Arafat’s godfather-like sway over his people derives less these days from his revolutionary credentials than from the estimated $1 billion in bank accounts to which he alone has access. He uses the money to encourage loyalty among a fractious people and was resisting all efforts to prise the key to this impressive war chest out of his hands.

Just before he boarded a Jordanian helicopter at the start of his journey on Friday to the hospital in Paris where he is undergoing tests for a blood disorder, two potential successors asked him what to do about money.

Ahmed Qureia, the prime minister, and Mahmoud Abbas, his predecessor, told the 75-year-old Arafat that they needed funds to keep the Palestinian territories running in his absence. Instead of producing his chequebook, however, Arafat, in light blue pyjamas and a woollen cap, replied: “I’m still alive, thank God, so don’t worry.”

There was reason enough to worry by the end of last week. Arafat has been ill before but seldom has the Palestinian figurehead appeared so visibly frail. Whatever the nature of the mysterious illness he suffers from, it inevitably focused the world’s attention on the uncertain scenario of a Middle East without Arafat, who has led the Palestinians for 40 years.

Because he has held the reins of power so tightly and for so long, there were predictions that his departure would leave a vacuum of power and generate chaos. From Washington to Moscow, the risk of violence overshadowed optimism about the possibility of a new beginning in peace talks with Israel under a different leadership.

President George W Bush has long argued that Arafat must go before peace talks can resume. Ariel Sharon, the hawkish Israeli leader, also refuses to deal with him and has kept him isolated in his battered headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah for the past three years.

The conflict, however, has helped to inflame Arab sentiment against the West and swell the ranks of Palestinian suicide bombers and Al-Qaeda jihadists. The sooner Arafat’s agony ends, some argue, the better for the war against terror.

Set against that are assessments of the difficulties of a post-Arafat world. There are fears that rival Palestinian security forces could take advantage of the vacuum to go to war against each other to settle old scores.

These well-armed groups are hard to control at the best of times, and while Qureia and Abbas might try to stabilise the political position at the head of some interim governing committee before presidential elections could be held, they would be powerless over the gunmen — especially without money.

THE crumbling Palestinian headquarters has taken so many Israeli tank rounds that its inhabitants are used to seeing plaster and dust spill from the ceiling. What they witnessed on Wednesday at about 7pm gave them much more of a jolt.

They had gathered around the dining table for iftar, the meal that ends the day of fasting during Ramadan. At the head of the table, Arafat broke pieces of bread into his soup with trembling hands.

He ate one spoonful, then another — and suddenly collapsed, his head falling on to the table. He appeared to have lost consciousness. His bodyguards took him to another wing of the partially destroyed compound and called for a doctor.

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