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Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat poses for a portrait in Geneva in 1988. He died Nov. 10 at age 75.
Yasser Arafat, revered as the beacon of Palestinian statehood but reviled as a sponsor of terrorism, died Thursday at the age of 75.
His passing marked the end of an era in modern Middle East history, and prompted calls from President Bush and other world leaders to seize the moment to spur new efforts at Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking.
A wave of grief quickly swept across the West Bank and Gaza Strip after Arafat died in a French military hospital at 3:30 a.m.
Thousands of Palestinians ran into the streets, clutching his photograph, crying and wondering about their future without the man who embodied their struggle for statehood.
''He is our father,'' Namia Abu-Safia, 48, said sobbing in the Jebaliya refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. ''He is Palestine.''
Black smoke from burning tires rose across the Gaza Strip, gunmen fired into the air in grief. Palestinian flags at Arafat's battered compound here were lowered to half staff. Church bells rang out, and Quranic verses were played for hours over mosque loudspeakers. Palestinian officials announced 40 days of mourning for Arafat.
Fearing the mourning could rapidly turn into rioting, Israel quickly sealed the West Bank and Gaza Strip and increased security at Jewish settlements.
The death of Arafat, who ruled firmly over squabbling Palestinian factions for four decades, left Palestinians without a strong leader for the first time. It raised concern that the scramble to claim Arafat's mantle could fragment the Palestinian leadership or spark chaos and factional fighting in the streets.
In a hurried effort to project continuity, the PLO elected former Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas as its new chief, virtually ensuring that he will succeed Arafat as leader of the Palestinians, at least in the short term.
The Palestinian legislature also swore in Parliament Speaker Rauhi Fattouh as caretaker president of the Palestinian Authority until elections can be held in 60 days, according to Palestinian law.
President Bush said the passing of Arafat was a ''significant moment'' in Palestinian history and expressed hope that Palestinians would achieve statehood and peace with Israel.
''During the period of transition that is ahead, we urge all in the region and throughout the world to join in helping make progress toward these goals and toward the ultimate goal of peace,'' he said.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who has shunned his longtime nemesis as a terrorist and obstructionist, said Arafat's death could serve as a ''historic turning point in the Middle East'' and expressed hope the Palestinians would now work to stop terrorism. In a sign of the enmity the two men shared even in death, Sharon refused to mention Arafat by name.
Insisting that with Arafat at the helm it was impossible to discuss peace with the Palestinians, Sharon had pushed forward with his ''unilateral disengagement'' plan. Under the plan, Israel will evacuate the Gaza Strip next year and continue building a West Bank barrier to separate Israelis from Palestinians.
Nabil Shaath, the Palestinian foreign minister, called on Israel to resume implementation of the U.S.-backed ''road map'' peace plan. He told The Associated Press that Israel had used its dislike for Arafat as an excuse for avoiding obligations to withdraw from West Bank towns.
''Now, the road is open, and we are telling the Israelis, welcome. If you want to implement the road map, then implement it,'' Shaath said. ''It was the path of President Arafat, and we will go on the path of Arafat.''
French President Jacques Chirac eulogized Arafat as a ''man of courage and conviction who, for 40 years, has been the incarnation of the Palestinians' combat for recognition of their national rights.''
But others questioned Arafat's legacy.
Australian Prime Minister John Howard said Arafat could have helped secure Middle East peace by accepting a deal in 2000 that would have resulted in the Israelis ''agreeing to about 90 percent of what the Palestinians had wanted,'' Howard said. He also said Arafat could have done more to restrain terrorists.
Arafat was flown to a French military hospital in Clamart, outside of Paris, on Oct. 29 after his health began deteriorating last month. It was the first time in nearly three years that he left his compound in Ramallah, where he was held a virtual prisoner by Israel.
Palestinian officials initially insisted he had a lingering case of the flu, but they grew increasingly concerned when he did not recover.
