JERUSALEM, Nov. 26 -- Marwan Barghouti, a popular Palestinian leader serving five life sentences in an Israeli prison, decided Friday not to run for president of the Palestinian Authority in elections in January, associates said.
Barghouti, 45, a shrewd politician and firebrand orator, had threatened to run for president from his jail cell, and many Palestinian analysts said they thought he could win the Jan. 9 election to fill the post vacated by the Nov. 11 death of Yasser Arafat.
But Barghouti, who was the clear favorite of younger members of Arafat's Fatah movement, bowed to intense pressure not to risk splitting the movement by challenging its official nominee, former prime minister Mahmoud Abbas, 69, who was favored by Fatah's old guard.
The decision averted a generational clash within Fatah and a potential public relations nightmare for Israel.
Barghouti's decision not to run was apparently influenced by an agreement that Fatah will hold a party convention this summer for the first time in 15 years to choose new leaders -- a move that almost certainly would put allies of Barghouti in key positions. The party conference was scheduled for Aug. 4, Arafat's birthday, according to the Associated Press.
Barghouti, in a letter read to reporters by his close confidant, Palestinian Minister of State Qadura Fares, said he "welcomed" the convention and urged Palestinians to preserve the memory of Arafat and the unity of Fatah by voting for Abbas. Fares read the letter Friday night in the West Bank city of Ramallah after spending four hours with Barghouti at his prison in the southern Israeli town of Beersheba.
Barghouti, the former head of Fatah in the West Bank and a member of the Palestinian parliament, was convicted this year by an Israeli court of killing five people and belonging to a terrorist organization. He denied the charges but did not participate in his defense, saying the trial was a political show.
He has approved of attacks against Israeli soldiers and Jewish settlers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Abbas has condemned the use of violence, saying the militarization of the Palestinian uprising against Israel's continuing occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip was a mistake.
Abbas, the current head of the Palestine Liberation Organization, was selected to be the Fatah nominee at a closed-door meeting Monday of the movement's Central Committee, a group of 15 men, led by Abbas, who were elected to their posts 15 years ago. Their decision was finalized Thursday night in a meeting -- also closed -- of Fatah's 129-member Revolutionary Council.
The process by which Abbas was chosen was a key complaint of Barghouti and his backers in Fatah, who include many activists who have grown up in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. They complained that the selection process was controlled by Arafat's old guard -- the group that followed the former leader abroad during his years in exile and returned to Gaza and the West Bank with him in 1994.
The al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a Fatah branch that has conducted a suicide bombing campaign against Israel, also favored Barghouti, one of the group's founders. Barghouti, in the letter read by Fares, praised the members of al-Aqsa, calling them "heroes" and vowing to "continue the intifada and the resistance until we reach our independence."
Some younger members of Fatah have also demanded the resignation of Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia and his cabinet after the election, so that younger, reform-minded leaders can run the government. Qureia has promised elections this summer for the Palestinian parliament, which was elected in 1996.
