AIN EL-HELWEH, Lebanon, 13 November 2004 — With tears and deep sorrow, Palestinian refugees across Lebanon held symbolic funerals yesterday for Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat who had embodied their hope to return to their homeland.

“Revolution, revolution until victory,” chanted thousands of refugees marching behind fighters carrying an empty coffin bearing a portrait of Arafat and draped with a Palestinian flag at the Ain El-Helweh refugee camp near the southern coastal city of Sidon. A black-clad Palestinian woman walked alongside the coffin, carrying a traditional Arab checkered headscarf similar to the keffiyeh that Arafat wore for most of his life and an olive branch to symbolize his drive for peace.

“We wanted to hold a symbolic funeral with the two symbols that Arafat presented to the United Nations in 1974: The revolutionary rifle and the olive branch for peace,” said Khaled Aref, head of Arafat’s Fatah movement in Sidon.

The procession, including many Lebanese sympathizers, had started after midday weekly prayers at the grand mosque of Sidon where worshippers had performed the prayer of the dead for Arafat.

In Beirut, a group of youngsters carried an empty coffin draped with the Palestinian flag to the Imam Ali Mosque where about 3,000 Palestinian men, women and children in tears held a symbolic funeral for Arafat.

“Yasser Arafat was a great leader and his death is felt by Palestinian refugees as the loss of the guarantee of right to return to our homeland Palestine,” said Amneh Jibril, president of the General Union for Palestinian Women in Lebanon.

“Palestinian camps in Lebanon maintain a very special relationship with Arafat. He gave them a lot and they gave him a lot, including fighters,” said the black-clad woman, wiping tears from her cheeks.

“Arafat always kept Palestinian refugees in Lebanon as a top priority for refugees to return to the homeland. Now we all feel that our future has been thrown into the unknown,” Abu Rushdi, a senior official from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command which has opposed Arafat’s peace agreement with Israel, said “Arafat’s death is a loss to all the Palestinians.”

“He was a great leader who gave everything for the Palestinian people,” he told AFP.

At the main public square in the Rashidiyeh camp further south, hundreds of refugees wept as they watched Arafat’s funeral live on giant screens, following the procession from the official funeral in Cairo to the popular burial ceremony in Ramallah.

Sultan Abul Ainain, head of Fatah in Lebanon, told AFP that “Arafat was the guarantee for the return home of millions of Palestinian refugees.”

“In Geneva 2000, Arafat had rejected a peace plan by (then US President Bill) Clinton” for dropping demands for the right to return, he said.

“He then said: ‘If I had accepted, any refugee child would have had the right to assassinate me,” said Abul Ainain.

Abdel Karim Al-Abed, a 60-year-old refugee originally from the village of Nahit in the Acca district, said: “Arafat died as he was besieged by (Israeli Prime Minister Ariel) Sharon at his headquarters .—. because he dared to say no to Clinton when he asked him to drop the Palestinian diaspora’s right to return.”

“Who among the new leadership would dare to say no to (US President) George W. Bush who thinks he is the master of the world?” he said. Nearly 400,000 Palestinian refugees are registered in Lebanon, according to the United Nations relief agency for Palestinian refugees.