Palestinians prepare for Arafat burial on Friday

With Yasser Arafat in “the final phase of his life”, the Palestinian leader’s political heirs completed his burial arrangements today and made plans for a funeral as soon as Friday.

An Islamic cleric read from the Koran at the Paris military hospital bedside of the 75-year-old symbol of the Palestinian cause, who was in a deep coma, on life support, with bleeding in the brain and problems with other vital organs, officials said.

Palestinian leaders accepted an offer from Egypt to host the main funeral in Cairo – a site less problematic for foreign dignitaries – before Arafat is buried at his sandbagged headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

Bulldozers pushed aside rubble and hauled away piles of wrecked cars to prepare the compound – built as a police base by the British 60 years ago – for his burial.

Officials said they believed it would take place on Friday, implying a medical decision may be taken on Arafat’s life.

“It was decided that the body will be brought to Cairo and there will lie in state,” Palestinian Cabinet Minister Saeb Erekat said. “After that, the body will be flown from Cairo to Ramallah.”

Palestinian envoy to France Leila Shahid said cleric Taisser Bayoud Tamimi, who prayed at Arafat’s bedside today, came to Paris to accompany Arafat “in the final phase of his life”.

Arafat was “in a critical state” after a “complication in the state of all of his vital organs” and his coma ”seems difficult to come out of,” she said. “The reality is that he is in the hands of God.”

A French hospital spokesman, General. Christian Estripeau, told the newspaper Le Monde today that Arafat’s death “could be a question of hours, or, perhaps, days”.

After that, Palestinian parliament speaker Rauhi Fattouh will become temporary president of the Palestinian Authority, leaders of Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organisation and Fatah movement decided.

Under Palestinian law, the speaker would be president for 60 days, until new elections are held.

Arafat controlled three top jobs – head of the PLO, of Fatah and president of the Palestinian Authority.

Erekat, the Palestinian minister, said that immediately after Arafat’s burial, the 18 member PLO Executive Committee would decide on a new PLO chief.

It is believed that the PLO’s number two, Mahmoud Abbas, would win the vote, giving him the legitimacy to take the reins of power. Abbas, known as Abu Mazen, has been acting has caretaker leader, along with Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia.

The decision, meanwhile, by Palestinian leaders to bury Arafat at Ramallah defused a potential conflict with Israel by dropping a demand for a Jerusalem burial.

Israel’s prime minister said he would go along with the plan. Israel has pushed for a Gaza burial, but the Palestinians wanted Jerusalem. Palestinians see Arafat’s Ramallah headquarters – his virtual prison for the last three years - as a symbol of his resistance. Burial there is less politically sensitive for Israel.

Israeli Interior Minister Avraham Poraz said Israel would permit a “respectful” funeral and be careful not to ”upset” Palestinian feelings.

He said the Palestinian Authority would be in charge of security and Israeli forces would remain on the sidelines unless there was unrest, such as an attempted march on Jerusalem.

Israel will permit Israeli Arabs and West Bank Palestinians to attend, Poraz said, but only a small group VIPs from the Gaza Strip will be able to go.

“There’s going to be tremendous emotion, both in Palestine, in the Arab world, in the Muslim world,” Shahid, the Palestinian envoy to France, said outside Arafat’s hospital.

Tamimi, the cleric who heads the Islamic court in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, said Islam prohibits Arafat’s life support from being switched off.

“It is absolutely rejected,” he said. “As long as there are signs of life in the body of the president, he will remain under treatment.

“For sure, President Arafat didn’t notice who I am because he didn’t open his eyes, and I think things should be left to God. It’s God who decides, not us.”

He said he read passages from the Koran and “prayed to God for his recovery” during more than an hour at his bedside. Arafat’s nephew, Nasser Al-Kidwa, and chief of staff, Ramzi Khoury, also were there.

Shahid said Zahwa, the daughter of Arafat and his wife Suha, was not brought to the hospital to see her dying father.

“His daughter is a nine-year-old girl who has to be spared the very difficult situation – first, in relation to his status and the crowd that surrounds him, and second, the medical situation,” Shahid said.

While the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize winner’s illness remains publicly undisclosed, his condition has steadily worsened during his 13 days at the Percy Military Training Hospital south-west of Paris.

French doctors seeking to explain Arafat’s low count of platelets, blood cells that aid in clotting, sent samples of his blood to several countries for testing, PLO hard-liner Farouk Kaddoumi said in Tunisia, where he lives.

Test results did not pinpoint a cause for Arafat’s illness, Kaddoumi said. He said, however, that he suspects poisoning, although he did not say by whom or provide proof to support his allegation.

“From the beginning, we have had doubts that the deterioration in President Arafat’s health was due to poisoning. We have not changed our opinion,” said Kaddoumi, who visited Arafat’s hospital last Friday.

But Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath said Tuesday after meeting Arafat’s doctors that they “ruled out completely poison.”