Thousands of people booed Yasser Arafat Friday during the funeral of an Islamic militant who died after being fatally wounded by Palestinian police, in a rare show of anger with their leader.
Mourners poured scorn on Arafat for the death of Ahmed Akram Silmi, 22, who was shot in the back by police when they tried to enforce orders from Arafat to put under house arrest the spiritual leader of the Islamist Hamas movement.
Silmi, who died Thurday of his injuries, was among 2,000 supporters who formed a human shield outside the home of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin on Wednesday to prevent the armed Palestinian police from executing the presidential order.
"Be careful not to stand against the Islamic resistance, because you'll be brought down," a militant warned in a veiled threat against Arafat as he stood over Silmi's tomb.
"Arafat, you're not one of us. Go away," he screamed.
A student who joined the funeral procession from Gaza City's Al-Omari mosque to the "martyrs'" cemetery, bid a last farewell to Silmi, saying in disbelief: "Killed by a Palestinian blood brother."
His emotionally-charged words illustrated the paradox of Silmi's death at the hands of Palestinians rather than their sworn Israeli enemy, and the funeral as such.
Unlike other funerals of Palestinian "martyrs", victim of Israeli violence, not a gun was brandished in defiance, not a shot fired in the air.
The green flag of the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, was also omnipresent, one being draped around Silmi's body instead of the traditional Palestinian colours.
Slogans chanted over and over as the mourners emerged from the funeral prayers were aimed at Israel as usual but also at Arafat's Palestinian Authority.
Hamas militants vowed to carry out new attacks against Israeli targets in retaliation for the latest Israeli pre-dawn air strike Friday on the headquarters of the Palestinian police in Gaza.
"The resistance against the (Israeli) occupation and the attacks will be as violent as the Israeli bombardments," said a masked Hamas militant.
"The attacks will take place everywhere in occupied Palestine. The blockade (imposed by Israel on Palestinian territories) will not prevent us from passing through," he said.
"If Israel uses F-16s (warplanes), we will use human bombs," he said.
But Arafat, his authority and the Palestinian police, were the focus of the wrath.
"At a time when you are arresting militants, (Israeli) bombs are falling on Gaza," another Hamas activist, his face covered in a red-and-white chequered keffiyeh, told the crowds of mourners through a loudspeaker.
"Shame on you," the man shouted.
As Silmi's body was lifted by several of his comrades-in-arm on a simple wooden stretcher, other militants raised banners denouncing the arrests ordered by Israel.
"No to the political arrests of mujahedeen (freedom fighters) and Hamas fighters," one of the banners said.
Others flatly told Arafat they refuse to let him put the revered Hamas spiritual guide under house arrest.
On the way to the cemetery, mourners also shouted slogans against the chief of Palestinian police in Gaza, Ghazi Jabali, accusing him of being a "spy".
And as they walked past a police station, Palestinian youths grabbed stones and threw them at the building -- eerily enacting a traditional gesture that has marked the Palestinian intifada, or uprising, against Israeli rule -- AFP
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
