The Rai Al-Youm newspaper reported on Wednesday that Palestinian Arab organizations in the United States and Europe are considering openly supporting the candidacy of Marwan Barghouti's for the Palestinian “presidency” in the upcoming elections.
Barghouti is serving several life sentences in Israel for his role in planning terrorist attacks against Israelis.
He is widely believed to have planned the Second Intifada, which claimed thousands of Israeli lives from 2000 to 2005. Barghouti has continued inciting to terrorism from his jail cell.
The Palestinian Authority and Hamas recently agreed to hold general elections to parliament and the presidency and then also to the PLO institutions.
Sources quoted by Rai Al-Youm stated that the question of calling on Barghouti to present his candidacy awaits the official decision on holding the general election, and the prevailing assessment is that his candidacy will return the Palestinian issue to the front of the international agenda.
It was also reported that contacts are taking place between the initiators of the idea and Barghouti.
The report said that the fact that Barghouti is serving life sentences in Israel does not pose any legal problem when it comes to presenting his candidacy for the presidency and could even expedite the solution for the issue of terrorist prisoners serving time in Israeli prisons.