A Dream Becomes Reality for Arafat : Autonomy: The PLO chief’s unexpected debut in Gaza marks an emotional encounter with the history of his movement and his own past.

There was a perceptible moment of silence when Yasser Arafat, the feisty revolutionary who badgered the world into accepting his nation without a state, stepped out of his car, bent down and kissed the hot earth here.

Then this hellish outpost of unsettled humanity, beloved of almost no one, erupted in joy as the Palestine Liberation Organization chairman launched his improbable reunion with his people.

It marked a turning point in the 46-year-old Palestinian struggle and an appointment with destiny of sorts for the 64-year-old leader.

Images that might have seemed unbelievable only a few months ago played across the dusty, stench-filled streets through a long day of chaos and euphoria:

* Arafat hoisted on the shoulders of his police as they shouted: “With our blood and our souls we defend you!”

* Arafat squeezing through throngs so enthusiastic his face was pinched into a grimace between the shoulders of his bodyguards.

* An old lady with a gold tooth trilling the ululation of joy that, for this day at least, replaced the wailing and keening that for so many years have been the song of Gaza’s mothers.

“It was because I am happy from the heart,” said the woman, Miriam, whose son was recently released from a Gaza prison. “God willing, we have a new life.”

It is a heavy burden to carry for this slight, ailing leader--the expectations that a Palestinian government, so far confused and half-formed, will be able to turn Gaza’s broiling refugee camps and squalid slums, morose and disheartened after 27 years of Israeli occupation, into a future of possibilities.

Speaking to tens of thousands in the old Parliament square near the former Israeli army headquarters, Arafat emphasized the job ahead, saying: “I want to remind you that we have a big mission ahead of us, a big mission to build this homeland, to build our institutions, and to rebuild the institutions the Israeli army destroyed.”

For Arafat, the unexpected debut in Gaza--most PLO officials had been planning an orderly trip to the more sedate Jericho, the other outpost of Palestinian self-rule--was an emotional encounter with the history of his movement and his own past.

Arafat last set foot in Palestine in 1968, as a guerrilla leader and founder of the Fatah movement, slipping in and then out of the West Bank in disguise.

Many of his earliest days as a young student protester were spent chanting slogans in Gaza’s streets. It was in the sweltering refugee camps outside Gaza City that the Palestinian intifada-- the uprising against the Israeli occupation--erupted in 1987, changing the course of the struggle for independence.

As Arafat made his way from an airfield in neighboring Egypt to the border , he grew increasingly ebullient, nervous about the reception but conscious of the route his motorcade was tracing through history , his aides said.

“He was in a very good mood. Not just good, great. Very high emotions. And then with the crowds, the people, you see how big the crowd was--unbelievable in every way!” said Mohammed Sobhieh, secretary general of the Palestine National Council, who accompanied the chairman. “For him, for us, for all of us, it was a very sensitive, a very extraordinary moment. I was last here 28 years ago.

“Think of it,” Sobhieh continued. “After that long, long march of blood, agony, problems, depression, appealing to the U.N. and international opinion, massacres here and there, then the difficulty of the peace talks, the Schultz plan, the Baker plan, the Madrid conference. You put that all together, and then you step into Gaza--it is indescribable.”

Nabil Shaath, a senior Arafat adviser and member of the new Palestinian Authority, added: “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a day like it. It’s the stuff that historic moments are painted of--this is a historic moment that will never go away.”

But Jamil Tarifi, another Palestinian Authority member, admitted that Arafat’s job has only begun.

He said the chairman must now marshal the divided factions that are still debating the wisdom of peace, push for international donations to fund the new self-rule government and build a nation out of a land of desperate refugees and dispirited farmers.

Arafat’s visit to Gaza, he said, is a signal that the Palestinian leadership is up to the job--and that it still needs its leader to finish it.

“We need him from now, and not just now. We need him from yesterday,” Tarifi said. “He was outside because he was forced to be outside. Now, you can’t ask any people, ‘Do you need your president?’ Of course we need him!”

Delegations of Palestinian well-wishers from Gaza and the West Bank pushed into the seaside Palestine Hotel. Arafat was there holding court, as his new Palestinian police, newly drawn from the ranks of the Palestine Liberation Army all over the Arab world, tried to unsnarl the traffic bedlam outside.

And while the crowd of about 70,000 in the main square was far short of the 500,000 optimistically predicted, thousands of families and young men lingered long after Arafat’s black-and-white headdress, barely visible above a sea of bodyguards, had been whisked away.

“He greeted the children of the stone, and that includes most of us,” said Mohammed Youssef Nejam, a 27-year-old student who was among a generation of young Palestinians whose lobbed rocks at armed Israeli soldiers earned the world’s sympathy for an occupied Palestine.

“He said the stone children were the main reason we reached this point, and he greeted all the Palestinians, regardless of their factions or parties, all the Palestinians without any discrimination,” Nejam noted of Arafat. “I can tell you that (Arafat) is the father of every Palestinian here.”

Munching on a corn on the cob from one of the dozens of street vendors around the plaza, Bassam Nasser, 25, conceded that Arafat will not be able to solve Gaza’s heartaches over the course of a four-day visit.

“I don’t think the problems will be solved after this visit,” he said. “But just to see Arafat up there, it makes people think that we are achieving our dream. It’s the next step of our revolution which started in Gaza.”