RAMALLAH, West Bank ? Yasser Arafat was buried Friday in the place where he spent his last years as a virtual prisoner, seen off in a huge and chaotic outpouring of grief for the man who embodied the Palestinian people’s dream of statehood.

Police firing in the air failed to restore order as the tens of thousands of mourners rushed toward the coffin, struggling to be close to their leader — hailed as a Nobel Peace laureate and branded a terrorist — for one final time.

“President Arafat would have wanted it this way, with exhilaration, feelings of loyalty, pain, sadness and love all at once,” Palestinian legislator Hanan Ashrawi said. “The people reclaimed him. They wanted to say goodbye without distance.”

Just hours after Arafat was laid to rest in a stone-and-marble tomb, President Bush said his death provided “a great chance to establish a Palestinian state,” and pledged in his second term “to spend the capital of the United States on such a state.”

Secretary of State Colin Powell expects to meet soon with new Palestinian leaders but the exact time and place hasn’t been determined, a senior State Department official said.

The frenzied burial took place at Arafat’s headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah, where Israel had kept him under siege for nearly three years. It came just hours after an orderly funeral ceremony in Cairo, where the only outburst of emotion was the quiet weeping of Arafat’s 9-year-old daughter, Zahwa, standing beside her veiled mother, Suha.

Where that service gave foreign dignitaries an opportunity to bid a formal farewell to the 75-year-old Palestinian leader, his burial in Ramallah allowed the Palestinian masses, who adored Arafat even as the United States and Israel tried to marginalize him, to say goodbye.

“Everyone wanted to carry the coffin, to touch it, to say goodbye to the president,” said Ahmed Tirawi, 22, a West Bank villager.

Arafat’s death Thursday at a French military hospital shocked many Palestinians, who had never considered life without the man who led them for nearly four decades and transformed their struggle from a refugee problem into an international crisis.

Palestinian security officers struggle to hold the flag-covered coffin containing the remains of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Thousands of Palestinians gathered to see Arafat's coffin en route to his burial Friday in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

Arafat promised Palestinians a state of their own, but died without delivering. Palestinian Cabinet minister Saeb Erekat, who accompanied Arafat’s coffin on the helicopter flight from Egypt to the West Bank, said he kept talking along the way, as if Arafat were still alive. “I told him, ‘My heart is broken. Your life has ended, but the occupation has not.”‘

The outbreak of Israel-Palestinian violence four years ago left peace hopes in tatters. Israel accused Arafat of instigating terror attacks and cut off all contacts with him, confining him to his compound with threats to expel him if he left.

Many Palestinians accused Arafat of running a corruption-filled regime, but death burnished his image, transforming him into a transcendent symbol of Palestinian defiance.

In accordance with his wishes, Palestinians wanted to bury Arafat in Jerusalem at the Al Aqsa Mosque compound, Islam’s third holiest site, which lies atop the ruins of the biblical Jewish temples. Israel refused, fearing chaos and a strengthened Palestinian claim to the city.

Suha Arafat, right, the widow of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, and her daughter Zahra look on during Yasser Arafat's funeral Friday in Cairo.

Nearby Ramallah was the compromise site. Palestinian officials buried him in a concrete box so they could move him to Jerusalem as soon as possible. Soil from Al Aqsa was sprinkled into the grave.

Israel put its forces on high alert but kept them away from the funeral and tried to defuse tension by limiting travel through the West Bank by Palestinians heading to the burial. Only a small group of officials from the Gaza Strip were allowed to cross Israel and reach Ramallah.

Ramallah is the hometown of Arafat’s widow, Suha, but she and her daughter were not at the burial, Erekat said. Senior Palestinian officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they were still upset at her for publicly accusing them earlier this week of seeking to usurp Arafat’s role without waiting to see if he survived.