The Secret Burial of President Arafat

The Secret Burial of President Arafat

Aug 9th, 2009 by kawther.salam

Nasser Al-Kidwa, the former PLO ambassador to the UN, demanded that the sixth Fatah congress take place in Bethlehem, to declare that Israel is behind the assassination of the late President Yaser Arafat. Everybody applauded and voted for the Al-Kidwa suggestion, including the very people suspected to be the killers of Arafat, who were among the participants in the conference. Nobody asked Al-Kidwa to disclose the results of his investigation as head of the committee to investigate Arafat’s death. Nobody asked him who were the Palestinian killers and the collaborators with Israel who killed Arafat?

The Secret Burial of President Arafat

Five years have passed since the burial of President Arafat in Al-Moqata’a in Ramallah, on 12 November 2004. Five years have passed since the local and the international media covered the burial ceremony of Palestinian President Arafat. Five years of fraud, misleading and deception around the real burial of President Arafat. Five years until we discovered that the burial of our President, and all the ceremonies of his funeral shown before the media were a sham, propaganda like any Hollywood film. Five years until we discovered that the satellite broadcasting was not the real ceremony of Arafat’s burial. This is a big shame, and a crime against the memory of President Arafat.
President Arafat was buried in the dark, without the presence of Palestinians, without the presence of Mahmoud Abbas, Tayeb Abed Al-Rahim, Ramsi Khouri, Nabil Abu Rdieneh, Ahmad Quria, …

President Arafat was not buried on 12 November 2004, what was broadcast that day was not his true burial, but just a sham show for the masses. He was buried in the morning (half past two) of November 13, 2004 by one person and some of his personal guards, and without light or the presence of now-President Mahmoud Abbas, the the Secretary of the Executive Liberation Committee, Ahmad Qurei, who had been Prime Minister at the time, or Tayeb Abdel Rahim, who was the secretary general of the Palestinian Presidential cabinet, or anybody from the political or the civil leadership. Nobody said a real goodbye to him. Nobody observed his real burial; nobody saw him, they are all liars and hypocrites without moral principles. In one way or another, all those involved in his death were in a hurry dispose of the body and to inherit the imaginary authority allowed them under the Israeli occupation.

Only some days ago I read lines from the play of the burial of President Arafat after the journalist Shaker Al-Jawhari published an interview with Sheikh Dr. Taysir Rajab Al-Tamimi on his website Al-Mustaqbal. I was shocked about what Sheikh Al-Tamimi said in that interview, and I called him to ask for further information.

Sheikh Dr. Taysir Al-Tamimi, the Chief of Judges of the Palestinian Authority and Chairman of High Council of Islamic Law for Palestine, said that President Yasser Arafat was buried TWICE, on 12 and 13 November 2004.

I asked Dr. Al-Tamimi: How can it be that he was buried twice, and why did this happened? Who buried him? Who was with him during the first and the second burial? Did President Abbas accept that?

Al-Tamimi said that the body of the President arrived in Al-Moqata’a after three o’clock in the afternoon, that there were many thousands of people who came from everywhere, and we could not get the coffin from the plane, and only with difficulties. There was an arrangement to place the coffin in the hall at Al-Moqata’a to say goodbye by the officials, the diplomats and the people, but we were not able to get the coffin into the room because of overcrowding. With great difficulties we managed to reach the grave, the few kilometers between the plane and grave was covered in more than two hours.

Dr. Al-Tamimi explained how he buried President Arafat TWICE. He said: the first time he was buried in the coffin against the rules of the Islamic Faith, in the presence of Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian leadership, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and the local and international press “I was not able to bury him then according to the rules of the Islamic Faith” he said.

He added that after they put his coffin in the grave and before they opened it, many people threw themselves over him, and because of the spreading of rumours about kidnapping of the body of the President, I decided to bury him in the coffin and to close the grave with cement. This happened far away from President Abbas, Ahmad Qurei and … observations. But I informed Tayeb Abed Al-Rahim about what I did, and that I wanted to bury him again.

Sheikh Al-Tamimi told me that the second time he buried him, it was according to the rules of the Islamic Faith. The burial was only in presence of some of his personal guards. Nobody from the officials came to see him, to say good bye or to see the ceremony. The Sheikh said that he informed Tayyeb Abed Al-Rahim, the general secretary of the presidential cabinet about the second burial and he asked him to prepare the situation for that, but Al-Rahim only asked why, showing his lack of interest in the issue of the real burial.

The Sheikh told Abed Al-Rahim that he wants to bury the President Arafat according to Islamic religion! He explained to him that the situation had prevented taking the body out of the coffin and that he obliged to bury him inside the coffin, and now I want to bury him again and that I would need a help.

On that Saturday morning the cameras were still standing on the buildings around Al-Moqata’a, said Al-Tamimi: “because of that I asked the guards to cover the grave with a tent, and a number of military vehicles surrounded the place. We dug up the grave and opened the coffin, and then we took the body out and buried him according to the principles of the Islamic faith”.