Arafat Fighting for His Life in Paris
Yasser Arafat was reportedly fighting for his life Thursday at a French military hospital after losing consciousness, as anxious Palestinian officials transferred some of their 75-year-old leader's powers to Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia.
| Wouldn't happen if he hadn't croaked... |
Doctors at Percy Military Training Hospital outside Paris, where Arafat was airlifted last Friday after more than two years of confinement in the West Bank, quashed a swirl of reports that he had died. But the French doctors would not say much else, and confusion ruled as Palestinians issued conflicting reports about Arafat's condition and how close to death he was.
"He's dead!"
"No! He's only mostly dead! There's a difference!"
"He's starting to stink!"
"He stank when he got here!"
"Yeah, but it was a different smell!" |
Outside the hospital, some 50 well-wishers held a vigil late into the evening. Some held candles, others portraits of Arafat. A large Palestinian flag hung from the hospital's outer wall. "It tears your heart up," said Mahmod Nimr, a 36-year-old unemployed Palestinian. "I can't see someone taking his place."
| Me neither, but I'll betcha about a dozen try... |
In an emergency meeting in the West Bank town of Ramallah, the PLO executive committee empowered Qureia to deal with urgent administrative and financial matters in Arafat's absence, said committee member Qais Abdel Karim. Qureia also will meet with security chiefs in the Gaza Strip on Friday to ensure that no internal conflict erupts in the volatile area at a time of uncertainty, a Palestinian official said.
| "Try not to have any shootouts until the body's cold, okay?... Duck!" |
Arafat's chief of staff, Ramzi Khoury, called an Associated Press reporter to say the Palestinian leader was alive but that his condition was grave. "I am standing next to the president's bed, he is in grave condition," Khoury said.
"I can definitely tell you, he's not running that persistent fever anymore."
"What's his temp?"
"About 72 degrees right now..." |
A senior Palestinian official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the AP that Arafat was in a coma in the intensive care unit, where he was taken after his condition worsened overnight Wednesday. In Washington, Said Hamad, deputy chief of the Palestine Liberation Office, also said Arafat was in a coma. French television station LCI quoted an anonymous French medical official as saying Arafat was in an "irreversible coma" and "intubated" — a process that usually involves threading a tube down the windpipe to the lungs. The tube is often connected to a life support machine to help the patient breathe.
However, three Palestinian officials denied Arafat was in a coma.
"He is not getting better, but not getting worse either.
| "We think the rigor mortis has mostly passed, in fact..." |
"He is being embalmed examined. He is not in a coma," Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath said. "There is no explanation for what has happened." A Palestinian official in Gaza who is close to Arafat's wife Suha said she told him her husband fell unconscious after receiving a strong anesthetic for a biopsy. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, quoted Suha Arafat as saying her husband was recovering. Israel TV's Channel Two reported that Arafat was brain dead and remained on life support. However, Arafat's personal physician, Dr. Ashraf Kurdi, told Dubai-based Al-Arabiya television that "Arafat has no type of brain death." He also said a brain scan showed that Arafat had not suffered a hemorrhage or stroke. |