AP
Feb 04, 2024
Feb 04, 2024
JERUSALEM (AP) — He's viewed by some Palestinians as their Nelson Mandela, and he's a prime candidate to become their president in the future. He's also the highest-profile prisoner held by Israel.
Now Marwan Barghouti's freedom is at stake in cease-fire negotiations between Hamas and Israel. Hamas leaders demanded Friday that Israel release Barghouti, a leader of the militant group’s main political rival, as part of any deal to end the fighting in Gaza.
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The demand brings new attention to Barghouti, who plays a central role in Palestinian politics even after spending more than two decades behind bars. His release could lay the groundwork for his eventual election to national office.
Hamas' gambit to free him appears to be an attempt to rally public support for the militant group as well as a recognition of his status as a uniquely unifying Palestinian figure.
“Hamas wants to show to the Palestinian people that they are not a closed movement. They represent part of the Palestinian social community. They are trying to seem responsible,” said Qadoura Fares, who heads the Palestinian Ministry of Prisoner Affairs in the occupied West Bank and has long been involved in negotiations over prisoner releases.
Senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan called for Barghouti's release as international mediators try to push Israel and Hamas toward an agreement after nearly four months of war.
Israel is seeking the release of more than 100 hostages still held by Hamas in Gaza. Hamas is demanding an end to Israel's devastating military offensive and the release of thousands of Palestinian prisoners.
The war broke out Oct. 7, when Hamas fighters crossed into Israel, killing some 1,200 people and dragging 250 hostages back to Gaza. The Hamas attack triggered an Israeli ground and air campaign that has killed more than 27,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials, and triggered a humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza.
Over 100 hostages were released during a weeklong truce in November. Israel estimates 136 hostages remain in captivity, though 20 have been pronounced dead. With protests calling for the hostages' immediate release sweeping Israel, and fears that time is running out to bring them home safely, pressure is mounting on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to reach a deal.
For Palestinians, the plight of their imprisoned loved ones is deeply emotional. While Israel considers “security prisoners” to be terrorists, Palestinians widely see them as heroes battling Israeli occupation. Virtually every Palestinian has a friend, relative or acquaintance who has been imprisoned.
The Israeli human rights group HaMoked says Israel is currently holding nearly 9,000 security prisoners. Hamas seeks the release of all of them. But in his remarks Friday, Hamdan mentioned only two by name — Barghouti and Ahmad Saadat.
Saadat heads a small faction that killed an Israeli Cabinet minister in 2001 and is serving a 30-year sentence for allegedly participating in attacks.
Palestinians see the 64-year-old Barghouti, a member of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party, as a natural successor to the 88-year-old Abbas, who leads the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority, the self-ruled government that administers parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Abbas, whose forces in Gaza were overrun by Hamas in 2007, hopes to regain control of the territory after the war. But he is deeply unpopular because of corruption within the authority and because of his security coordination with the Israeli army.
Palestinians have not held elections since 2006, when Hamas won a parliamentary majority.
Fares, a Barghouti supporter, said that if Barghouti is released, he could become a consensus candidate in a round of new elections that Hamas, Fatah and other Palestinian factions could rally behind. A wartime opinion poll published in December showed Barghouti to be the most popular politician among Palestinians, ahead of both Abbas and Hamas' leader, Ismail Haniyeh.
Israelis see Barghouti as an arch-terrorist, and convincing Israel to free him will be an uphill battle.
Barghouti, a leader in the West Bank during the second Palestinian uprising in the early 2000s, is serving five life terms for his role in several deadly attacks. During that uprising, Palestinian militants carried out deadly suicide bombings and shooting attacks in Israel and the Palestinian territories, targeting buses, restaurants, hotels and Israelis driving in the West Bank, eliciting crushing Israeli military reprisals.
In 2002, Barghouti was arrested on multiple counts of murder. He did not offer a defense, refusing to recognize the court’s authority. Since then, he has repeatedly thrust himself into the spotlight.
In 2021, he registered his own list for parliamentary elections that were later called off. A few years earlier, he led more than 1,500 prisoners in a 40-day hunger strike to call for better treatment in the Israeli prison system. From jail, he has continued to call for a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem — lands Israel seized in the 1967 war.