Neither his doctors nor Palestinian leaders would say what killed him.
''He closed his eyes and his big heart stopped. He left for God but he is still among this great people,'' said senior Arafat aide Tayeb Abdel Rahim, who broke into tears as he announced Arafat's death.
Arafat was to be flown Thursday from Paris to Cairo, where a funeral service attended by foreign dignitaries will be held for him Friday morning. His body will then be flown by helicopter to his Ramallah compound, called the Muqata, for services and burial in a mausoleum later in the day.
The Israeli military said it would restrict access to the burial, allowing only Palestinians with permits to attend, but would allow mourners to hold processions in towns and refugee camps.
As much as his life was filled with controversy, so too was Arafat's death.
The Palestinians had demanded Arafat be buried in Jerusalem on the disputed holy site that once held the biblical Jewish temples and now the Al Aqsa Mosque, Islam's third holiest shrine.
Israel refused, fearing a Jerusalem burial would strengthen Palestinians' claims to a city they envision as a capital of a future Palestinian state.
In a compromise, the Palestinians agreed to bury him at his compound in Ramallah, battered and strewn with rubble from repeated Israeli raids. But they plan to line his grave with soil taken from the Al Aqsa Mosque compound, said Ahmed Ghneim, a Fatah leader, and he is to be interred in a cement box, so he can be moved to Jerusalem for burial when the opportunity presents itself.
Seldom in public without his military uniform and his checkered keffiyeh headdress, Arafat kept the Palestinians' cause at the center of the Arab-Israeli conflict. But he fell short of creating a Palestinian state, and, along with other secular Arab leaders of his generation, he saw his influence weakened by the rise of radical Islam in recent years.
Revered by his own people, Arafat was reviled by others. He was accused of secretly fomenting attacks on Israelis while proclaiming brotherhood and claiming to have put terrorism aside. Many Israelis felt the paunchy 5-foot, 2-inch Palestinian's real goal remained the destruction of the Jewish state.
Arafat became one of the world's most familiar faces after addressing the U.N. General Assembly in New York in 1974, when he entered the chamber wearing a holster and carrying a twig. ''Today I have come bearing an olive branch and a freedom fighter's gun,'' he said. ''Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand.''
Two decades later, he shook hands at the White House with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin on a peace deal that formally recognized Israel's right to exist while granting the Palestinians limited self-rule in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The pact led to the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize for Arafat, Rabin and then-Foreign Minister Shimon Peres.
But the accord quickly unraveled amid mutual suspicions and accusations of treaty violations. A new round of violence that erupted in the fall of 2000 has killed some 4,000 people, three-quarters of them Palestinians.
''The biggest mistake of Arafat was when he turned to terror. His greatest achievements were when he tried to build peace,'' Peres said.
The Israeli and U.S. governments said Arafat deserved much of the blame for the derailing of the peace process. Even many of his own people began whispering against Arafat, expressing disgruntlement over corruption, lawlessness and a bad economy in the Palestinian areas.
A resilient survivor of war with Israel, assassination attempts - even a plane crash, Arafat was born Rahman Abdel-Raouf Arafat Al-Qudwa on Aug. 4, 1929, the fifth of seven children of a Palestinian merchant killed in the 1948 war over Israel's creation. There is disagreement whether he was born in Gaza or in Cairo.
Educated as an engineer in Egypt, Arafat served in the Egyptian army and then started a construction firm in Kuwait. It was there that he founded the Fatah movement, which became the core of the PLO.
After the Arabs' humbling defeat by Israel in the six-day war of 1967, the PLO thrust itself on the world's front pages by sending its gunmen out to hijack airplanes, machine gun airports and kill Israeli athletes at the 1972 Summer Olympics.
''As long as the world saw Palestinians as no more than refugees standing in line for U.N. rations, it was not likely to respect them. Now that the Palestinians carry rifles the situation has changed,'' Arafat explained.
Source: AP