November 9, 2004
Arafat's Health Worsens as Delegation Arrives
By STEVEN ERLANGER
and ELAINE SCIOLINO
ERUSALEM, Nov. 9 - "The condition of the Palestinian leader, Yasir Arafat, has worsened overnight, just before a group of Mr. Arafat's likely political heirs arrived today at the French hospital where he is being treated in the latest stage of a confrontation brewing between the delegation and Mr. Arafat's wife, Suha.
"The comatose state that led to his admission into intensive care has become deeper this morning," Christian Estripeau, the chief doctor, said today of the 75-year-old Mr. Arafat's condition. "This marks a significant step towards an evolution whose prognosis cannot be determined."
The Palestinian delegation, which arrived at the French hospital in the Paris suburbs today, consists of all the institutional successors to Mr. Arafat's many titles - as the head of the Palestine Liberation Organization; as head of its largest faction, Fatah; and as president of the Palestinian Authority.
The group consists of Mahmoud Abbas, secretary general and No. 2 of the P.L.O.; Ahmed Qurei, 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 Mr. Arafat's death for 60 days until new elections could be held.
Mrs. 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.
Exasperated and worried, senior Palestinian leaders arrived in Paris on Monday night to find out for themselves the state of Mr. Arafat's health. They had scheduled meetings today with the French president, Jacques Chirac, and Foreign Minister Michel Barnier.
Some senior French officials, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation, have said they are fed up with Mrs. Arafat's maneuvering. So are the Palestinian leaders trying to keep their people calm and establish a legitimate line of succession to Mr. Arafat, who has kept all positions of real power to himself.
The Palestinians abruptly canceled and then rescheduled the trip to France on Monday after Mrs. Arafat accused them, in what she called "an appeal to the Palestinian people" from Mr. 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 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 Mr. 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 condition of Mr. Arafat, had urged the Palestinian leaders to come to try to break Mrs. Arafat's hold. They also urged the Palestinians to reschedule the trip to Paris after they had canceled it in anger over Mrs. Arafat's remarks, Palestinian officials said.
Under French law, Mrs. Arafat 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 Élysée Palace that "the coma is technically reversible although it is unlikely," one French official said, but that Mr. Arafat could linger for some time.
On Monday evening, General Estripeau, the hospital spokesman, said his condition was stable but it "forces us to limit visits." In her appeal, Mrs. Arafat also shouted, "It is revolution until victory!" one of Mr. Arafat'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 young Palestinian militants not to let his institutional inheritors 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 Monday, however. Mr. 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, a 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."
Mrs. 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 the French military hospital on Oct. 29.
Palestinian resentment toward Mrs. 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.
Mrs. 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-1980's, Mrs. Arafat worked in public relations for the Palestinian leadership in Tunis, Mr. Arafat's base at the time.
Born Christian, she converted to Islam and married Mr. Arafat secretly in 1990. 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, Mrs. 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, Yasir Abed Rabbo, a senior P.L.O. figure, accused Mrs. Arafat of "hysteria" over her handling of her husband's illness.
Hanan Ashrawi, a Palestinian legislator, said Mr. Arafat was 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 Mrs. Arafat's comments "provocative and divisive."
Mr. Qurei, 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 Mr. Arafat "belongs to the Palestinian people."
In Nablus, Palestinians finishing their shopping for the evening meal, to break the Ramadan fast, sharply criticized Mrs. 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 Monday that Mr. 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 sister are interred. But Egypt denied the account.
Elaine Sciolino reported from Paris for this article. Greg Myre contributed from Jerusalem, James Bennet from Nablus and Taghreed el-Khodary from Gaza."
