One of the most popular candidates touted as a successor to Mahmoud Abbas — should he step down — would be Marwan Barghouti, a fiery leader of Fatah’s younger generation.

Barghouti, 50, has immense support in the West Bank as a home-grown, younger alternative to the ageing generation of PLO leaders who fought alongside Yassir Arafat through the years of war in Jordan, Lebanon and then exile in Tunisia. Unlike the older generation, he speaks fluent Hebrew, and was an influential leader in the first Palestinian uprising against Israel in 1987, which led to the Oslo peace accords.

He has often been touted as a successor for the leadership, combining his street-fighting abilities with a charismatic popular appeal. He stands in contrast to another potential candidate, Salam Fayyad, a former World Bank economist and technocrat trusted by the West.

Unlike the moderate Mr Abbas, Barghouti has long believed in armed resistance against Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, although he said he had tried to avoid civilian casualties. However, in his 2004 trial in Israel — whose legitimacy he refused to accept — he was found guilty of organising an attack in a market that killed three civilians.

Barghouti joined Fatah at 15, and learnt Hebrew in an Israeli jail three years later.

Israeli officials in the previous administration, led by the centrist Kadima party, talked privately about releasing Barghouti — seen as one of the few Palestinian leaders with the clout to heal the rift between Fatah’s Government in the West Bank and Hamas’s rival administration in Gaza.

It seems unlikely that the present administration, headed by Binyamin Netanyahu, a right-wing Likud leader, would consider such a move.

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