Barghouti was born in the West Bank village of Kobar in 1962. While studying history and politics at Bir Zeit University, he helped spearhead student protests against the Israeli occupation.
He emerged as an organizer in the first Palestinian uprising, which erupted in December 1987, but Israel eventually deported him to Jordan. He returned to the West Bank in the 1990s, as part of interim peace agreements that were meant to pave the way for a Palestinian state but got bogged down by the end of the decade when a second uprising erupted.
Barghouti was seen as political leader of the armed wing of Fatah at the time.
Israel has previously rejected calls to free him. It refused to include him in a 2011 exchange of more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners for a single soldier held captive in Gaza by Hamas, said Fares, who was party to the negotiations. Yehya Sinwar, the current Hamas leader in Gaza and a mastermind of the Oct. 7 attack, was freed in that exchange.
The 2011 negotiations revolved around the release of a single hostage. With the lives of over 100 hostages now hanging in the balance, there is more pressure than ever on Israel to release Palestinian prisoners. That may make conditions ripe for a deal that could simultaneously win Barghouti’s release and bolster Hamas’ standing among Palestinians.
“Hamas is more strong and more clever than ever before," Fares said. “They understand how necessary it is for the Palestinian people to have consensus."
Who Is Marwan Barghouti, and Why Is He Israel’s Most Important Prisoner?
Many Palestinians and Israelis consider him the only person who can lead the way to a two-state solution. Maybe that’s why Netanyahu won’t release him.
TAL COHEN/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
Marwan Barghouti in 2003, returning to jail after appearing before a Tel Aviv court
Jo-Ann Mort
January 30, 2024
Marwan Barghouti is Israel’s most celebrated prisoner and, by all accounts, the person most likely to succeed Palestinian Authority president and PLO leader Mahmoud Abbas whenever the Palestinian Authority—and the PLO—holds elections. Since 2002, he has been serving five life sentences plus an add-on of 40 years for his role in the Second Intifada. Barghouti was convicted of the direct murder of five Israeli citizens and for planning additional murders as the head of the Tanzim, the military wing of the nationalist Fatah party (also Abbas’s party), during the 1990s Second Intifada. Since then, he has renounced violence. In 2012, for example, in his court hearing, he spoke in Arabic, telling the Palestinian people to fight for “peaceful popular resistance of the occupation.”
There is faint hope that he could be released soon, as part of a deal with Hamas for the Israeli hostages. More likely, he will be released by a post-Netanyahu government if there is any hope for a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian crisis. There is simply no other leader who can deliver this scenario. Indeed, his prisoner status gives him extraordinary gravitas among the Palestinian people. He is also seen as not corrupt, unlike the current leadership of Abbas and those around him.
Once he is released, it will be difficult for an Israeli government to defy momentum toward a two-state option. In a recent Haaretz interview, Ami Ayalon, a former head of Israel’s Shin Bet security services, stressed not only that it was in Israel’s security interest to agree to a Palestinian state but that Barghouti must be released to negotiate and lead this state. “Marwan is the only Palestinian leader who can be elected and lead a united and legitimate Palestinian leadership toward a path of mutually agreed separation from Israel,” he told the Israeli newspaper.
Every poll since his imprisonment shows Barghouti to be the favorite to lead the Palestinian people in a free election. The most recent survey by Ramallah-based pollster Khalil Shikaki shows the same. When I met with Shikaki in January, in his Ramallah office, he told me: “Barghouti remains the most popular by far. We have never seen Barghouti losing, even during wartime, when Hamas gains ground.” No other Fatah leader can claim the same
Jo-Ann Mort @ChangeCommNYC
Jo-Ann Mort often writes about Israel-Palestine and progressive issues. She is co-author of Our Hearts Invented a Place: Can Kibbutzim Survive in Today’s Israel?
Many Palestinians and Israelis consider him the only person who can lead the way to a two-state solution. Maybe that’s why Netanyahu won’t release him.
