TIME TO FREE BARGHOUTI:

Abbas Will Put Two-State Issue to a Vote of Palestinians (Scott Wilson, June 6, 2006, Washington Post)

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas decided early Tuesday to hold a referendum to determine whether Palestinians favor creating a state on territory Israel occupied in the 1967 Middle East war. He made his decision after talks with the rival Hamas movement failed to result in a political consensus on the question. [...]

Since Abbas delivered his ultimatum, talks have been underway to reach agreement on basic principles dividing Fatah and Hamas, formally known as the Islamic Resistance Movement. The basis of the talks and the referendum is an 18-point document signed last month by Hamas and Fatah leaders in prison, an agreement that polls show has broad public support in the Palestinian territories. The document endorses a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. [...]

Abbas's aides said he saw the prisoners' plan, as the document has come to be known, as a way to show that Hamas is on the wrong side of a politically popular issue.

The more radical Hamas leaders in exile immediately rejected the document when it was made public this month, but opinion polls conducted since indicate that roughly 80 percent of Palestinians support it.