Arafat buried at compound in Ramallah

RAMALLAH, West Bank — Yasser Arafat was buried in a marble-and-stone tomb yesterday amid a multitude of Palestinian mourners, who surged around the flag-draped coffin as it arrived by helicopter from a state funeral in Cairo.

Plainclothes militants from Mr. Arafat’s Fatah party pumped machine gun fire into the air and the crowd chanted “God is great” at the partially destroyed compound where the Palestinian leader spent his final years under Israeli-imposed house arrest.

Palestinian legislator Hanan Ashrawi said the frenzied outpouring was a fitting farewell.

“President Arafat would have wanted it this way, with exhilaration, feelings of loyalty, pain, sadness and love all at once,” Mrs. Ashrawi said. “The people reclaimed him. They wanted to say goodbye without distance.”

Just hours earlier, monarchs, heads of state and foreign ministers representing at least 40 countries joined Mr. Arafat’s widow, Suha, and their 9-year-old daughter, Zahwa, at a ceremony in a military mosque near the Cairo International Airport.

Then, a detail of Egyptian soldiers accompanied a black horse-drawn carriage through city streets that had been cordoned off from the general public.

The contrasting ceremonies following Mr. Arafat’s death at a hospital outside Paris on Thursday vividly illustrated the contradictions of Mr. Arafat’s four-decade career as both a leader and a symbol of Palestinian nationalism.

He aspired to be seen as a peace-seeking statesman on one hand and as a militant revolutionary on the other.

He was despised by Israelis, who considered him a duplicitous terrorist.

The burial plot was filled with soil brought by a Muslim cleric from Jerusalem, the city which Palestinians claim as their future capital and hope will be the final resting place for Mr. Arafat.

At the grave site, uniformed soldiers sobbed with palms turned skyward in religious devotion while mourners trampled olive saplings nearby in a surge toward the tomb.

Before the helicopter landed, loyalists from Mr. Arafat’s Fatah party held a series of rallies that reflected the growing militancy among young Palestinians.

“Bin Laden, do it again,” the Fatah cadres yelled through red-and-blue megaphones. “And wipe out Israel.”

“There are some heroes among traitorous Arab leaders,” they yelled. “One is Saddam, and Arafat is another.”

When the Egyptian aircraft landed outside of the compound, known as the Muqata, the coffin remained inside for nearly a half-hour, held back by the crush outside.

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