TAL COHEN/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
Marwan Barghouti in 2003, returning to jail after appearing before a Tel Aviv court
Jo-Ann Mort
January 30, 2024
Marwan Barghouti is Israel’s most celebrated prisoner and, by all accounts, the person most likely to succeed Palestinian Authority president and PLO leader Mahmoud Abbas whenever the Palestinian Authority—and the PLO—holds elections. Since 2002, he has been serving five life sentences plus an add-on of 40 years for his role in the Second Intifada. Barghouti was convicted of the direct murder of five Israeli citizens and for planning additional murders as the head of the Tanzim, the military wing of the nationalist Fatah party (also Abbas’s party), during the 1990s Second Intifada. Since then, he has renounced violence. In 2012, for example, in his court hearing, he spoke in Arabic, telling the Palestinian people to fight for “peaceful popular resistance of the occupation.”
There is faint hope that he could be released soon, as part of a deal with Hamas for the Israeli hostages. More likely, he will be released by a post-Netanyahu government if there is any hope for a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian crisis. There is simply no other leader who can deliver this scenario. Indeed, his prisoner status gives him extraordinary gravitas among the Palestinian people. He is also seen as not corrupt, unlike the current leadership of Abbas and those around him.
Once he is released, it will be difficult for an Israeli government to defy momentum toward a two-state option. In a recent Haaretz interview, Ami Ayalon, a former head of Israel’s Shin Bet security services, stressed not only that it was in Israel’s security interest to agree to a Palestinian state but that Barghouti must be released to negotiate and lead this state. “Marwan is the only Palestinian leader who can be elected and lead a united and legitimate Palestinian leadership toward a path of mutually agreed separation from Israel,” he told the Israeli newspaper.
Every poll since his imprisonment shows Barghouti to be the favorite to lead the Palestinian people in a free election. The most recent survey by Ramallah-based pollster Khalil Shikaki shows the same. When I met with Shikaki in January, in his Ramallah office, he told me: “Barghouti remains the most popular by far. We have never seen Barghouti losing, even during wartime, when Hamas gains ground.” No other Fatah leader can claim the same
.
A mural of Marwan Barghouti in a refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip on April 16MAJDI FATHI/NURPHOTO/GETTY IMAGES
Journalists are not permitted to interview Barghouti in prison. His wife, Fadwa Barghouti, herself a noted Fatah leader, women’s activist, and lawyer, hasn’t seen him in 18 months. Once heading a thriving legal practice, since her husband’s imprisonment she is active full-time keeping him in the public eye and advocating globally for his release. Barghouti’s closest political ally is Qadora Fares, who spent 13 years in Israeli prisons for his activities during the Intifada. The current commissioner of the Palestinian Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs for the Palestinian Authority, he oversees family needs and rehabilitation of prisoners kept in Israeli jails and is himself a popular political leader with the grassroots. Once called “the Fatah Young Guard,” he and Barghouti are now in their late fifties. Fares is a veteran of earlier peace initiatives, and today he still stands by all of them. So does Barghouti, Fares told me when I visited him at his office in Ramallah.
One of the most important documents never to be implemented was a 2006 “Prisoners’ Letter” co-authored by Barghouti on behalf of Fatah, Hamas, and other Palestinian factions inside the Israeli prisons, which offered an outline for a two-state solution. At the time, it made headlines precisely because Barghouti was able to negotiate it with the Hamas and more radical factions in prison. While it clearly articulates two states, it is likely more sweeping in other details than anything the Israeli government could accept, but the two-state declaration in it is clear. When I asked Fares if it is still relevant, he said, emphatically, “Yes, yes, yes.”
An earlier document, the Geneva Initiative of 2003, negotiated by former Israeli Justice Minister Yossi Beilin and former Palestinian Authority Minister Yassar Abed Rabo, also outlines a two-state solution roughly along the 1967 lines, with a refugee-return formula that is more likely to be accepted by an Israeli government than the prisoners’ document. It has been used by Israel’s shrunken peace camp as an aspirational model for years.
Fares, who signed Geneva at the time, told me that if Barghouti had objected to his signing, he would not have done so. Fares thinks that “Geneva, if you have a serious partner in Israel, will be accepted by the Palestinian majority, including Hamas.”
