Arafat in temporary stone coffin to await re-interment in Jerusalem
His military funeral is being held today at modest mosque at Cairo airport.
The relatively humble ceremonies planned reflect the security concerns of Egyptian officials, who sought a venue for condolence calls that limited any risk of an outpouring of popular emotion that might flare out of control.
Roads near the airport mosque were expected to be closed off during today’s funeral.
Security officials said Mr Arafat’s body would be borne by a horse-drawn carriage for a short way after the prayer at the mosque on the airport grounds. It then would be taken to a military base about 2.5 miles south and flown out of Egypt.
At the modest King Faisal bin Abdel-Aziz Mosque on the airport grounds, workers were laying new carpet, chandeliers were being cleaned and repaired and a paint touch-up was planned for parts of the cream and white exterior.
In the mosque courtyard, workers mowed grass, raked out brush and freshened up old flower beds with new green plants.
“We are trying to make it as great as the man for tomorrow,” said General Abdul-Fattah Badran, a senior airport official. Arafat is to be buried on Saturday at the Ramallah compound, or Muqata, to which he had been confined by Israel for nearly three years.
Overnight, bulldozers were clearing a plot next to the Muqata’s parking lot, and a grave was being dug, said a top official in Arafat’s Fatah movement.
Azzam al-Ahmed, another Fatah official, said Arafat would be buried in a stone coffin to allow him to be re-interred at a later time at the Al Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem, Islam’s third holiest shrine.
Israel has ruled out a Jerusalem burial, fearing it would undermine its claims to sovereignty over the city.
Palestinians agreed to have Mr Arafat buried at the Muqata, but said it was only a temporary grave.
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