JERUSALEM — In a drama that had some elements of a Greek tragedy and some of a French farce, a confrontation was brewing Monday night over the comatose figure of Yasser Arafat between his distraught wife, Suha, and his likely political heirs.
Suha Arafat, sophisticated, stylish and 34 years younger than her revolutionary icon husband, has used French privacy laws to keep the state of her husband's health a mystery to the world — and even to the Palestinians who were closest to him, not to speak of those ordinary people who claim him as the father of their nation.
Some senior French officials, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation, have said they are fed up with her maneuvering. So are the Palestinian leaders trying to keep their people calm and establish a legitimate line of succession to Yasser Arafat, 75, who kept all positions of real power to himself.
Exasperated and worried, senior Palestinian leaders arrived in Paris on Monday night to find out for themselves the state of Arafat's health. But as they scheduled meetings for today with the French president, Jacques Chirac, and the foreign minister, Michel Barnier, it remained unclear whether they would be allowed to visit Arafat's bedside.
The Palestinians abruptly canceled and then rescheduled the trip on Monday after Suha Arafat accused them, in what she called "an appeal to the Palestinian people" from Yasser Arafat's bedside, of trying to bury her husband alive and take over his powers.
"You have to realize the size of the conspiracy," she told al-Jazeera television in a telephone call that she initiated. "I tell you that a number of contenders to the throne are coming to Paris, and they are trying to bury Abu Ammar alive," she said, using Arafat's nom de guerre. "He is all right, and he is going home. God is great."
French officials, themselves impatient with the mystery surrounding the lingering death of Arafat, had urged the Palestinian leaders to come to try to break his wife's hold. They also urged the Palestinians to reschedule the trip to Paris after they had canceled it in anger over Suha Arafat's remarks, Palestinian officials said.
Under French law, she has the right to control information about her husband and decisions about his treatment and perhaps his eventual death, French officials said.
Doctors at the Percy military hospital outside Paris have told the Elysee Palace that "the coma is technically reversible although it is unlikely," one French official said, but that Yasser Arafat could linger for some time.
On Monday evening, Gen. Christian Estripeau, the hospital spokesman, provided another cryptic briefing. "His condition is stable," Estripeau said, and added: "Mr. Arafat's medical condition forces us to limit visits." Whether that will be a reason for the Palestinian delegation not to see Arafat was unclear.
The Palestinian delegation consists of all the institutional successors to Arafat's many titles as the head of the Palestine Liberation Organization and of its largest faction, Fatah, and president of the Palestinian Authority.
The group consists of Mahmoud Abbas, secretary-general and No. 2 of the PLO; Ahmed Qureia, the prime minister of the Palestinian Authority; Nabil Shaath, the Authority's foreign minister; and Rawhi Fattouh, the speaker of the parliament, an Arafat loyalist who would become president of the Authority upon Arafat's death for 60 days until new elections could be held.
But as the leader of the Palestinian liberation movement lay dying, questions surrounded the leadership's mission. Were they going to seek his anointment as his successors?
Or were they going to make a bid for the cash?
Arafat's financial empire was worth $3 billion to $5 billion in 1996, the Associated Press quoted a former PLO finance minister, Jaweed al-Ghussein, as saying. Were the three going to ask the dying Arafat for the location, as well as check-writing privileges, for the bank accounts that he used to operate has mammoth patronage machine?
No one outside the inner circle knows for sure. In her appeal, Suha Arafat also shouted, "It is revolution until victory," one of her husband's most famous slogans from his long revolutionary past, dropped only when he agreed to recognize the existence of the state of Israel.
She was appealing to the young militants of Palestine not to let the institutional inheritors of Arafat win, suggested Eran Lerman, an Arabic-speaking former Israeli intelligence officer who is the regional director of the American Jewish Committee.
Her appeal was widely scorned on Monday, however. Yasser Arafat's national security adviser, Jibril Rajoub, said to reporters: "About the chairman's wife, he chose her to be his wife. We respected this and continue to respect this. She was not part of the Palestinian leadership."
Sufian Abu Zaida, deputy Cabinet minister, told Israeli radio: "For a woman who did not see her husband for three years, it is very strange that at the end of his days, his wife decides who will enter and who will not enter."
"This is an absurd situation," he said, raising his voice, "for Suha to sit there and decide when and how and who."
Suha Arafat, 41, who has been living comfortably — some say luxuriously — in Paris, had not seen her husband in more than three years. But she re-emerged as a fiercely protective wife when she traveled to the West Bank city of Ramallah to accompany her ailing husband as he was flown to a French military hospital on Oct. 29.
Palestinian resentment toward Suha Arafat has grown since she left the Palestinian areas for Paris with the couple's daughter, Zahwa, now 9, shortly after the Palestinian uprising began four years ago. Many view her as a snob. Suha Arafat was raised in the West Bank by her father, a banker, and her mother, Raymonda Tawil, a prominent journalist considered a driving force in her daughter's life.
After university studies in France in the mid-1980s, Suha Arafat worked in public relations for the Palestinian leadership in Tunis, Yasser Arafat's base at the time.
Born Christian, she converted to Islam and married Arafat secretly in 1990, though the union did not become public until two years later. "I married a myth," she said in an interview five years ago with The New York Times. "But the marriage helped him step down from his pedestal and become a human being."
The couple's only child was born in 1995, at a French hospital. In remarks that alienated many Palestinians, Suha Arafat said the girl was conceived in Gaza, but she chose to give birth in France because the sanitary conditions at Gaza hospitals were "terrible."
On Monday, Yasser Abed Rabbo, a senior PLO figure, accused Suha Arafat of "hysteria" over her handling of her husband's illness.
Hanan Ashrawi, a Palestinian legislator, said that Arafat is a head of state, not just a husband and father. "This is their right to go to Paris — to dispel all these misconceptions and rumors," she said, calling Suha Arafat's comments "provocative and divisive."
Qureia, at the beginning of a Cabinet meeting, was more gentle, saying: "We express our utmost regret at the comments made by sister Suha," adding that Yasser Arafat "belongs to the Palestinian people."
In Nablus, Palestinians finishing their shopping for the evening meal, to break the Ramadan fast, sharply criticized Suha Arafat.
"All of us are worried about the president's health," said Umm Khalil, 58, pausing with three bulging plastic bags in her hands. "She has no right to say, 'Don't come.' They are his comrades, his colleagues, his friends."
The Israeli press suggested on Monday that Arafat might have a main burial service in Egypt, where Arab leaders would not have to pass through Israeli border controls, and then be buried in the Gaza Strip, where his father and his sister are interred. But Egypt denied the story.
Contributing: Greg Myre, James Bennet, Taghreed el-Khodary