Palestinian officials said Yasser Arafat was close to death on Tuesday night after suffering a brain haemorrhage and sinking deeper into a week-long coma.
The Palestinian prime minister, Ahmed Qureia, visited Arafat at a Paris military hospital to try to establish the true state of his health after two weeks of confusing and contradictory claims.
The Palestinian foreign minister, Nabil Shaath, who met doctors at the hospital but did not see Arafat, said the delegation was not prepared to predict the Palestinian leader’s death but it was not holding out hope of a swift recovery.
”The president is very ill,” said Shaath. ”He has been in a coma and that coma has deepened last night. Having said that and having recognition of the critical situation that President Arafat is in today, his brain, his heart, his lungs still function and he is alive.”
Shaath said Arafat is on a life support machine administering drugs and nutrients.
Saeb Erekat, the Palestinian chief negotiator, said in Ramallah that Arafat had suffered a brain haemorrhage.
The deputy speaker of Parliament, Hassan Khareisha, said that a meeting of senior Palestinian officials was told that Arafat could die very soon.
”There were some who were crying when they heard this,” he said.
Khareisha also said that when the Palestinian leader dies he will be buried at his partially destroyed Ramallah headquarters, the muqata, in defiance of Israeli attempts to force the funeral to the Gaza Strip. Arafat was a de facto prisoner of the Israelis at his headquarters for more than two years until he was flown to Paris.
Shaath said the Palestinian leaders in Paris were ”embraced” by Arafat’s wife, Suha, who had attempted to block the visit to her husband by accusing them of trying to ”bury Mr Arafat alive”.
The head of the Islamic court in the occupied territories, Taissir Dayut Tamimi, was travelling to Paris on Tuesday night to be at Arafat’s side. Officials said he was going to offer legal and religious advice, and because there was a need for an Islamic declaration of death to remove any suspicion about how Arafat may have died.
Earlier Shaath dismissed speculation that the Palestinian leader might be deprived of life support.
”People talk as if his life is plugged in and plugged out. This is utterly ridiculous. We Muslims do not accept euthanasia,” he said.
He added: ”No such measure has ever been considered by his doctors or by his family. And so he will live or die depending on his body’s ability to resist and of the will of God.”
Shaath was asked when Arafat might be declared an ”incapacitated president”, thus triggering measures in the Palestinian constitution for appointing a new leader.
”There would have to be an independent medical inquiry to decide whether he is incapacitated and then that would have to go to the supreme court. We don’t think it is really urgent to do that yet,” he said.
Shaath said doctors have still failed to establish what is afflicting Arafat but have ruled out cancer and poisoning.
A meeting of Palestinian leaders on Tuesday night agreed to defy Israeli attempts to dictate where Arafat will be buried and insist that he is interred at the muqata, not in the Gaza Strip.
Arafat has said he wishes to be interred at one of the most sacred sites in Islam, Haram as-Sharif, known to Jews as the Temple Mount, inside Jerusalem’s old city.
But the Israeli government has ruled it out on the grounds that he is an ”arch-terrorist” and should not be laid to rest in the holy city.
Israel has been trying to force a burial in the Gaza Strip by saying it has made preparations for Arab leaders and foreign dignitaries to travel there without passing through Israel.
But Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, said the burial would take place at the compound still strewn with rubble and crushed vehicles from the Israeli assault and siege in 2002.
”The muqata became the symbol of the steadfastness of the Palestinian people, the president’s place of siege,” he said.
Israel would be uncomfortable with a funeral at the muqata because of its symbolism in Palestinian resistance and because Arafat’s grave would implicitly lay claim to the West Bank as Palestinian territory. But diplomats said they thought it unlikely that Israel would prevent a funeral in Ramallah. – Guardian Unlimited Â