in Morocco, "brought this region to the turning point we now face. The opportunity of lasting peace is now at hand."
During his long reign King Hassan, 70, survived military coups, leftist plots and opposition from Islamist activists. "When I ascended the throne, people said I would not last more than six months," he once told his friend, King Carlos of Spain. But his grip on power and personal popularity among Morocco's 29 million people was recognised even by his political opponents who had tried to unseat the man they called "the great survivor".
King Hassan was enthroned in 1961 and had miraculous escapes in 1971 and 1972 when army rebels tried to kill him. Leftists organised an uprising in 1973 after several assassination plots were aborted. His opponents were motivated at that time by their outrage at what they regarded as an authoritarian style of rule and human rights abuses. In his book The Challenge, King Hassan wrote: "Moroccans need a popular monarchy that governs. That is why the king governs in Morocco. The people would not understand if the king did not govern." In a second book, The Memory of a King published in 1993, he acknowledged that 60 per cent of his decisions had been wrong. He added: "I have had the courage to see my mistakes and to correct them." He did not, however, say what these mistakes had been.
Opponents denounced human rights abuses, like harsh treatment of political prisoners, even though the king denied that there were political prisoners but only what he called "traitors". But early in the 1990s he responded to critics by ordering the release of left-wing opponents and members of the military who had tried to overthrow him. More than 800 prisoners were freed and 195 death sentences were commuted to life imprisonment. There are still a few dozen political prisoners in custody most of whom are Islamist activists. The late king contained fundamentalism by using his prestige as a descendant of the Prophet, as a religious and temporal ruler who carried the title of Amir Al-Mu'menin, or prince of the faithful.
King Hassan was a discreet but key mediator in the Middle East peace process whose contacts with Israeli leaders helped pave the way for the 1979 peace accord between Egypt and Israel. He also recognised Israel as a state in 1994.
Born on 9 July 1929, King Hassan had two sons and three daughters by Lalla Latifa, a commoner styled simply as the mother of the royal children.
