CAIRO, 13 November 2004 — Saudi Arabia yesterday sent a high level delegation to the official funeral of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, led by Crown Prince Abdullah.
Prince Abdullah was accompanied by top officials including Interior Minister Prince Naif, Riyadh Governor Prince Salman, Makkah Governor Prince Abdul Majeed, Madinah Governor Prince Muqrin, Prince Faisal ibn Abdullah, assistant director of intelligence, Prince Turki ibn Abdullah, Prince Abdul Aziz ibn Abdullah, Prince Bandar ibn Salman, advisers at the crown prince’s court, and State Minister Prince Abdul Aziz ibn Fahd.
The 17-member Saudi team included several other princes as well as high-ranking officials including Nasser Al-Rajhi, head of the crown prince’s court. Former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri also accompanied the crown prince to attend the funeral.
In death Arafat appeared to have brought the Arab world together, just as the Palestinian struggle against Israel has been a uniting force in Arab politics for more than half a century.
At his military funeral in Cairo, Arab leaders set aside old reservations about Arafat the man for the sake of solidarity with Arafat the symbol of a movement which continues to resonate in the minds and hearts of ordinary Arabs. Syrian President Bashar Assad, whose father Hafez had a deeply troubled personal relationship with Arafat, made an unexpected appearance in Cairo to walk behind the coffin along with representatives of the other Arab countries.
The purpose of the Cairo ceremony seemed to be to ensure world leaders could pay their last respects to Arafat without the complications of traveling to the Palestinian territories.
Lebanon, where Palestinian guerrillas are now unwelcome after they contributed to a long and devastating civil war in the 1970s and 1980s, also sent its top leaders — President Emile Lahoud and Prime Minister Omar Karami.
The new Iraqi government, which Israel and the United States would like to abandon the pro-Palestinian policies of deposed President Saddam Hussein, sent Deputy President Rowsch Shways.
Arafat rose to prominence in the late 1960s at a time when Arab governments seemed powerless to reverse the territorial gains that Israel made in the Middle East war of 1967.
By offering ordinary Arabs the glamor of guerrilla struggle as an alternative to diplomacy and rhetoric, he naturally ran into conflict with Arab leaders fearful that he would drag them into dangerous military ventures.
He also had to fend off attempts by Arab governments, especially Syria, Iraq and Libya, to bend the Palestinian cause to their domestic and regional agendas.
He came into armed conflict with King Hussein of Jordan in the 1960s, with half of Lebanon in the 1970s and with Hafez Assad of Syria repeatedly, especially in the 1980s.
He fell out of favor in many of the Gulf states after 1990, at great financial cost, because of his refusal to condemn the invasion of Kuwait by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
But he steered his way through the shoals of Arab politics and brought the Palestinians to international prominence at the head of a movement which treasured its independence from other Arab powers.
The presence of almost 20 European foreign ministers at his funeral attested to the success of his gradual transition from a guerrilla chieftain to an international statesman who roamed the world mobilizing support for a Palestinian state.
When Israel and the United States tried to isolate him, from 2002 onward, the Europeans continued to pay him respect as the historic representative of legitimate Palestinian aspirations.
Even the United States, which refused to deal with Arafat until 1988 and ostracized him for his past two years, sent a senior State Department official to the funeral.
— Additional input from agencies
