Associates of Marwan Barghouti, who is serving five life sentences on terrorism charges in an Israeli jail, said Sunday night that he was withdrawing from the Jan. 9 election for president of the Palestinian Authority. It was the second time he has pulled out of the race. Barghouti, 45, is the former West Bank head of the Fatah movement, the mainstream political group of the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. He is immensely popular with younger, more radical Palestinian voters, and his candidacy had threatened to split Fatah, which officially nominated a member of the party’s old guard, former Palestinian prime minister Mahmoud Abbas, 69, as its candidate. Barghouti was running as an independent. Full Story