The Israeli government is making plans to prevent Palestinian mourners from trying to snatch Yasser Arafat’s body during funeral activities and burying it in Jerusalem.
According to a report in Israel Insider, Israeli security officials expressed fear that members of the funeral procession will actually try to “snatch the body” from Ramallah, turn south and try to cross or bypass one of the several checkpoints separating the West Bank town and Israel’s capital.
Arafat died this morning at a Paris hospital after being transferred there last month.
The newssite reported Arafat often called for a “million martyr march” and expressed the wish that he himself would be counted among the shahidim, destined to buried on the Temple Mount.
In recent days, however, Israeli officials have scoffed at the notion of burying the father of modern-day terrorism in Jerusalem.
“Jerusalem is a city where Jewish kings are buried, not Arab terrorists and mass murderers,” Israeli Minister of Justice Yosef Lapid stated.
Israeli officials expressed a preference for a Gaza burial to prevent any attempt at forcing Arafat’s body into Jerusalem.
The Palestinians will put Arafat’s body in a stone coffin rather than a wooden one, his aides said today, to allow his re-interment at a later time in Jerusalem. For now, the longtime despot’s body will be placed in a grave at his Ramallah compound.
As part of Israel’s plan to keep order in the wake of Arafat’s death, forces have sealed off the Palestinian territories, erecting roadblocks around major Palestinian population areas.
According to Israel Insider, the plan calls for isolating Jerusalem from Ramallah during Arafat’s burial service there after a brief funeral ceremony in Cairo, Egypt, on Friday.
The newssite reported the funeral and burial will take place on the last Friday of Ramadan, which traditionally attracts very large numbers of Muslim worshippers to the Temple Mount during the regular Friday mosque service. Security sources said that the timing of the two events would create difficulties for the police, since officers would need to allocate large forces both to the funeral procession and to the Temple Mount.
