Arafat has the right to be buried in Jerusalem: rabbi

CLAMART, France, Nov 5 (AFP) - Yasser Arafat has the right to be buried in Jerusalem when he dies, an Orthodox rabbi who was in Paris to support the Palestinian leader said Friday.
As a democratically elected president, Arafat "has the obvious and indisputable right to be buried in Jerusalem," Moishe Arie Friedman, a rabbi from the Austrian capital Vienna, said.
Describing himself as active in supporting the Palestinian struggle for statehood, Friedman said the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land was "a sort of holocaust against the Palestinian people".
The rabbi belongs to an ultra-orthodox fringe of Judaism that has little support in Israel.
The Israeli government has said it would resist attempts to have Arafat buried in Jerusalem, which it and the Palestinians both claim as their future capital.
Arafat, 75, is in a coma in a Paris military hospital on the verge of death.

11/05/2004 14:11 GMT - AFP