Yasser

THE SILENT side-effects of the Israeli-Palestinian power struggle over Jerusalem still spawn behind-the-scenes dramas that jeopardize everyday life 33 years after the entire city came under Israeli control in the Six-Day War. One is that of the family of 17-year-old Yasser Abu Halaf, a Palestinian who suffers malignant brain cancer. Ninth out of 13 children, Yasser left school after the sixth grade. Since age 14 he has worked as a dishwasher and odd-job boy in a Jerusalem restaurant. Yasser hid the bump growing on his head as long as he could.

RAMALLAH, West Bank -- Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas dedicated Yasser Arafat's sleek new mausoleum in a ceremony yesterday, drawing on his predecessor's continued popularity as he heads into peace negotiations with Israel. The dedication of the mausoleum, on the third anniversary of Arafat's death, was meant to boost Abbas' legitimacy as he faces a stiff challenge from the rival Hamas. Arafat died at age 75 in a French military hospital, after spending his final years under Israeli siege at his West Bank headquarters.

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum forced its director to resign yesterday, ending an acrimonious tenure that was highlighted by an embarrassing on-again-off-again invitation last month to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.Several people close to the situation said that the invitation to Arafat -- which was extended, revoked, then extended again and finally spurned by the Palestinian leader -- was such a public relations catastrophe that the museum needed a scapegoat and landed on Dr. Walter Reich, the director.

JERUSALEM - The medical records of Yasser Arafat, which have been kept secret since his unexplained death last year at a French military hospital, show that he died from a stroke that resulted from a bleeding disorder caused by an unidentified infection. The first independent review of the records, obtained by The New York Times, suggests that poisoning was highly unlikely and dispels a rumor that he might have died of AIDS. Nonetheless, the records show that despite extensive testing, his doctors could not determine the underlying infection.

Khaled al-Hassan, 66, a close associate of Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat and a founding member of the PLO's Fatah movement, died Friday in Rabat, Morocco, after a lengthy illness. Known also as Abu Said, he was president of the Committee on External Relations of the Palestine National Council.John Flint Dille Jr., 80, board chairman of Truth Publishing Co. and Pathfinder Communications Corp., died Friday of a heart attack in Elkhart, Ind.Virginia E. Montes, 50, former national secretary and lobbyist for the National Organization for Women, died of a stroke Thursday in Atlanta.

JERUSALEM - Israeli officials canceled the latest round of cease-fire talks with the Palestinians last night after a suicide bomber blew himself up outside a row of shops in downtown Jerusalem, killing himself and three bystanders and injuring more than 60 others. The thunderous blast rumbled through the city in what has become a familiar occurrence. Cars screeched to a halt; people blocks away stopped to listen for the inevitable wail of sirens that confirmed their fears. Once again, the target was downtown, a wide central artery of shops and apartment buildings that have been shot up and bombed repeatedly by Palestinian militants over the past 18 months.

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip -- Of many standing ovations at the Shawwa Cultural Center yesterday, one of the warmest went to the other Clinton in the house, the U.S. president's wife, Hillary.Welcomed by Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat as a "great and generous guest," Hillary Rodham Clinton beamed to the audience, her daughter, Chelsea, at her side. Mrs. Clinton and Arafat's wife, Suha, seemed genuinely friendly, walking arm in arm and whispering to each other as though sharing confidences.Mrs.

JERUSALEM -- Fearing for the health and safety of her child, Yasser Arafat's wife, Suha, has made a decision that is scandalizing Palestinian society: She will give birth to the couple's first-born in Paris rather than in Gaza, where her husband is trying to build a Palestinian state."

JERUSALEM - Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat sought to unequivocally distance himself from the terror network al-Qaida in an interview published yesterday, warning Osama bin Laden to stop justifying attacks in the name of Palestinians. "I'm telling him directly not to hide behind the Palestinian cause," Arafat was quoted as saying in The Sunday Times of London, referring to recent statements by al-Qaida leaders. "Why is bin Laden talking about Palestine now?" Arafat said in the article.

One day on "Live with Regis and Kathie Lee":Regis: "Coming up, Fabio is here with his new pinup calendar and so is the incomparable Susan Lucci of 'All My Children.' But right now ... you've seen these guys all over the news lately with the, um, situation in the Middle East, that whole business. Please welcome Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat!"(Applause.)Regis: "I'm telling ya, you guys look great!"Kathie Lee (squeezing Arafat's cheeks): "Look at the tan on this man!"

