and are guided by it, and who, like the Ayatollahs, are leading their people towards catastrophe.
The Hamas people accuse Abbas of being a Palestinian Marshal Petain, who has made a deal with the occupier and is sliding down the slippery slope of collaboration.
The propaganda of both sides is full of venom, and the mutual violence is reaching new heights.
It looks like a cul-de-sac. Many Palestinians have despaired of finding a way out. Others are searching for creative solutions. Afif Safieh, the chief of the PLO mission in Washington, for example, proposes setting up a Palestinian government composed entirely of neutral experts, who are members neither of Fatah nor of Hamas. The chances of that are very slim indeed.
But in private conversations in Ramallah, one name pops up more and more often: Marwan Barghouti.
"He holds the key in his hand," they say there, "both for the Fatah-Hamas and for the Israeli-Palestinian conflicts."
Some see Marwan as the Palestinian Nelson Mandela.
Superficially, the two are very different, both physically and in temperament. But they have much in common.
Both became national heroes behind prison bars. Both were
convicted of terrorism. Both supported violent struggle. Mandela supported the 1961 decision of the National African Congress to start an armed struggle against the racist government (but not against the white civilians). He remained in prison for 28 years and refused to buy his freedom by signing a statement denouncing "terrorism." Marwan supported the armed struggle of Fatah's Tanzim organization and has been sentenced to several life terms.
But both were in favor of peace and reconciliation, even before going to prison. I saw Barghouti for the first time in 1997, when he joined a Gush Shalom demonstration in Harbata, the village neighboring Bil'in, against the building of the Modiin-Illit settlement that was just starting. Five years later, during his trial, we demonstrated in the courthouse under the slogan "Barghouti to the negotiating table, not to prison!"
Last week we visited Marwan's family in Ramallah.
I had met Fadwa Barghouti for the first time at Yassir Arafat's funeral. Her face was wet with tears. We were crowded among the multitude of mourners, the din was earsplitting and we could not exchange more than a few words.
This time she was calm and composed. She laughed only when she heard that Teddy Katz, a Gush activist who took part in the meeting,