Jailed Barghouti mulls running for Palestinian presidency

Jailed Tanzim leader Marwan Barghouti said Monday that he is considering running for the Palestinian Authority presidency in the next elections that are expected to take place in 2009 or 2010.

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Barghouti's comments came only a few hours after a poll showed that the Israel Defense Forces attacks in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip have boosted the popularity of the Islamist group's leader Ismail Haniyeh among Palestinians in that territory and in the West Bank. The survey by the West Bank-based Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research showed that if new presidential elections were held, Haniyeh would receive 47 percent of the vote compared with 46 percent for President Mahmoud Abbas of the rival Fatah faction.

The figures represented a sharp strengthening of Haniyeh's popularity. He served as prime minister in the Hamas-led government Abbas dismissed after Hamas seized the Gaza Strip from Fatah in June.

But the survey also found that Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti, imprisoned in Israel and seen as a possible Abbas successor, would defeat Haniyeh by a clear margin. The poll gave him 57 percent of the vote, compared to Haniyeh's 38 percent.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/965610.html

Would he be a more palatable leader than Haniyeh? He favors armed resistance, does he not?

It will be interesting to see what the attitude of Barghouti and Haniyeh towards each other is, if and when the issue is allowed to come up. Barghouti, near as I can tell out here in TV land, is somewhere in the neighborhood of Arafat 20 years ago, he's willing to settle, he knows that Israel is not going to just evaporate, but not at any price. If enough was put on the table, he would settle and get on with things. Haniyeh has said as much too. Now we need some Israeli politicians to acknowledge that the Palestinians are not going away either. We need an Israeli DeKlerk.

So it depends.

Edit: and, yes, he doesn't seem to be averse to a bit of violence.

I don't believe that Hamas is after absolute power in Paletine; not by a long shot. And I think they'd much prefer to work with him than with Abbas!

is that he is the most likely candidate to revive Fatah as a Palestinian political force. If he is freed and allowed to pursue political office, it will be with that purpose in mind. Hamas has been in pursuit of a Palestinian unity government for some time now, so one would expect them to be willing to work with him. Simply because I favor a secular Palestine, I think it would be good if he was set free, pardoned, or paroled or whatever, and allowed to pursue office.

I would support him as well for those same reasons.

I think he's clear eyed about Israel and has a national liberation objective, rather than "I want to run the bureacracy and load my bank account" objective.