 Yasser Arafat |
Amid news reports that he is clinically dead, French doctors issued a statement insisting Palestinian President Yasser Arafat is still alive after lapsing into a coma at a Paris hospital.
Doctors rushed him to intensive care yesterday after a sharp deterioration in his health.
Israel’s Channel Two, citing French sources, reported Arafat had been declared brain dead. French officials, Radio Monte Carlo and the French-language online journal Proche-Orient Info also delivered that report.
The Jerusalem Post’s website has a large-type, all-caps banner headline reading, “REPORTS: ARAFAT CLINICALLY DEAD.”
French television quoted an anonymous medical source saying Arafat is in an “irreversible coma.”
During a press conference in Washington this morning, a reporter posing a question to President Bush said he had just received word Arafat had died.
Bush replied, “My first reaction is, God bless his soul, and my second reaction is that we will continue to work for a free Palestinian state that is at peace with Israel.'”
Arafat, 75, was flown Friday from his Ramallah headquarters in the West Bank to Percy Military Training Hospital outside Paris for emergency treatment. After passing out, he initially was described as having a bad flu.
Responding to the reports of Arafat’s death, Christian Estripeau, head of communications for French military health services, concluded a statement with “Mr. Arafat is not dead.”
Estripeau said, “This statement has been drafted out of respect for the discretion demanded by his wife,” Suha, who has been living in Paris.
“The clinical situation of the first fews days following admission has become more complex,” Estripeau said. “The state of health of the patient requires appropriate treatment that required his transfer on Wednesday afternoon of Nov. 3 to a unit adapted to his pathology.”
Israel Radio reported Suha Arafat insisted lated this evening, Paris time, her husband was not clinically dead and not in a coma. She said the report is “a festival of the Israeli media and is nothing but a lie.”
Anticipating his death, the Israel army has developed a plan called “new leaf” to handle the potential for chaos, including riots.
Israeli commanders were told to be on standby.
Earlier today, news reports quoted a Palestinian official who said Arafat had lapsed into a coma, but Palestinian Authority cabinet official Saeb Erekat called the reports “baseless.”
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has said he will not permit Arafat to be buried in Jerusalem, claimed by both Israel and the Palestinians as their capital.
 Yasser Arafat on his way to Paris hospital last week (Photo: Sky News) |
But Israeli officials said they would continue to offer humanitarian assistance in preparation for a funeral.
As WorldNetDaily reported, Arafat has said he hoped to be buried near the Al Aqsa Mosque on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, but Muslims who revere the holy site also are in fierce opposition.
A leaflet distributed earlier this year by the Muslim Liberation Party, a tiny faction with a strong presence on the Temple Mount, said, “We warn this wicked infidel, who married a Christian infidel, against contemplating desecrating the holy Aqsa Mosque.”
The Muslim Waqf, the group with responsibility for the Temple Mount area, also opposes the move.
Israeli Knesset Member Aryeh Eldad has introduced a bill banning all burials on the site and in the Old City.
Arafat was born in Cairo, Egypt, in 1929, but he has claimed Jerusalem as his birthplace.
He became an activist as a 19-year-old engineering student in Egypt in 1948, when the Arab nations that declared war on the new Israeli state were defeated.
Former Palestinian prime minister Mahmoud Abbas had planned to fly to Paris, but the trip was cancelled after Abbas was told he would be unable to visit Arafat, reported the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
The paper said the planned trip might have been spurred by hopes that Arafat would appoint him officially as a successor, but Arafat has never named an heir.
Abbas, as secretary-general of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s executive committee, is second to Arafat in the PLO’s hierarchy.
More to come …