This initiative makes the parameters of an agreement clear, according to Fares, with “solutions—Jerusalem, refugees, borders, economic cooperation, everything. Some people criticize us because of the exchange of border swaps.” The compromise is to split Palestine. “All this land is Palestine,” he told me. “But when we signed the agreement, it became Palestine and Israel, OK? If you accept the principle of splitting it, OK ... if we want to check which kind of solution I find there, if tomorrow I became the representative of Palestinians, I will sign this.”
Today, there is a completely different opportunity than existed 20 or so years ago: to include all of the Arab states, most importantly Saudi Arabia, in an agreement sponsored by the kingdom and called the Arab Peace Initiative, which offers Israel full peace from regional governments with a Palestinian state. Though it was originally promoted by the Saudis in 2002, Benjamin Netanyahu’s government ignored it, and until recently Netanyahu (lured into a sort of unreality regarding the Palestinians thanks to the Trump strategy regarding the Abraham Accords, which gave Israel agreements with several Gulf States minus Palestinian recognition) thought that Israel could amend the agreement for peace with Saudi minus a Palestinian state. (As recently as at the 2023 U.N. General Assembly plenum, Netanyahu held up a map that included all of Israel’s neighbors minus a future Palestine.) That was highly unlikely, to say the least, but October 7 shattered it completely.
According to Fares, who also agrees with this Saudi initiative, “it’s been accepted by Marwan.” But for Israel to engage, there will have to be a new government. He adds: “First of all, the Israelis have to say that they decide to end the occupation, and they want to cooperate with the Arab world, with the Palestinian people. If there is an international effort, a real serious effort to react to a serious political process that will lead to end the occupation and to build our own state, I think that the behavior of Hamas, the policies of Hamas, the decision will be different.” That’s because “the Hamas political leadership understands that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has to find a solution one day.” One hopes that Fares’s optimism could be warranted, though it’s difficult to imagine a shaken and frightened Israeli public buying it. Regardless, a political resolution promoting two viable states, with a strong Palestinian leader—with the overt support of the leading Arab states—could someday be a positive outcome of the Hamas attacks on October 7.
That’s also why Fares’s comments about a demilitarized Palestine were of vital importance. This is something that all Israeli political factions (and the United States) demand—and, though it’s unstated, the Arab states will also probably demand it. “If I am at peace with Israel, with Jordan, with Egypt, with the international community, and I need the support of the international community to rebuild our state … to act according to the Palestinian people’s interest, I have to think about an army?” he quips. “I have to create in Palestine what is most necessary … we have to build hospitals, schools, universities—to rehabilitate everything. We have around us here in the region a lot of strong armies. What have they done? Nothing. So it should be invested in education.… Let me imagine that I am a dominant person in the Palestinian leadership. And we are an independent state. Let us prepare the plan for the first five years.… For what do I need the army?”
So, returning to the awful moment in which we still find ourselves, why, I ask, did Hamas attack on October 7? Fares surmises that “it was because Netanyahu was telling Israel and the world that there is no Palestinian issue. That there could be a ‘new Middle East’ without finding a solution.” He continued: “The Palestinian Authority in Ramallah is a weak one … Netanyahu wants to bring it in as part of his administration indirectly.” As has been widely documented, Netanyahu thought he could stave off an independent Palestinian state by, as Fares characterized it, “taming Hamas.” It’s common knowledge now that Netanyahu had been allowing funding from Qatar to Hamas’s military and governing arm in Gaza for years—as a means of defanging Fatah.
Meanwhile, at the war’s start, Barghouti was moved to Ayalon Prison and placed in solitary confinement for five days. The Israeli authorities claimed that Barghouti wrote a letter supporting October 7. He and his wife deny this vehemently, as does Fares. This was used as an excuse to isolate him, where “his cell was dark 24 hours daily,” Fares said. Barghouti has been given minimal food, his mattress taken away during the day, and sleep deprived by blasting music. “They tried to humiliate him when they tied his hands to his back. They want his head to be close to the ground,” Fares explained. Partly due to the family hiring one of Israel’s leading human and civil rights attorneys, he is now back in Rimonim Prison in the center of Israel.
According to Fares and others quite close to Barghouti with whom I met, Marwan’s resolve remains. “He’s a true, true believer in the two-state solution,” someone very close to the family stressed to me during my recent Ramallah visit. Barghouti has become a bit of a legend among both the Palestinian people and, increasingly, the Israeli security establishment. The only way to test the promise of his leadership will be for a visionary Israeli leader to take the bold but necessary step to release him.
