'We Can Choose Our Destiny By Ourselves'

On the walls outside the home of Hussam Khader, in the narrow streets of the Balata refugee camp, posters, graffiti and flags celebrate his release a week ago from an Israeli jail. Alongside them is a newly-painted sign in large Arabic lettering which reads: "Occupation and corruption are two faces of one coin."

Last Monday, Khader, 47, was one of 198 security prisoners released by the Israeli authorities as a gesture towards the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas. It was the third prisoner release since the latest and still fruitless peace negotiations began a year ago.

Apart from two long-serving prisoners, most of those freed last week were young men jailed for attacks on the Israeli military or settlers and who were close to finishing their sentences. But the release of Khader was unexpected. He was a prominent youth leader in the Fatah movement, which is led by Abbas, and a former Palestinian legislator who became an outspoken critic of the late Yasser Arafat and the corruption that surrounded him at the top of the Fatah movement and the Palestinian leadership.

Khader is one of several men in a younger generation of Fatah leaders who command support on the streets and who are pushing for major reform within the movement. He still rails against Fatah corruption, though it remains to be seen whether in the months ahead he can bring any significant change to a situation in stalemate. Since his release, thousands of supporters have descended on his small home in the Balata camp, in Nablus, to talk about the future at a time of deep division between the two leading Palestinian factions, Fatah and Hamas, and deadlock in the peace negotiations.

"The situation has got worse because of the separation and fighting between Fatah and Hamas," Khader said. "We don't have a state yet, but we have two heads in this state and this will push us back to square one in our struggle. It's a very, very dangerous point that we have reached."

Khader was arrested at his home in March 2003 and convicted of being a member of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, the armed wing of the Fatah movement that played a key role in the second intifada, and of helping fund the group through connections to Hizbullah and Iran. He was sentenced to seven years in jail but released after five and a half. It was his 24th time in an Israeli prison - he was first arrested at age 13 for taking part in a demonstration against the Israeli occupation.

While he was inside, Fatah lost its dominance to its Islamist rival Hamas, which won elections in 2006 and then took full control of Gaza last year after a near civil war between the two factions. Both sides seem a very long way from returning to an agreement to govern together.

"Hamas missed a historic opportunity to lead the Palestinian people," he said. "They fell into a trap and acted in a cruel and bad way towards the Palestinian people to defend their project." Yet, in the past week several senior Hamas leaders, including the deposed prime minister Ismail Haniyeh, have telephoned Khader to celebrate his release. At the same time, he said, problems within Fatah had worsened. "The corruption is more organised now," he said. "We repeat our mistakes. We never criticize our own experience."

Others regarded as the young guard in Fatah make a similar argument, the most prominent among them Marwan Barghouti, a leader of the Fatah armed wing who was jailed a year before Khader and who remains in prison. Khader, who said he spent time in talks with Barghouti when they were in the same jails, argues for a new unity government with Hamas and rebuilding of his Fatah movement and says the Palestinians should work towards a two-state peace agreement with the Israelis. "We can change our situation. We can choose our destiny by ourselves and our failed leaders are not our destiny," he said.