Yasser

RAMALLAH, West Bank -- A fleet of trucks and bulldozers had lumbered into place yesterday afternoon, and aimed for a small grove of cypress trees, shoving aside the rusted remains of junked cars along the way. By dusk, most of the debris was cleared. The cypress trees still stood, on the edge of a concrete parking lot, in the shadow of the presidential compound. Sullen-faced members of the presidential guard sat slumped on a wall and watched. The workers were clearing space, in the sparse shade of the cypress trees -- for Yasser Arafat's grave.

WASHINGTON - Having come to despise Yasser Arafat toward the end of his life, the Bush administration was not about to praise him in death. In a statement last night, President Bush said, "The death of Yasser Arafat is a significant moment in Palestinian history," omitting any judgment on the Palestinian leader. "We express our condolences to the Palestinian people." "During the period of transition that is ahead, we urge all in the region and throughout the world to join in helping make progress toward these goals and toward the ultimate goal of peace."

Yasser Arafat, the leader and most famous symbol of Palestinian nationalism for nearly 40 years, died early today in a French military hospital near Paris. His death deprived Palestinians of the figure who led and shaped their long, often-violent campaign to obtain international recognition as a people and their quest to govern themselves in an independent state. Mr. Arafat, 75, died after suffering a brain hemorrhage and multiple organ failure, two weeks after falling seriously ill at his presidential compound in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

PARIS - Senior Palestinian officials, after consulting with doctors treating Yasser Arafat and visiting his hospital, said yesterday that his condition had deteriorated sharply and acknowledged for the first time that preparations were under way for his funeral and burial. Arafat, in a coma since Nov. 3, slipped deeper into unconsciousness early yesterday, but reports that he is brain dead are untrue, said Palestinian Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath at a news conference here. "His brain, his heart and his lungs are still functioning, and he is alive," Shaath said, hours after visiting the hospital southeast of Paris where Arafat has been treated since Oct. 29. "He will live or die, depending on his body's ability to resist and ... the will of God."

RAMALLAH, West Bank - Palestinian officials worked yesterday to create a new leadership structure as confirmation came from France that the hospitalized Yasser Arafat was in a coma and "between life and death." Rival factions in Gaza reached a power-sharing agreement that gives added authority to Ahmed Qureia, the Palestinian prime minister, who took responsibility for finances and the tangle of competing security forces, the two areas Arafat had long insisted on controlling. In France, physicians offered no diagnosis of Arafat's illness despite a week of tests.

TEL AVIV, Israel - A Palestinian suicide bomber killed three Israelis and injured more than 30 others at an outdoor market here yesterday, in the first militant attack since Yasser Arafat left the Palestinian territories for medical treatment in France. The bombing at the Carmel Market, in the southern part of the city, posed an immediate challenge for the interim Palestinian leadership as it tries to maintain stability during Arafat's absence and uncertainty about a post-Arafat era. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a small, Syria-based faction of the PLO, claimed responsibility for the bombing and heightened concern that militant groups may use violence to vie for power.

THE RECENT BUS bombings in Beersheba reminded Israelis that the lull in suicide attacks in Israel had less to do with the Hamas intention to conduct such acts and more to do with Israel's capability to prevent them. Israel's presence in the West Bank, including continuing raids into cities such as Nablus and Jenin and completion of a quarter of the security barrier, have combined to make it more difficult for groups such as Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade to carry out acts of terror.

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 - Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia withdrew his resignation yesterday after Yasser Arafat promised to give him limited power over Palestinian Authority security forces and to enact reforms. The agreement ended a two-week political rift that had threatened the Palestinian leadership. "The president refused my resignation, and I will comply," Qureia told reporters in the West Bank city of Ramallah after emerging from a closed-door meeting, kissing the Palestinian president on the cheeks and holding his hand.

RAMALLAH, West Bank -- Yasser Arafat was striding across the parking lot of his ruined compound with a confident smile, flanked by aides wearing suits and ties and by guards dressed in green fatigues and brandishing machine guns. There he was, the one-time revolutionary now under siege. The dust blowing off the piles of rubble from Israeli army raids added to the appearance that this was a person bravely resisting the forces arrayed against him. After more than three years of bitter fighting with Israel, however, the people of the West Bank and Gaza Strip are increasingly disillusioned with Arafat and the government he leads, the Palestinian Authority.