A Militant's Allegiance; Jenin's brash Al Aqsa leader likes Abu Mazen's quiet style.(Zakaria Zubeidi, Mahmoud Abbas)

Byline: Kevin Peraino (With Dan Ephron and Samir Zedan)

Zakaria Zubeidi is a wanted man. As soon as he steps out the door of a concrete apartment block into the hardscrabble lanes of the Jenin refugee camp, he is besieged. Not by the Israelis, who consider the 29-year-old head of the city's Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades a terrorist who has ruthlessly ordered suicide attacks. He's wanted by his own neighbors. An old man wearing a checkered headscarf presses close and asks Zubeidi whether he can get him a better deal on his electricity bill. Zubeidi, who acts as all-purpose arbitrator and enforcer in lawless Jenin, says he'll try. Another man implores him to donate clothes. Zubeidi's M-16 is slung over his shoulder and a 9mm Smith & Wesson is tucked into a holster. Wide-eyed kids carrying toy pistols point and ask for pictures. One 10-year-old declares that when he grows up he wants to be "like Zakaria," as Zubeidi approvingly looks on. "I want to be a wanted man," the boy explains.

You don't meet many kids in the West Bank's refugee camps who say they want to be Mahmoud Abbas, the 69-year-old former schoolteacher popularly known as Abu Mazen. Last month Abbas was overwhelmingly elected to lead the Palestinian Authority--thanks in part to Zubeidi's support. Conventional wisdom had it that Abu Mazen's maturity and mild-mannered temperament would be both his greatest asset and his fatal flaw. Older Palestinians (and Israeli leaders) viewed the hard-working diplomat as their best chance for peace. Still, many feared the new PA president would be shot dead by uncompromising young toughs. Yet by last week Abu Mazen seemed tantalizingly close to securing a truce with most militant groups, including Al Aqsa. Israel responded in kind, hinting that it would stop targeted killings of wanted Palestinians, a chief demand of the militants.

So why do the Palestinian movement's grandfather and its godfather, as one might describe Abu Mazen and Zubeidi, get along? The firebrand didn't immediately back the elder statesman. After Yasir Arafat's death last November, Zubeidi supported Marwan Barghouti, the charismatic militant who briefly opposed Abbas despite his incarceration in an Israeli prison. But Zubeidi quickly decided that Barghouti's candidacy was impractical. "Marwan was isolated," Zubeidi says. ...