A mural of Marwan Barghouti in a refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip on April 16MAJDI FATHI/NURPHOTO/GETTY IMAGES
Journalists are not permitted to interview Barghouti in prison. His wife, Fadwa Barghouti, herself a noted Fatah leader, women’s activist, and lawyer, hasn’t seen him in 18 months. Once heading a thriving legal practice, since her husband’s imprisonment she is active full-time keeping him in the public eye and advocating globally for his release. Barghouti’s closest political ally is Qadora Fares, who spent 13 years in Israeli prisons for his activities during the Intifada. The current commissioner of the Palestinian Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs for the Palestinian Authority, he oversees family needs and rehabilitation of prisoners kept in Israeli jails and is himself a popular political leader with the grassroots. Once called “the Fatah Young Guard,” he and Barghouti are now in their late fifties. Fares is a veteran of earlier peace initiatives, and today he still stands by all of them. So does Barghouti, Fares told me when I visited him at his office in Ramallah.
One of the most important documents never to be implemented was a 2006 “Prisoners’ Letter” co-authored by Barghouti on behalf of Fatah, Hamas, and other Palestinian factions inside the Israeli prisons, which offered an outline for a two-state solution. At the time, it made headlines precisely because Barghouti was able to negotiate it with the Hamas and more radical factions in prison. While it clearly articulates two states, it is likely more sweeping in other details than anything the Israeli government could accept, but the two-state declaration in it is clear. When I asked Fares if it is still relevant, he said, emphatically, “Yes, yes, yes.”
An earlier document, the Geneva Initiative of 2003, negotiated by former Israeli Justice Minister Yossi Beilin and former Palestinian Authority Minister Yassar Abed Rabo, also outlines a two-state solution roughly along the 1967 lines, with a refugee-return formula that is more likely to be accepted by an Israeli government than the prisoners’ document. It has been used by Israel’s shrunken peace camp as an aspirational model for years.
Fares, who signed Geneva at the time, told me that if Barghouti had objected to his signing, he would not have done so. Fares thinks that “Geneva, if you have a serious partner in Israel, will be accepted by the Palestinian majority, including Hamas.”
This initiative makes the parameters of an agreement clear, according to Fares, with “solutions—Jerusalem, refugees, borders, economic cooperation, everything. Some people criticize us because of the exchange of border swaps.” The compromise is to split Palestine. “All this land is Palestine,” he told me. “But when we signed the agreement, it became Palestine and Israel, OK? If you accept the principle of splitting it, OK ... if we want to check which kind of solution I find there, if tomorrow I became the representative of Palestinians, I will sign this.”
Today, there is a completely different opportunity than existed 20 or so years ago: to include all of the Arab states, most importantly Saudi Arabia, in an agreement sponsored by the kingdom and called the Arab Peace Initiative, which offers Israel full peace from regional governments with a Palestinian state. Though it was originally promoted by the Saudis in 2002, Benjamin Netanyahu’s government ignored it, and until recently Netanyahu (lured into a sort of unreality regarding the Palestinians thanks to the Trump strategy regarding the Abraham Accords, which gave Israel agreements with several Gulf States minus Palestinian recognition) thought that Israel could amend the agreement for peace with Saudi minus a Palestinian state. (As recently as at the 2023 U.N. General Assembly plenum, Netanyahu held up a map that included all of Israel’s neighbors minus a future Palestine.) That was highly unlikely, to say the least, but October 7 shattered it completely.
According to Fares, who also agrees with this Saudi initiative, “it’s been accepted by Marwan.” But for Israel to engage, there will have to be a new government. He adds: “First of all, the Israelis have to say that they decide to end the occupation, and they want to cooperate with the Arab world, with the Palestinian people. If there is an international effort, a real serious effort to react to a serious political process that will lead to end the occupation and to build our own state, I think that the behavior of Hamas, the policies of Hamas, the decision will be different.” That’s because “the Hamas political leadership understands that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has to find a solution one day.” One hopes that Fares’s optimism could be warranted, though it’s difficult to imagine a shaken and frightened Israeli public buying it. Regardless, a political resolution promoting two viable states, with a strong Palestinian leader—with the overt support of the leading Arab states—could someday be a positive outcome of the Hamas attacks on October 7.
