JERUSALEM, 5 November 2004 — Yasser Arafat, who is said to be fighting for his life at a hospital in Paris, has not made a will specifying how he should be buried, a high-ranking Muslim religious official said yesterday.

“We never discussed this issue with the president and he never mentioned it to us,” the Palestinian official said on condition of anonymity. “None of us dared to ask about it because it might bring bad luck.”

Muslim tradition decrees that after death, the body should be washed according to a special ritual before being wrapped in a white burial shroud and interred.

Political and religious Muslim leaders usually prepare a religious will during their lifetime which defines who should be involved in performing the ritual.

The official said should Arafat die in France, local Muslim clerics would be called in to perform the ritual before flying him back to be buried in his homeland.

But the issue of where Arafat was likely to be laid to rest was set to be controversial after Israel made it clear it would never allow the veteran Palestinian leader to be buried in the Al Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem’s Old City, the third holiest site in Islam.

“I don’t think that Israel will ever allow him to be buried in Palestine,” the official said, estimating that Jordan and Egypt would both offer to have him buried on their territory as Israel was “making a lot of problems about burying him in the mosque compound.”

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon reaffirmed that he would block moves to bury Arafat in Jerusalem, public radio reported yesterday.

“As long as I am in power, and I have no intention of leaving, he (Arafat) will not be buried in Jerusalem,” public radio quoted Sharon as telling a weekly Cabinet meeting on Sunday.

A team headed by Sharon’s private secretary, Israel Maimon, has drawn up a report to explain the premier’s refusal and why such a burial would be unpopular in the country as a whole.

Israel’s private Channel 2 television, quoting political officials, said Israel would only sanction an Arafat burial in the Gaza Strip and would not allow its arch foe to be buried on ground it controls.