Marwan Barghouti’s supporters call him the Palestinian Mandela. Just like the South African leader who was imprisoned for 28 years by the apartheid regime, the Fatah politician has been in prison for more than two decades.
Today, despite growing calls for his release – notably from Hamas, Fatah’s long-time rival – his incarceration appears set to continue. On Wednesday, far-right Israeli Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir announced that Barghouti had been placed in solitary confinement. Tel Aviv Tribune independently confirmed this.
Barghouti was a prominent leader of the first and second Intifadas and was convicted by an Israeli court of five counts of murder in 2004, two years after his imprisonment. His imprisonment by Israel was among the most publicized, and his release has long been a key goal of several groups opposed to Israel’s occupation of Palestine.
Israel accused Barghouti of founding the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades in the early 2000s and charged him with 26 counts of murder and attempted murder attributed to the brigades. He was sentenced by an Israeli court to five cumulative life sentences, plus 40 years in prison for attempted murder and membership in a terrorist organization.
Barghouti offered no defense, refusing to recognize the authority of the Israeli court and saying only that he supported armed resistance but opposed the targeting of civilians.
Israeli reluctance
Barghouti’s absence from Palestinian politics has not really affected his popularity. According to a wartime poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy Research and Survey, Barghouti is the most popular Palestinian leader, with support outstripping Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and Palestinian-backed Mahmoud Abbas. the West, from which 90 percent of those questioned demand resignation.
His son, Arab Barghouti, and those around him have not heard anything to suggest that the elder Barghouti’s release might be imminent, but he remains optimistic, especially as Hamas demands his release in early February.
“Hamas wants to show the Palestinian people that it is not a closed movement. They represent a part of the Palestinian social community,” Qadoura Fares, who heads the Commission for Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs in the occupied West Bank, told the Associated Press.
“From the Palestinian perspective, the timing of his return is particularly auspicious,” said Khaled Elgindy, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute. “Barghouti is a well-respected personality from all sides. Moreover, he is a unifying figure and that is what the Palestinians need. That, or even the promise of that,” he added.
Hamas understands that after October 7, it cannot be the public face of the Palestinian national movement, Elgindy added.
But, analysts say, Israel will be very reluctant to release a man capable of mobilizing so many people.
Barghouti, his son Arab told Tel Aviv Tribune, “knows that he can be the guarantee of the unification of the Palestinian people and political partnerships, and that is what Israel is afraid of.”
Ironically, it is perhaps Barghouti’s commitment to a two-state solution that presents the most significant threat to an Israeli government apparently determined to renege on the agreements it reached in Oslo in the 1990s. 1990, analysts suggested.
Barghouti was one of the authors of the 2006 Palestinian Prisoners Document, an extraordinary achievement that not only recognized Israel but had a wide range of signatories whose factions lent their names to the document.
In it, members of Fatah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine call for the creation of two states, resistance to occupation Israeli security being limited to military targets located inside. the territory seized by Israel in the 1967 war.
“Israel has every reason to keep him in prison,” Elgindy said. “It’s the old colonial strategy of divide and rule…Netanyahu is going to be very concerned about keeping the West Bank separate from Gaza and Abbas, with all its shortcomings, in place,” he added.
Pragmatism
Adding to the potential difficulties of a unified Palestinian front is Barghouti’s reputation as a noted resistance fighter and someone Israel has condemned for his past actions.
“Freeing Barghouti is going to require a certain degree of pragmatism that does not seem to belong to Netanyahu’s right-wing cabinet, or to Netanyahu himself for that matter,” Elgindy said. “From what we’ve seen, they have no interest beyond playing to their base and the baser instincts of their base.”
International support for Barghouti’s release may also be uncertain.
“For the Biden administration, it’s an option,” Elgindy warned, “but I don’t know if there is enough pragmatism in this government to deal with Barghouti,” a man regularly castigated in the Israeli media and convicted of five counts of murder.
By retaining his seat on Fatah’s Central Committee, Barghouti appears to maintain his belief in bringing together the various Palestinian factions and ending much of the factionalism that has existed since Hamas’s 2006 electoral victory and the fighting between the group and its own party of Bargouthi, Fatah.
That Barghouti retained his influence over the Palestinian population became clear in December when Quds Press published a statement it said it had received from him, calling on all Palestinian factions in the occupied West Bank to rise up and fight the occupation Israeli.
The alleged appeal spread like wildfire and the prisoner was thrown into solitary confinement where, lawyers say, prison authorities removed his mattress and bedding, blocked his access to prison facilities. basic hygiene and subjected Barghouti to loudspeakers blasting the Israeli anthem 12 hours a day.
“No one has been able to visit him since October,” Arab said. “How anyone could claim to have gotten a statement from him, I don’t know. Finding him a new lawyer has been a full-time job.
Since October 7, numerous reports and testimonies from prisoners have emerged of the mistreatment and abuse they have faced at the hands of Israeli prison authorities.
Asked by British newspaper The Times, Israeli prison authorities would not comment on the specific allegations of Barghouti’s mistreatment, saying only that they “operate strictly according to rules and procedures.” A spokesperson added: “The prisoner has made a formal complaint, which will be investigated according to standard procedure. »
Like many Palestinians, Arab describes the plight of the country’s political prisoners – estimated at around 9,000 by the Israeli human rights organization HaMoked – as dire.
“Releasing all the prisoners would probably be a major priority,” he said of his father’s plans after his release.
Many of Barghouti’s supporters have cited the irony that almost all of the factors that would typically contribute to his release – his commitment to a two-state solution and his ability to unite a deeply fractured Palestinian polity – could now be used in Tel Aviv as arguments against him.
