A SURGE in support for the Islamic fundamentalist group Hamas in the run-up to Wednesday’s parliamentary elections is fuelling calls for Mahmoud Abbas, the 70-year-old Palestinian president, to step down after the vote.

Dissatisfaction is growing in the ranks of Abbas’s Fatah party at his lacklustre performance since he was elected leader last January. Polls yesterday showed Hamas had closed the gap with Fatah and was trailing only 42%-45%, making the final result too close to call.

Even if Fatah manages to hold its lead, Hamas will be guaranteed a role in the Palestinian parliament for the first time and may be part of the next government. “Abbas has failed and we want him out of the job,” said a young Fatah leader. Members of the 60,000 strong Palestinian security forces began voting yesterday.

Many of the president’s critics would like to see Abbas replaced by Marwan Barghouti, 48, who has emerged as leader of a faction known as the Young Guard. He directs it from a high security prison cell in Israel’s Negev desert where he is serving five life sentences for murder.

Barghouti heads Fatah’s national list of candidates, making his own election a certainty. His inability to attend parliament has not stopped him calling Palestinians from the jail, urging them to back Fatah.

There were indications, meanwhile, that Hamas may be softening its stance on Israel: Ahmed Aboul Gheit, the Egyptian foreign minister whose government has had close contact with Palestinian militant groups,said yesterday the group recognised Israel’s existence and predicted joining the political process would lead to fundamental changes in its thinking.

Hamas has been going from strength to strength thanks to a campaign focused on social and economic rather than religious issues. “Hamas is regarded as a movement with clean hands and as such appeals also to non-Muslim voters,” said Dr Menahem Klein, a leading Israeli authority on Palestinian society.

With Abbas’s standing in decline, photographs of the jailed Barghouti were plastered all over the West Bank this week. “He’s our leader,” said Ilham Bilbesy, a 19-year-old student in East Jerusalem. “I’ll vote for him because he’s a fighter. He is not corrupt and he will be our president.”

Abbas, who appears to have reconciled himself to sharing power with Hamas, admitted last week that his days in office might be numbered. “If I’m unable to implement my policy, I’ll resign,” he told Palestinian journalists in the West Bank.

The decision about whether to stay or go might not be entirely left to Abbas. He was forced last week to deny a report in an Israeli newspaper that he was suffering from clinical depression.

“Our president is a total failure,” said one Fatah supporter. “How can he seriously rule an emerging state like Palestine if on Fridays (the Muslim day of rest) he puts on a white robe and plays with his grandchildren in his Ramallah residence?” When Yasser Arafat died in 2004, Abbas, a long-time associate and former prime minister, was seen by many as an interim leader. Instead he won the presidency. He has since presided over rampant corruption and an administration seen as a shambles.

Under one scenario being discussed by Barghouti’s supporters, he would be appointed prime minister after the election but the job would be done in his absence by Salam Fayad, a highly respected American-educated former finance minister.

A senior source from Shin Bet, the internal Israeli security service, hinted that Israel might then be interested in releasing Barghouti, provided it could find a way of surmounting the legal and moral obstacles to freeing a convicted murderer.

“It’s clearly in Israel’s interests,” the source said. “Abbas can’t deliver, as we have seen, and Barghouti is the only one who can do it.” oThe Syrian president Bashar al-Assad accused Israel yesterday of having assassinated Yasser Arafat, the former Palestinian leader who died of an unspecified illness 14 months ago. He gave no evidence to back his claim.

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