JERUSALEM, Nov. 10 -- Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, who remained in a deep coma and close to death at a hospital outside of Paris Wednesday, will be buried at his battered headquarters compound in the West Bank city of Ramallah, just north of Jerusalem, following a state funeral in Cairo, Palestinian, Israeli and Egyptian officials said.
The announcements ended days of tense speculation that Israel might prohibit Arafat, 75, from being buried in the West Bank and force him to be buried instead in a small family cemetery plot in the southern Gaza Strip, which Palestinian leaders said was unacceptable.
Palestinian cabinet minister Saeb Erekat said that Arafat's Ramallah headquarters, which has become a symbol of Palestinian resistance during the uprising over Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, would be turned into "a major Palestinian shrine" after Arafat's body is interred there. Until he flew to France for medical treatment on Oct. 29, Arafat had not left the compound in more than 2 1/2 years.
Arafat slipped into a coma four days after his arrival at the Percy Military Training Hospital in Clamart, a suburb of Paris, and on Tuesday he developed a brain hemorrhage. Palestinian envoy Leila Shahid told France-Info radio Wednesday that Arafat was in the "final phase" of his life.
Taissir Dayut Tamini, a senior Islamic cleric who heads the religious courts in the Palestinian territories, arrived at the hospital Wednesday morning to recite the Koran at Arafat's bedside and was ready, if he dies, to prepare his body according to Islamic customs, Erekat said.
Before visiting the ailing leader, Tamini told reporters at the hospital, "As long as there is a manifestation of life present, from movement to temperature in the body, then he is alive." Removing Arafat from life support machines, he said, would be "forbidden under Islamic law."
When he emerged from the hospital, the cleric said: "I spent more than one hour next to the president and he is alive and well. . . . Yes, he is sick, and the situation is critical, but he is alive."
Under Islamic tradition, a person who dies should be buried as soon as possible, preferably within 24 hours of death.
According to his aides, Arafat longs to be buried in Jerusalem, which Palestinians and Israelis both claim as their capital. But Israel has controlled the city since annexing its eastern half after the 1967 war, and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon -- who often refers to Jerusalem as Israel's eternal, undivided capital -- ruled out any burial for Arafat in "greater Jerusalem," which refers to the city and neighborhoods surrounding it.
The choice of a burial site in Ramallah, which is about five miles north of Jerusalem, resolves a contentious issue that Israelis and Palestinians could have argued about for days. On Wednesday, bulldozers and dump trucks were clearing and cleaning Arafat's compound, known as the Muqata, of old cars, barrels filled with cement and other objects strewn around as a defense against Israeli incursions.
The decision to hold a formal state funeral in the Egyptian capital -- where Arafat was born, although he often claimed Jerusalem as his birthplace -- also resolves several potentially thorny issues, particularly whether leaders of countries that do not recognize Israel would visit an area under Israeli occupation, and if they did, whether Palestinian security forces could guarantee their security.
An Israeli official, who would not be quoted by name because of a government prohibition against speaking about funeral arrangements before Arafat dies, said Cairo was chosen for the funeral because the Palestinians "wanted a place where all Arab leaders could come without hindrance, and we said we can accommodate all the people who want to come, but no doubt the security situation is a deterrence for Arab leaders who don't want to go over Israeli roads and pass through Israeli checkpoints or whatever."
Foreign dignitaries would still be allowed to attend any service in Ramallah, he said, but Palestinian officials doubted many would.
Erekat said a delegation of Palestinians was scheduled to fly to Egypt Wednesday night to discuss details of a funeral but that the general outline was known.
"President Arafat will lie in state in Cairo for some hours, and then he will be flown from Cairo to Ramallah -- directly, I think, in Egyptian choppers -- and this will be the temporary burial place, because the day will come when we will have an independent state with Jerusalem as its capital, and President Arafat's body will be moved to the al-Aqsa Mosque," he said.
The al-Aqsa Mosque is part of a disputed holy site in Jerusalem's Old City revered by Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary and by Jews as the Temple Mount. Palestinians refer to the current uprising the al-Aqsa intifada.
