Palestine lives

Arafat is dying. For his people, the future has become another country, writes Graham Usher in Ramallah

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"Today I have come bearing an olive branch and a freedom fighter's gun. Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand." Arafat in his first address to the UN General Assembly in New York -- 13 November 1974

In the Muqataa headquarters, the compound of Arafat in Ramallah, some Palestinian officials were saying on Tuesday that Arafat was already dead. Others conceded it was only "a matter of hours". And every Palestinian -- in Palestine or in the diaspora -- understood that the only leader most of them had ever known was now closer to death than at any point during his 35-year stewardship of the Palestinian cause.

When -- as opposed to if -- that moment finally comes Palestine's caretaker leadership will have to make its first irrevocable decisions in the post-Arafat era. The most immediate will be the arrangements for his funeral.

In an emotionally charged press conference in Ramallah (where for the first time it was admitted that Arafat was suffering from a brain haemorrhage) head of the Palestinian Negotiations Department, Saeb Erekat, said all decisions about the funeral would be made in the Muqataa, site of Arafat's last great tussle with his life-long nemesis, Ariel Sharon.

That site will become his burial ground. For the duration of Arafat's illness, Israel had vetoed any funeral in Jerusalem, including the neighbouring village of Abu Dis, where the Palestinian Authority's unused and unfinished parliament stands. Instead they offered Gaza or an Arab capital abroad.

The Muqataa emerged as a compromise. According to officials quoted in the Israeli press the Israeli government came to the decision that "political considerations would have to overrule security ones" and, in any case, it was going to be difficult to prevent Arafat's burial in a city that is nominally under Palestinian Authority control. On Wednesday afternoon -- as Al-Ahram Weekly went to press -- there was talk of a decision to hold a state funeral for Arafat in Cairo, with reports that Egyptian officials were in Israel to work out the logistics.

As to the timing, Palestinian foreign minister, Nabil Shaath said on Tuesday evening that this was "in the hands of God and [Arafat's] doctors", and that there was "no question" of anyone turning off any kind of life- support system. Still, a leading West Bank Islamic cleric, Tayseer Al-Tamimi, arrived in Paris on Wednesday to be at Arafat's bedside.

In the immediate aftermath of Arafat's death, the leadership will also have to strive to maintain the "united Palestinian front" for all aspects of the transition. That unity received its first real jolt on Monday. In a surreal outburst on Al-Jazeera television Arafat's wife, Soha, accused the three-man delegation then about to depart for Paris of seeking to pull off a velvet coup.

"You have to realise the size of the conspiracy," she raged. "I tell you a number of contenders to the throne are coming to Paris and they are trying to bury Abu Ammar alive." But Arafat "is alright and he is going home. God is Great."

Palestinians received the tirade with amazement and contempt. The main opinion on the Ramallah streets was that Soha was jealously guarding access to Arafat to wrest control of his financial inheritance. Others said she had simply gone mad, unable to take the strain of her husband's lingering demise. But all feared that this could be portent of power struggles to come, with Soha being used as a mouthpiece for those in the Palestinian leadership opposed to the Abbas-Qurei succession, with the PLO's foreign secretary in exile, Farouk Qaddumi, the prime suspect.

Finally there is the response of the Palestinian people themselves. As the rumours came thick and fast on Tuesday Ramallah exuded an air of normalcy. During the day this mostly Muslim city kept to the Ramadan fast. As the fast broke -- and hundreds of journalists descended on the Muqataa -- thousands of Palestinians took to the streets of the neon-lit town, shopping in the arcades, drinking in the coffee houses.

A few hundred converged on the compound. Some hoisted portraits of their leader and flags of their and his nation. But there were no mass vigils, no outpourings of grief. There were only questions as to his perilous state and uncertainty about the future.

Why the lack of response -- I asked an aide to the president who has been at his side from his time in Jordan, through the long exiles in Beirut and Tunis and finally to his return to Gaza and the West Bank?

"Because," he said, "there are two Yasser Arafats. One is the symbol, the father of our nation, the man who put Palestine on the map. This Arafat I think history will respect. The second is Arafat the political leader, the man who has governed here for the last ten years. And this Arafat I think history will judge harshly, and it is the one his people will also remember. He made many, many mistakes. But the most serious one was that he never realised that with Oslo he had entered a new era, which required new minds and new people. Instead -- as he had always done -- he relied on the old ones". (see pp. 6&7)