That’s also why Fares’s comments about a demilitarized Palestine were of vital importance. This is something that all Israeli political factions (and the United States) demand—and, though it’s unstated, the Arab states will also probably demand it. “If I am at peace with Israel, with Jordan, with Egypt, with the international community, and I need the support of the international community to rebuild our state … to act according to the Palestinian people’s interest, I have to think about an army?” he quips. “I have to create in Palestine what is most necessary … we have to build hospitals, schools, universities—to rehabilitate everything. We have around us here in the region a lot of strong armies. What have they done? Nothing. So it should be invested in education.… Let me imagine that I am a dominant person in the Palestinian leadership. And we are an independent state. Let us prepare the plan for the first five years.… For what do I need the army?”
So, returning to the awful moment in which we still find ourselves, why, I ask, did Hamas attack on October 7? Fares surmises that “it was because Netanyahu was telling Israel and the world that there is no Palestinian issue. That there could be a ‘new Middle East’ without finding a solution.” He continued: “The Palestinian Authority in Ramallah is a weak one … Netanyahu wants to bring it in as part of his administration indirectly.” As has been widely documented, Netanyahu thought he could stave off an independent Palestinian state by, as Fares characterized it, “taming Hamas.” It’s common knowledge now that Netanyahu had been allowing funding from Qatar to Hamas’s military and governing arm in Gaza for years—as a means of defanging Fatah.
Meanwhile, at the war’s start, Barghouti was moved to Ayalon Prison and placed in solitary confinement for five days. The Israeli authorities claimed that Barghouti wrote a letter supporting October 7. He and his wife deny this vehemently, as does Fares. This was used as an excuse to isolate him, where “his cell was dark 24 hours daily,” Fares said. Barghouti has been given minimal food, his mattress taken away during the day, and sleep deprived by blasting music. “They tried to humiliate him when they tied his hands to his back. They want his head to be close to the ground,” Fares explained. Partly due to the family hiring one of Israel’s leading human and civil rights attorneys, he is now back in Rimonim Prison in the center of Israel.
According to Fares and others quite close to Barghouti with whom I met, Marwan’s resolve remains. “He’s a true, true believer in the two-state solution,” someone very close to the family stressed to me during my recent Ramallah visit. Barghouti has become a bit of a legend among both the Palestinian people and, increasingly, the Israeli security establishment. The only way to test the promise of his leadership will be for a visionary Israeli leader to take the bold but necessary step to release him.
Jo-Ann Mort @ChangeCommNYC
Jo-Ann Mort often writes about Israel-Palestine and progressive issues. She is co-author of Our Hearts Invented a Place: Can Kibbutzim Survive in Today’s Israel?
Time to Free Palestine’s Nelson Mandela
Marwan Barghouti has been in an Israeli prison since 2002.
BY JEROME KARABEL
Marwan Barghouti has been in an Israeli prison since 2002.
BY JEROME KARABEL
OCTOBER 20, 2023
BERNAT ARMANGUE/AP PHOTO
Imprisoned Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti is seen here making the victory sign in front of the media during a January 25, 2012, appearance in a Jerusalem court.
After Hamas’s brutal massacre of over a thousand Israeli civilians and Israel’s massive military response, peace may appear inconceivable. Certainly, few would blame those unwilling to forgive the shocking violence of days past. Yet peace does not demand forgiveness of the unforgivable—and shattering events have a way of producing unanticipated consequences.
A prisoner exchange—which historical patterns suggest is likely—could, despite it all, reopen a path to peace. In 2011, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu traded 1,027 Palestinian prisoners (280 of them serving life sentences) to obtain the release of a single Israeli soldier captured five years earlier. Israel now claims that Hamas holds 199 hostages. Meanwhile, an estimated 5,200 Palestinians languish in Israeli jails—and among them is one man who may hold the key to peace: Marwan Barghouti, considered by some to be Palestine’s Nelson Mandela.
