As Yasser Arafat lay brain dead in a Paris hospital on Thursday, Palestinians in the town that he left less than a week ago for life-saving treatment were already preparing to mourn their veteran leader.
Flags were flying half-mast over Arafat’s headquarters compound in the West Bank town of Ramallah in tribute to the United Arab Emirates’ founding father, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahayan, who died earlier this week.
After their iftah meal, which marks the end of fasting during Ramadan, residents of Ramallah were glued to their television sets for the latest news from Paris on their 75-year-old leader.
“I can’t bear the thought he will die for good. He’s our national leader, the one and only,” said 33-year-old Mohammed Ribhi as his eyes filled with tears.
But Palestinian officials took to the airwaves to insist that talk of Arafat’s death had been grossly exaggerated.
Reham Salah, a mother-of-two, said: “We hope he won’t go but it looks like it. We’re scared for the future, of internal chaos between factions and people seeking to take power.
“Democratic elections must be held as planned to decide on our future leader,” she said, flanked by her two ice-cream eating daughters.
Arafat announced last May that long-due presidential, parliamentary and municipal elections would be held next year.
His re-election would have likely been a shoe-in but, especially after Arafat resisted pressure to annoint an heir apparent, the people’s alternative choice is far from evident.
Clothes seller Mohamed said Arafat had a status that no-one could match.
“I’ll be very sad if he dies because he’s been our sole leader for decades and the symbol of our struggle,” he said.
“If it were to happen, it must be clear to both the current Palestinian leadership and the rest of the world that we will not accept a leader that is imposed on us. We, the Palestinian people, must elect his successor,” he added.
Many young Palestinians said West Bank Fatah leader Marwan Barghuthi, who has been sitting in an Israeli jail since April 2002 and was handed five life terms last June, would be their candidate of choice.
“Marwan is one of us, he lived his life in Palestine and suffered like us, unlike those in the current leadership that came back with Arafat in 1994 from Tunis and look down on us,” said Mohamed.
He and his friends also insisted that Arafat would have to be buried in Jerusalem, the city he has always wanted to see as the capital of a Palestinian state. Israel has made clear it will resist any such burial.
“I hope they’ll keep his body in a freezer until we can establish our state with Jerusalem as our capital. Anything short of that would be unacceptable,” he said.
Others pointed their finger at Israel for being responsible for Arafat’s ailment by keeping him under siege in his Ramallah compound, or Muqataa, for nearly three years.
“I was inside the Muqataa and the living conditions are insalubrious, so much so that even a healthy person would have become sick. How could a 75-year-old man have survived such environment,” said Mazen Ibrahim, a 45-year-old United Nations employee.
“Israel is undeniably responsible for what has happened to his health,” he added. – Sapa-AFP
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