Tens of Thousands View Arafat Funeral
By Sonja Pace
Yasser Arafat returned to Ramallah on Friday, where he was laid to rest as tens-of-thousands of Palestinians came to say their final farewell.
Yasser Arafat came home Friday, to his Muqata compound in Ramallah, to be laid to rest.
Tens-of-thousands of Palestinians, mostly young men, but also women and entire families, gathered around the Muqata, hours before his body arrived for burial.
By the time the helicopter carrying his remains touched down, the Muqata had become a sea of bodies, and it was difficult to see where the helicopters would be able to land. Somehow they managed it.
Then the shooting began, with dozens of armed men firing automatic rifles into the air in tribute. People waved the green, red, white and black Palestinian flags. They carried posters showing Yasser Arafat the way the world had known him, wearing brown military fatigues and a black-and-white-checkered kaffiyeh, the traditional Arab men's head covering.
Palestinians expressed a combination of grief at the loss of Yasser Arafat and pride for him as a leader.
A group of middle-aged men walked arm-in-arm down the middle of one of the streets leading up to the burial site, and sang songs of grief. Young men with keffiyeh scarves wrapped around their heads and necks joined in spontaneous chants, in praise of Yasser Arafat.
Because of the Israeli military closure and imposition of travel restrictions throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip, most of the mourners came from nearby. But one Palestinian woman, Hannah, made her way by taxi through a half dozen Israeli checkpoints from her home in the Israeli city of Haifa to be here for the burial.
"We came for the funeral of Yasser Arafat and he leads the Palestinian people for their freedom," she said.
Unlike the stately ceremony provided for the Palestinian leader in France, or the military funeral in Cairo, this was the people's funeral, the people's farewell.
Sonja Pace, VOA news, in Ramallah.
注释：
Ramallah拉马拉(巴勒斯坦地区的城市,在约旦河西岸)
Muqata compound "穆卡达"官邸（是阿拉法特去法国看病，首次离开被以色列软禁两年多以来位于约旦河西岸城市拉马拉的官邸）
Muqata 穆卡达（由沙袋围住的官邸，是以军围困软禁阿拉法将近3年的地点，是巴勒斯坦人抵抗以色列的象征）
remains遗体
rifle来复枪, 步枪
poster 海报, 招贴
military fatigues 迷彩服
kaffiyeh (沙漠地带阿拉伯人戴的)头巾
scarves丝巾
spontaneous 自发的
closure 终止
imposition强迫接受
mourner哀悼者
checkpoint 检查站
Haifa海法[以色列港市]