Word: fatah
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...More importantly, Abbas ran as the consensus candidate of a Fatah movement whose membership ranges from aging diplomatically-inclined men like Abbas to the militants of the al-Aqsa Martyr's Brigade, which continued to launch attacks on Israeli targets even as it campaigned for a leader who dismisses such attacks as futile and counter-productive...
...jailed Fatah chief has put a major crimp in hopes for a smooth transition of power in the wake of the death of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Until last week, Mahmoud Abbas--Arafat's longtime P.L.O. deputy who has the backing of the Central Committee of Fatah, the most powerful Palestinian party--seemed likely to roll up a big victory in the Jan. 9 election for Palestinian President. But last week Marwan Barghouti, who is serving five life sentences in an Israeli prison for his part in deadly shooting attacks early in the four-year intifadeh, announced his candidacy...
...last week when he said the organization is committed to a boycott and won't be able to change its decision in the short time available, despite expressing great respect for Barghouti. But at neighborhood level, particularly in Gaza where militants of Hamas have long fought alongside those of Fatah in the Popular Resistance Committees that coordinated armed activity during the intifadah, many supporters of the Islamist group may be given a nod and wink to go to the polls and vote for Barghouti despite the boycott...
...militias. Abbas's preferred method has been to negotiate cease-fire agreements with Hamas - and to the extent that he has succeeded, at least temporarily, in the past, he has relied largely on the efforts of Barghouti, from his prison cell, to bring the militants of both Hamas and Fatah on board. A rival candidacy which urges the militants to vote against Abbas by painting him as a man who will sell Palestinians short may undermine prospects for a new cease-fire...
...prisoner stays in the race. If he loses, his candidacy may nonetheless have delivered the political equivalent of a fatal wound to Abbas, at the same time as burning his own prospects for fulfilling his "Palestinian Mandela" ambitions. If Barghouti stayed in the race with the backing of the Fatah militants - making it an election fought over the fundamental strategic direction to be adopted by the Palestinians - and was then decisively defeated, Abbas would be free to pursue all manner of hitherto unpopular compromises with Israel. But that also remains the least likely scenario given the stated preference...