A HERO'S RECEPTION

A day after formally filing his papers for the presidency of the Palestinian Authority, PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat swooped into Nablus by helicopter and from the rooftop of the former Israeli military headquarters asked a crowd of thousands of cheering, flag-waving Palestinians: "Will you allow me to nominate myself?" TIME's Jamil Hamad reports from the West Bank: "One of the problems facing Arafat is the elections. Before the peace agreement, he was able to rule the Palestinians according to his mood. He won't be able to do that anymore, because, even if he is elected president of the Palestinian Authority, he will still have to share power with the [82-member] Palestinian Council. Although he should win the election, he won't have the almost 100 percent landslide that he wants. We have to wait to see how he shares power." Nablus, a city of 100,000, is the third West Bank city to be handed over to the Palestinian Authority, leaving three other towns, Qalqiliya, Bethlemhem, and Ramallah, as the last scheduled to be turned over as Israeli troops depart. The Palestinian general elections are scheduled for January 20.