Arafat 'between life and death'

2004-11-05 16:00

Clamart, France - Yasser Arafat remained in a coma in a French hospital on Friday as the Palestinian and Israeli governments made preparations to prevent a descent into anarchy in the event of the veteran leader's death.

A spokesperson for Arafat denied that the 75-year-old was brain dead but admitted he was comatose and "between life and death".

"He could wake up, but he could not wake up," Leila Shahid, one of a handful of people authorised to visit Arafat, told French radio.

The coma was such that Arafat, who has personified the Palestinian fight for a homeland for nearly half a century, could stay in it "a long time" or "come out of it", she said.

French medical sources had said on Thursday that Arafat was "brain dead" and only breathing with the help of life support machines at a military hospital in Clamart on the southwestern outskirts of Paris.

It marked a dramatic deterioration for Arafat who was airlifted a week ago out of his West Bank headquarters, where he had been kept under virtual house arrest by Israel for nearly three years.

Trying to prevent a power vacuum

While insisting that talk of Arafat's permanent demise was premature, Palestinian officials were trying to make sure that his death does not leave a power vacuum or trigger an outbreak of violence in a society where the number of gunmen has mushroomed during the four-year uprising against Israel.

All the branches of the Palestinian security services were placed on maximum alert late on Thursday while senior representatives of all the main Palestinian factions, including Arafat's Fatah movement and the Islamist group Hamas, were meeting in Gaza City on Friday.

"We have come here to demonstrate our national unity and show that we are not just scattered tribes," Mohammed al-Hindi, the head of Islamic Jihad in Gaza, told reporters as he entered the meeting.

A spokesperson for Hamas also said that Palestinian prime minister Ahmed Qorei was to head to Gaza for talks with the factions although the exact timing of the meeting had still to be confirmed.

Meeting of leaders

Qorei himself met on Friday with his predecessor Mahmud Abbas, who has taken the helm of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), which has been led by Arafat since 1969, as well as Fatah.

They were later joined at their meeting in Ramallah by parliament speaker Rawhi Fattuh and senior PLO official Yasser Abed Rabbo.

Israeli authorities were also trying to keep the lid on the simmering situation, barring any Palestinian man under the age of 50 from entering the country from the occupied territories.

Tight security was imposed around Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa mosque compound during Friday prayers where about 100 000 Palestinians prayed for Arafat on the fourth Friday of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.

Israeli security forces operating in Gaza and the West Bank have also been placed on maximum security.

- AFP