THE NEW PARTNER:

Jailed in Israel, Palestinian Symbol Eyes Top Post (JAMES BENNET, 11/19/04, NY Times)

Running through the political chatter among both Palestinians and Israelis since Mr. Arafat died a week ago has been speculation electrifying to both - that Israel would pardon Mr. Barghouti or release him in some sort of prisoner exchange.

That possibility is extremely remote, Israeli politicians and analysts say. An Israeli court has found Mr. Barghouti to have blood on his hands. But some Israelis also remember him for his support of a two-state solution and his formerly close relationships with Israeli politicians, including some right-leaning ones.

The newspaper Maariv published a cartoon this week that showed a prison guard sitting alone before a chessboard outside a cell door marked "Barghouti." Through the door comes a voice: "Do you need a partner?"

Mr. Barghouti is the most prominent member of the rising generation of Palestinian leaders - men in their 40's who, unlike Mr. Arafat and his fellow exiles, grew up under Israeli occupation, learned Hebrew in an Israeli prison and came to admire aspects of Israeli democracy even as they resented their occupiers. As a Palestinian legislator, Mr. Barghouti was a frequent critic of governance under Mr. Arafat.

Asked about her husband's view of Mr. Arafat, Mrs. Barghouti said that he admired Mr. Arafat's "commitment to the Palestinian people" but that "on the issue of democracy and corruption, he used to have his own observations."

Sounding a common complaint by the younger leadership, she said of Mr. Arafat's older comrades, "They look at the leadership as a kind of monopoly for their generation. It's for them only."

Mr. Barghouti also learned English in previous stints in Israeli jails. Having read his way through Marx and the biographies of Israeli leaders, he recently finished Bill Clinton's autobiography, Mrs. Barghouti said.

Some allies of Mr. Barghouti say he is unlikely to challenge Mahmoud Abbas, the new chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, should Mr. Abbas be picked as the presidential candidate of their shared faction, Fatah. In that event, they say, Mr. Barghouti is likely to throw his support behind the consensus candidate.

Unlike Mr. Barghouti, Mr. Abbas, 69, a longtime Fatah leader, is an opponent of the armed uprising. He has almost no popular following.

Mrs. Barghouti said she did not know if her husband would step aside if Mr. Abbas were nominated for president. But she said he thought the P.L.O. leader was "a person of ethics - sincere."

In internal deliberations, some senior Palestinian officials are arguing that Mr. Barghouti should be the faction's candidate, to emphasize the plight of Palestinian prisoners and to end the mixing of institutional roles under Mr. Arafat. They say the Palestinians should turn the presidency of the Palestinian Authority into a largely symbolic role, like the presidency of Israel, and let Mr. Abbas focus on the more overarching duties of chairman of the P.L.O., which represents the millions of Palestinians overseas as well as those in the West Bank and Gaza.

For all those reasons, Sakher Habash, a gray-haired member of Fatah's policy-setting Central Committee, said in a conversation near Mr. Arafat's tomb here on Thursday that he would nominate Mr. Barghouti for president. "He is a symbol of the intifada," he said, referring to the violent Palestinian uprising of the past four years. Asked how Mr. Barghouti could lead from prison, he cited the case of Nelson Mandela, who led the African National Congress from prison before becoming president.

Some Palestinians believe that Israel chose to arrest Mr. Barghouti in April 2002 and then give him a very public trial in order to burnish his credentials as a leader among Palestinians while preventing him from further tarnishing his credentials among Israelis.

The Barghouti/Abbas partnership seems especially sensible.

Posted by Orrin Judd at November 19, 2004 10:22 AM