AL QUDS: Palestinian leadership has come to this: Yasser Arafat, working by flickering candlelight in a cramped and fetid office in Ramallah, where he is trapped by Israeli troops in tanks and armored personnel carriers.

Marwan Barghouti, an Arafat follower and man of the people who once thought he could work with the Israelis, sitting in an interrogation chair in an Israeli prison in central Jerusalem, complaining he is desperate for sleep because of marathon questioning.

Jibril Rajoub, the tough security chief once seen as having the muscle to make a peace plan work, shorn of his instruments of power, standing in front of his demolished headquarters just outside Ramallah, blaming others for his woes.

In the three weeks of Israel’s military campaign in the West Bank, the fortunes of such top Palestinian officials - and of those who were rising beneath them - have declined dramatically.

Palestinians say this has been part of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s agenda for some time - to undercut Arafat’s leadership and cripple his Palestinian Authority so Israel will not have anyone with whom to negotiate on a Palestinian state. Sharon’s government has said the campaign was launched to uproot a terrorist infrastructure responsible for dozens of suicide bombings and has exposed the Palestinian leadership’s support for such violence.

Whatever the truth, the attacks on Palestinian cities and refugee camps have raised new clouds of uncertainty about the possible players in future relations between Palestinians and Israelis.

Because the Palestinian leadership has been crippled, the situation is unsettled, if not chaotic, in areas under Palestinian rule. Palestinians protest that US and Israeli demands to stop terrorism cannot be met while their leader is locked up, his lieutenants disabled, the security forces smashed and most of the institutions ransacked.

The ability of the Palestinian leadership to recover, and the person in charge, will play an important role in deciding whether the settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is political or violent, distant or soon. The same factors will show whether Israel’s tough strike has reined in leaders who were accused of fostering terrorism or eliminated the people who might have been able to deliver peace.

Even before the attacks began March 29, Palestinians were jockeying for political position. But a look at the fate of three top figures _ the venerable Arafat, the rising Barghouti and the practical Rajoub _ says much about the condition of the Palestinian house.

The more the Israelis try to isolate Arafat from the levers of power, the more popular he has become among the Palestinian public. Support for Arafat, the source of his longevity at the head of the Palestinian cause, has soared while the Israelis demolished much of his administration.

Arafat, 72, is a prisoner in two airless and rank offices in Ramallah that are ringed by the Israeli army and jammed with aides, Palestinian prisoners, and Jewish, Israeli and Western peace activists intent on protecting him with their presence.

“Until Sharon kills him, Arafat will remain the leader. If Sharon kept him in two rooms or deported him, it wouldn’t affect his power,” said Ghassan Khatib, a Palestinian analyst. “People support him more now. They don’t want him to compromise.”

The pressures on Arafat - and his age - have prompted discussions about the Palestinian leadership that could follow him. Members of a small circle of old guard associates have long laid unspoken claim to eventually succeed Arafat.

Most notably, Mahmoud Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, 65, always sits at Arafat’s right side, and Ahmed Qureia, also called Abu Ala, 63, on his left.

But members of that generation have played a limited role in the Palestinian uprising that began in September 2000 and are increasingly seen as irrelevant.

More damning, these leaders are seen by many Palestinians as having blown their best chance at an effective and uncorrupt Palestinian government, according to Khalil Shikaki, a Palestinian analyst and pollster. If they assumed power, he said, it would likely be transitional.

Among the half-dozen younger leaders who could be in line to make a generational shift, Barghouti, 41, and Rajoub, 48, always figured prominently. Both have spent time in Israeli jails - Barghouti for six years, Rajoub for 17. Both are smooth and smart, conversant in Hebrew, English and Arabic, and at home in front of a TV camera.

Barghouti is an activist in Arafat’s Fatah organization and popular on the street. When the 1993 Oslo agreements produced a prospect for peace, he signed on. He became active in plans for coexisting Israeli and Palestinian states, shuttling between the sides. “He has probably met with more members of the Knesset than Sharon,” said Jawad Boulus, his lawyer.

But after the Camp David peace talks failed, the uprising broke out and violence escalated, Barghouti became convinced the peace plan would not work. He took a harder line, criticizing Arafat’s concessions to Israel and exhorting the Palestinian youths who took to the streets to throw rocks at Israeli occupation forces. “He believes the intifada is the legitimate right of Palestinians to resist illegal occupation,” Boulus said.

Barghouti became an electrifying speaker at rallies and funerals. Israeli officials said he went further, becoming commander of an armed Fatah wing that has carried out scores of attacks.

Last September, they issued a warrant naming him as an accomplice to murder, and finally found him April 15 hiding in the house of a colleague in Ramallah. He was unarmed and did not resist.

He is now in Al Quds’s Russian Compound jail. According to Boulus, he is not being physically abused, but alleges that interrogators question him for 23 hours a day.

Israeli investigators have amassed a huge collection of paper documents and computer disks from captured Palestinian offices and are painstakingly compiling a case they believe will link both Barghouti and Arafat to violence.

Rajoub remains free in Ramallah. But his power and political prospects were demolished by what the Israelis called Operation Defensive Shield, during which tanks and helicopter gunships pummeled his headquarters. —Dawn/LAT-WP News Service (c) The Washington Post.