Crisis Over Eventual Burial of Arafat

While Palestinian and other Arab leaders insisted that the ailing leader should be buried in Jerusalem, the Israeli Cabinet unanimously chose Gaza as the only part of Palestine where Arafat could be laid to rest.

The mufti of Jerusalem, Ikrema Sabri, said that Arafat asked to be buried near the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, marking the first official comment on the ailing Palestinian leader’s burial wishes. Sabri said Arafat made the request during a meeting four months ago.

“The president has shown a desire to be buried in Jerusalem, and in a place that is close to the Al-Aqsa Mosque,” Sabri said, adding that he did not know if there is a written will.

Palestinian leaders hope to enlist international support for an Arafat burial at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, a Palestinian official said. Negotiations with Israel would only begin after Arafat’s death, the official said. Israeli Justice Minister Yosef Lapid reiterated yesterday that Jerusalem is off-limits. “They (the Palestinians) will choose where to bury him, but he will not be buried in Jerusalem because Jerusalem is the city where Jewish kings are buried and not Arab terrorists,” he said.

Israeli security officials said Gaza was the only burial option, and that they oppose allowing Arafat to be interred in the West Bank, including the Jerusalem suburb of Abu Dis.

Lapid did not refer to a possible ban on a West Bank burial, but told Israel TV’s Channel Two: “Now we are talking about Gaza. We have no problems with Gaza, of course.”

Palestinian Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath said there had been no contacts with Israel on funeral arrangements. “We’ve heard about their (Israel’s) plans only from the media,” he said. Arafat’s clan, the Al-Kidwas, are originally from Gaza, though the Palestinian leader grew up in Jerusalem and Cairo. The family has a small plot of 25 to 30 graves in the southern Gaza town of Khan Younis. The overgrown patch is in the middle of a busy vegetable market and would not be considered appropriate.

In Clamart, France, where Arafat is fighting for his life, an Orthodox rabbi said the Palestinian leader has the right to be buried in Jerusalem. As a democratically elected president, Arafat “has the obvious and indisputable right to be buried in Jerusalem,” Moishe Arie Friedman, a rabbi from Vienna, said.

Describing himself as active in supporting the Palestinian struggle for statehood, Friedman said the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land was “a sort of holocaust against the Palestinian people.”

The United States refused to get involved in the row. “We keep in touch with the Israelis, Palestinians and others to keep track of what’s going on and who is talking to whom but our view at this point is that it’s for them to try to work out,” State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said in Washington.

Forty-eight hours of intensive political work appeared to have led to an accord among all Palestinian factions and personalities to remain united in the period of transition that would end with elections 60 days after the official confirmation that Arafat is either dead or otherwise incapacitated.

The accord signed in Gaza yesterday brings together the Palestine Liberation Organization, now under the interim leadership of Mahmoud Abbas, along with Hamas, Islamic Jihad and a number of smaller radical groups.

Jibril Rajoub, chief of West Bank security, told reporters sensitive papers were removed yesterday from the Palestinian leader’s Ramallah headquarters to prevent them from falling into wrong hands.

Christian Estripeau, chief doctor at the Percy hospital where Arafat is being treated, said the Palestinian president’s condition remained stable.

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