JERUSALEM - Mahmoud Abbas, who is expected to win the Jan. 9 elections to succeed Yasser Arafat as Palestinian president, praised Arafat's legacy in a speech yesterday marking the end of the 40-day mourning period for the former leader. Abbas, 69, who has succeeded Arafat as chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, was lavish in his praise as he spoke in Arafat's old headquarters in Ramallah. "No words of homage are sufficient to commemorate his memory," Abbas said in the presence of Palestinian notables and Arab representatives, in a speech sometimes broken by bursts of gunfire homage from the crowd outside.

RAMALLAH, West Bank - The graffiti scrawled here in the Jalazon refugee camp was fresh, and it served as an ominous warning to the men warily seeking to succeed Yasser Arafat: "The lion has died and left tigers behind." The search that is under way for a new Palestinian leader may be resolved by elections, by violence or by both. It's a selection process that may resemble what that scrawled message suggests: a battle by ambitious former aides to Arafat for the scraps of power left by his death.

RAMALLAH, West Bank - Palestinians buried Yasser Arafat here yesterday amid chaos and outpourings of grief, after mourners firing guns in the air engulfed the helicopter that carried his flag-draped casket from his funeral in Cairo and briefly wrested the coffin from an honor guard. Crying, screaming and fighting to get closer, members of the crowd overwhelmed police early on and climbed the walls of the presidential compound, awaiting two Egyptian helicopters carrying Arafat's body and some of the Palestinian leader's longtime aides.

If there was a single face for the bloody, divisive, maddening Israeli-Palestinian conflict of the past 35 years, it was Yasser Arafat's. For different Americans, that face represented hate and violence or hope and salvation. It was a legacy of polarization that Arafat apparently took to his grave. As he lay in a coma in a military hospital outside Paris, some American Jewish leaders called him a failed leader who squandered chances for peace between his people and Israel; others labeled him a terrorist whom the world would not miss.

PARIS - Yasser Arafat's longtime personal physician called yesterday for an autopsy on the deceased Palestinian leader, saying he was baffled and angered by the French medical team's failure to diagnose Arafat's illness. Ashraf al Kurdi, who was a friend and doctor to Arafat for 25 years, also said he was "disappointed" in the care that French doctors gave Arafat. "They did not care even to phone me and ask for his medical history," he said in a phone interview from his Jordan home. "I am very disappointed in their care for him, and I cannot understand this lack of an explanation for his death.

RAMALLAH, West Bank - Palestinians embarked on a new, uncertain path yesterday with the swift, smooth swearing-in of new leadership after the death of Yasser Arafat. Rawi Fattouh, speaker of the Palestinian parliament, was sworn in as acting president of the Palestinian Authority, the government formerly led by Arafat, until elections are held within the next 60 days. Mahmoud Abbas, a former prime minister who advocated nonviolence, took Arafat's place as chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

RAMALLA, West Bank -- This week, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was not trying to squeeze concessions out of Israeli negotiators or struggling to control Islamic extremists. The showdown was with his own loyalists.In another bumpy patch on the Palestinian road to democracy, Arafat quelled yesterday a revolt among members of the Palestinian Legislative Council, the Palestinian legislature, who say he must share his power.Members of Arafat's own Fatah faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization threatened last week to resign rather than allow the council to provide a democratic facade for Arafat's autocratic rule.

JERUSALEM - The deputy chief of the Palestinian intelligence services was shot and seriously wounded in Gaza City yesterday as he drove to his office. Two of his bodyguards were killed and two others were wounded as gunmen fired on the convoy near the Shati refugee camp, overturning one of the cars, and then escaped. The shooting, for which there was no immediate explanation, was the latest sign of the unrest and confusion in Gaza as Palestinian groups struggle for control of the Gaza Strip, which Israel says it will leave next year.

JERUSALEM - For many Israelis, Yasser Arafat's death yesterday brought hope that his successors will find a way to end the violence that Israelis believed he encouraged or was unwilling to stop. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, without mentioning Arafat by name, expressed cautious optimism that relations with the Palestinians might improve. "Recent events are likely to constitute a turning point in Middle Eastern history," Sharon said. "I hope the new Palestinian leadership ... will understand that progress in relations and in the resolution of problems depends, first and foremost, on the cessation of terrorism.

WASHINGTON - President Bush moved cautiously yesterday into the post-Yasser Arafat era of Middle East diplomacy, dispatching a modest delegation to the Palestinian leader's funeral and giving little sign of a strong U.S. peacemaking role in the near future. Despite Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's statement early this week that the United States is ready to move "actively" on an international peace plan, a senior U.S. official said yesterday that much would hinge on the capability of Arafat's successors.