Arafat vigil outside Paris hospital

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 Arafat’s recovery.

The two men met at what has become a small shrine to 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 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,” said Friedmann, 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.”

Titouhi, imam of the Clamart mosque, said: “Yasser Arafat is an example to us” and that he came to the hospital to pray for him.

A forest of television cameras faced the main gate of the sprawling concrete, metal and glass hospital. TV trucks, their generators humming and their satellite dishes pointing to the sky, ran the length of the street outside the hospital.

Dozens of French police kept guard, corralling reporters behind metal barriers erected along the length of the street.

Supporters hung a large, bed sheet-sized Palestinian flag on the hospital’s perimeter wall alongside messages of support.

“The intefadah will win,” said one poster.

The pavement was gummed up with melted candle wax, and roses had been placed at the foot of a poster of Arafat.