RAMALLAH, West Bank — The helicopter carrying Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's body touched the ground Friday, and his impassioned mourners surged forward. By the thousands, they clambered over concrete walls, burst through police lines, trampled one another and flung themselves against the chopper's metal skin.
"He's here!" a man bellowed, his face contorted as he charged the helicopter.
Desperate and angry, Palestinian security forces fired wildly into the air. Black-masked gunmen answered with louder bursts. Momentarily panicked, people closest to the aircraft dove for the ground in a tangle of sweating bodies, intertwined limbs and lost shoes. Seconds later, they were back on their feet — chanting, screaming, cursing, demanding Arafat's coffin.
The reception of mayhem and gunfire that greeted Arafat's remains on their return to this West Bank city forced apprehensive officials to cancel a planned funeral and hasten his burial. The Palestinian leader was quickly laid to rest inside the government compound that had been his prison and refuge for the last 2 1/2 years of his life.
According to the Associated Press, Secretary of State Colin Powell expects to meet soon with new Palestinian leaders, but the exact time and place hasn't been determined, a senior State Department official said on condition of anonymity.
Arafat died early Thursday in a military hospital outside Paris, where he had been taken Oct. 29 for treatment of what doctors said were apparently digestive and blood disorders. The precise cause of death has not been released.
The chaos here contrasted starkly with the formal pomp and pageantry of Arafat's military funeral, held Friday morning near Cairo and attended by Arab leaders and other foreign dignitaries. And while Palestinian officials initially were dismayed by the public display of disorder that was beamed around the world by television networks, they conceded it was an apt farewell to the 75-year-old Arafat, who considered himself a revolutionary and a rebel.
Tens of thousands of Palestinians, many of whom had walked hours to evade Israeli military checkpoints, converged Friday morning hoping to catch a glimpse of the coffin containing the remains of the only leader most of them had ever known. They climbed atop cars, shimmied up street lamps and packed roofs for a peek over the high concrete walls of the rubble-strewn Palestinian presidential complex.
Inside the compound, soldiers in pressed uniforms and a marching band practiced for the burial ceremony.
With the approach of the Egyptian helicopter carrying Arafat's body from an airfield in the Sinai Peninsula, where it had been flown by military cargo plane after the service in Cairo, hundreds of Palestinians began scaling the complex walls. Some were aided by the outstretched arms of Palestinian security guards atop the wall. About 30 minutes before the helicopter was scheduled to land, the undermanned security forces opened the main gates of the compound, and thousands of people pushed and shoved inside.
With the helicopter pilots unable to land amid the sea of bodies, Palestinian police began shooting into the air. People huddled against one another for cover, leaving room for the helicopter to set down at 2:18 p.m. in a burst of dust and debris. In an instant, the mob pressed forward and overpowered the security forces.
Saeb Erekat, the Palestinian chief negotiator and one of four Palestinian officials who flew aboard the helicopter with Arafat's body, pleaded with the mob to show respect. "Please honor him!" Erekat shouted from the door of the helicopter. "Give him the honor he deserves!"
"I was shocked and saddened because I wanted to give him a dignified burial with honors," Erekat said later. "I think the mistake was to allow people inside the compound. There were more guns in the hands of the people than in the hands of the police."
Yasib Khodir, 40, a merchant from the northern city of Nablus, was unrepentant. "This is our expression of sadness for a man we loved," Khodir said, shouting over bursts of gunfire as he was jostled by a masked militant. "He is now a part of history."
After about 20 minutes, jeeps and soldiers were able to make their way to the helicopter, remove Arafat's coffin and rescue the passengers. But the crowd partially commandeered Arafat's flag-draped coffin, as black-masked members of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed wing of his Fatah political movement, led chants of "To Jerusalem! To Jerusalem!" — a reference to Arafat's wish to be buried in what he considered the Palestinians' capital. Israel refused the request.
Alarmed by the continuing chaos, Palestinian officials quickly abandoned plans for a formal funeral ceremony with tributes, marching band and soldiers in formation. The red carpet intended for the event remained wadded on the tarmac.
Instead, security officers slipped Arafat's body out of its wooden coffin and quickly buried it — draped in the Palestinian flag and the leader's signature black-and-white head scarf — in the limestone and black marble tomb that workmen had spent the previous night building beneath towering pine trees. Bags of dirt from the al-Aqsa Mosque in the Old City of Jerusalem had been sprinkled into the grave, a gesture that recalled Arafat's greatest failure — an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital. Even so, Palestinian officials said Arafat's tomb was constructed so it could be moved to Jerusalem if the Palestinian dream was ever achieved.
As Arafat's remains disappeared into the tomb at about 3:05 p.m., masked militants and tearful security guards blasted the skies with gunfire, littering the grave site with spent bullet casings. Despite the stampeding crowds and the hundreds of bullets fired over the course of the afternoon, Palestinian medical officials said only nine people suffered slight injures.
Officials put Arafat's empty coffin, covered in wreaths of fall flowers, on display in the legislative chambers in the compound. The contrasting ceremonies Friday underscored Arafat's role as a world leader on the one hand and a revolutionary icon on the other.
Even though the Palestinians do not have a state, he gave them a national identity, made them a political force on par with Arab countries in the region and transformed himself into a leader whose stature exceeded that of many Arab heads of state. He made himself and the Palestinian people a powerful force — and often a thorn in the side — in the neighboring states of Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, where about 2.5 million Palestinian refugees live. About 3.5 million Palestinians live in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
While he symbolized the Palestinian dream of nationhood, many considered him one of its main obstacles. Arafat's refusal to tame Palestinian militant groups and disarm them, share power with his associates, implement political and security reforms and, most importantly, prevent suicide bombings against Israel led Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to refuse to negotiate with him. With the Palestinians in full revolt against Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Sharon launched a prolonged attack on the Palestinian Authority and its institutions, particularly official security forces and Palestinian militant groups.
In the end, the man who oversaw the growth of the Palestinian movement into an international force spent his last years watching the short-term chances for an independent Palestinian state diminish and the land on which it could be created shrink.
"If you look at the record over the last 10 years, there was tremendous disappointment in Arafat's state-building and peacemaking — Arafat did not deliver according to the expectations of most of the Palestinian public," said Palestinian pollster and political analyst Kahlil Shikaki. "But today, people will put this aside and remember him for his incredibly important legacy as the father of Palestinian nationalism who represents the aspirations and symbolizes and embodies the Palestinian desire for independence and statehood."