Rabbi and Muslim shake hands

AT a solemn vigil outside the hospital treating Yasser Arafat, a remarkable, poignant moment of peace: a Jewish rabbi and a Muslim prayer leader shaking hands and extending hopes for the Palestinian leader’s recovery.

Rabbi Moishe Arye Friedmann travelled from Vienna to show his support, while Kamel Titouhi came from a local mosque where he had led prayers for Mr Arafat’s recovery.

The two men met at what has become a small shrine to Mr Arafat beside the main gate of the modern military training hospital outside Paris, where he has been treated for a week and now lies in a coma.

“We are here to express our solidarity with our Muslim brothers and sisters,” said Mr Friedmann, the chief rabbi of the Orthodox Jewish community in the Austrian capital.

“We feel very ashamed of the barbarity being done against the Palestinian people,” he said, who wore a wide-brimmed black hat, and a black-and-white scarf with tassels in the colours of the Palestinian flag. “It’s a kind of Holocaust being done against the Palestinians in our name.”

Mr Titouhi, of the Clamart mosque, said: “Arafat is an example to us” and said he was at the hospital to pray for him.