"Arafat is back and will never leave us again," wailing mourners shouted
when their beloved leader Yasser Arafat's casket was flown back to his battered
Muqata compound in the West Bank city of Ramallah Friday.
With tears and gunshots, the Palestinians bid farewell to the 75-year-old
leader, whose dream of letting his people live in their own lands freely has yet
to be fulfilled.
Arafat passed away at 3:30 a.m. (0230 GMT) Thursday at a military hospital
outside the French capital of Paris after failinga battle for life for two
weeks.
"I would rather die for the president if he were brought back to life," said
57-year-old Mohammed Mashri.
The burial procession could hardly continue as thousands of mourners burst
into the compound, waving portraits of Arafat and the four-color Palestinian
flag.
"I was in shock ... I expected to see, you know, a procession of guards of
honour, as the president would have loved to see, with music and so on," said
chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, who accompanied the casket back from
Cairo aboard a military helicopter.
"It was a chaotic situation, but at the same time it reflected the attachment
of his people toward him," he added.
The emotional mourners fought their way to get closer to the casket and lay
their hands on the coffin of Arafat, a lifetime revolutionist who led his people
for four decades.
The crowd shrieked and wept when the flag-draped casket was carried out of
the helicopter and jostled through the throngs to the burial place, where the
man of "courage and conviction" was laid to rest.
"Abu Ammar (Arafat's nom de guerre) is back now. He said he would come back
when he left for Paris two weeks ago," a tearful young man said.
Standing beside the young man, a group of young people waved their hands,
chanting "with blood and soul, we will redeem you, Arafat."
By Arafat's tomb, Muslim clerics read Koranic verses and prayed.Sheikh Ikrima
Sabri, the Palestinian grand mufti of Jerusalem, poured some sand taken from the
site of al-Aqsa mosque, the third holiest shrine in the Islamic world, on the
casket.
Arafat had wished to be buried in Jerusalem's al-Aqsa mosque, but Israel
rejected the demand as both sides claimed Jerusalem as the capital city.
"I think the burial in Ramallah will be temporary and one day when we have
peace, President Arafat's body will be moved to east Jerusalem, to al-Aqsa,"
Erekat said.
Arafat once said: "Jerusalem, without you, my dream is not complete."
