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		The family gravesite of Yasser Arafat is located just outside the eastern walls of Jerusalem's Old City.
		By Atta Hussein, AFP

The debate over what will happen to the remains of the Palestinian leader, who lay critically ill Monday in a French military hospital near Paris, is making a tense situation between Israelis and Palestinians even more volatile.

Arafat's condition remained unclear more than a week after he collapsed in his Ramallah headquarters and was flown to France for treatment. After initially improving, he apparently had a setback Wednesday. Monday, hospital spokesman Gen. Christian Estripeau said the Palestinian leader was stable and in intensive care.

Early Monday, Arafat's wife, Suha, accused Palestinian leaders planning to visit Arafat in France of trying to usurp his position. "I tell you, they are trying to bury Abu Ammar alive," she shouted, using Arafat's nom de guerre, in a telephone call to Al-Jazeera TV.

Despite this, Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia, former prime minister Mahmoud Abbas, Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath and Parliament Speaker Rauhi Fattouh decided to fly to Paris to visit Arafat, 75. They arrived late Monday. But it wasn't clear whether they would be able to see him. Hospital officials said visiting rights had been restricted. Suha Arafat, as next of kin, has been controlling who has access. (Related item: What will happen to Arafat's money?)

The dispute between Arafat's family and his aides may be only a prelude to the expected battle over the future grave site of the man many Palestinians consider the father of their national movement. Islamic officials in Jerusalem say Arafat wished to be interred atop what Jews call the Temple Mount, the location of the biblical Jewish Temple and the holiest site in Judaism. Muslims call the site the Noble Sanctuary, and built a mosque on it when they controlled the city centuries ago.

Israel fears Arafat's burial in the East Jerusalem site could undermine Israeli claims to sovereignty over the entire city, claims the international community hasn't recognized since Israelis captured East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza in the Middle East war in 1967.

The concerns stem from Palestinians' desire to establish a capital in East Jerusalem, which is where the Temple Mount/Noble Sanctuary is located. The site has been the source of Israeli-Palestinian conflict for decades. Most recently, the 4-year-old Palestinian uprising began when Ariel Sharon, now Israel's prime minister, visited the site. The Muslim world has adopted the name of the mosque there to describe the uprising, calling it the Al-Aqsa intifada.

Israel's plans for a Gaza burial were discussed Sunday during a weekly Cabinet meeting. Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said the government had "completed its preparations for Arafat's burial in Gaza," but he said the Palestinian leadership had not formally contacted them on the matter.

Palestinian officials insist that discussing burial arrangements would be disrespectful and premature. Upon hearing of the Israeli Cabinet's discussion, Palestinian Cabinet Minister Saeb Erekat said, "I think it's not for the Israelis to decide, and I would urge the Israelis to show some sensitivity."

But many Israelis revile Arafat and would strongly object to seeing him interred near Judaism's holiest site. "Jerusalem is the city where Jewish kings are buried and not Arab terrorists," Israeli Justice Minister Yosef Lapid said Friday.

If the Israelis change their minds, Arafat would not be the first Muslim interred on the Temple Mount, according to Uri Koopershmidt, a political scientist at the University of Haifa. "In the 1930s, the Amin Al Husseini, the grand mufti, tried to turn Haram al-Sharif into a kind of pantheon," Koopershmidt said, using the mount's Arabic name. "Several people were buried there." Israel stopped the practice of burying prominent Muslims there in 1967.

Yoel Cohen, an expert on the Temple Mount who teaches at the Netanya Academic College, said it is "inconceivable" Israel would permit Arafat to be buried there. "Israel is certainly trying to control the Palestinian trend to attach political symbolism to the site," he said. From a Jewish religious perspective, the site "is too holy to bury Jews or non-Jews," he said. "In the time of the temples, Jews were buried outside the city boundaries because death implies impurity."

Riad Malki, the director of Panorama, a Palestinian non-governmental organization, said the site "has great religious, historical and political significance" to Palestinians. "For Muslims, it is the closest thing on Earth to heaven. In order for Mohammed to reach God, he had to go to Jerusalem, to the mount. Arafat, who is known to be a religious man, felt it would be a privilege to be buried on the mount, so close to God."

Palestinians hope their leader will be accorded a state funeral in Jerusalem, rather than burial in his family's plot in Gaza. Referring to the gate at which Muslims ascend to the Al-Aqsa Mosque for prayers, Ghassan Abu Khader, 41, said, "It was important for him to plant the flag at Damascus Gate. Maybe if he did not succeed in this life, he can succeed in death."

Contributing: Paul Wiseman in Ramallah, West Bank, wire reports.