Though Israeli authorities labeled Barghouti a “terrorist” after Israeli courts convicted him on five counts of murder, the idea of releasing him is far from a fringe position: Indeed, Alon Liel, formerly Israel’s most senior diplomat, has proposed just that. Deeming him “the ultimate leader of the Palestinian people,” Liel believes “he is the only one who can extricate us from the quagmire we are in.”
More from Jerome Karabel
As early as 2008, polling data revealed that Barghouti was far more popular among Palestinians than any other possible leader, including President of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. But his very popularity was a problem for Prime Minister Netanyahu.
As Hebrew University professor Dmitry Shumsky has pointed out, it has long been the unannounced policy of Netanyahu to undermine the more moderate Palestinian Authority by bolstering Hamas, which shares his hatred of the two-state solution. As confirmed by a former Israeli Cabinet minister, Netanyahu actually propped up Hamas, approving the channeling of substantial funds from Qatar to the radical Islamist organization. Paradoxically, then, there has been a de facto alliance between the hard-line Netanyahu and Hamas, long irreconcilably opposed to the existence of Israel.
In this context, the popular and charismatic Barghouti has posed a unique threat to Israel and its persistent claim that it had no plausible interlocutor with whom to negotiate. The influential Israeli newspaper Haaretz captured the underlying dynamic well as far back as 2012, stating flatly in an editorial, “If Israel had wanted an agreement with the Palestinians it would have released him from prison by now. Barghouti is the most authentic leader Fatah has produced and he can lead his people to an agreement.”
Both Mandela and Barghouti arrived at a hard-won recognition that, after years of relentless struggle, they would have to learn to live with their longtime enemy.
The parallels between Barghouti and Mandela, while imperfect, are striking. Barghouti has spent 27 years in prison and in exile—precisely the number of years Mandela spent in a South African prison. While imprisoned, Mandela’s convictions drove him to learn Afrikaans, the language of his captors. Barghouti, in turn, has spent his time in jail becoming fluent in Hebrew. Critically, both men advocated for peaceful coexistence with—not the annihilation of—their adversaries.
One should not romanticize. Neither Mandela nor Barghouti were devotees of Mahatma Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr.’s nonviolent philosophy; both believed that armed resistance to oppression was sometimes justified. As early as 1953, Mandela advocated armed resistance; classified by the South African regime as a “terrorist,” he six times refused offers of release conditioned in part on his renunciation of violence. And while Barghouti rejected violence in the early years of the Oslo peace process, claiming in 1994 that “the armed struggle is no longer an option for us,” he later embraced armed struggle as he watched Israel expand settlements in the West Bank and consolidate control. But by 2012, Barghouti admitted that the turn to violence during the Second Intifada had been a grave error, and has repeatedly stated that he supports only unarmed resistance.
Crucially, both Mandela and Barghouti arrived at a hard-won recognition that, after years of relentless struggle, they would have to learn to live with their longtime enemy. Recognizing, as he put it in his eulogy of Mandela, that they must “defy hatred and … choose justice over vengeance,” Barghouti supports, in exchange for an end to the Israeli occupation that began in 1967, permanent peace between Israel and Palestine as “independent and equal neighbors.” As such, he stands in stark contrast to Hamas’s leader, Ismail Haniyeh, who steadfastly refuses to recognize Israel.
Like Mandela, Barghouti earned the respect of his people through decades of sacrifice and commitment to the cause. And despite his over two decades in prison, Barghouti remains popular among Palestinians in both Hamas-controlled Gaza and the Fatah-controlled West Bank. Indeed, a December 2022 poll by the Palestine Center for Policy and Survey Research showed that if Barghouti were to run in a presidential election, he would defeat Haniyeh in a landslide victory.
Barghouti’s release would hardly guarantee an expeditious or smooth peace agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians; entrenched animosity and the continued occupation of Palestine by more than half a million Israeli settlers spread out over 199 settlements and 220 outposts may well prove insurmountable. Excruciating concessions must be extracted from both sides, necessitating a receptivity to compromise that would no doubt arouse fierce, and possibly violent, backlash. Yet both the Israelis and the Palestinians must ultimately choose: either an endless escalation of the cycle of violence and hatred or a grudging recognition that they must find a way to live together.
Though the intensifying conflict between Hamas and Israel is a genuine tragedy, the exchange of prisoners that will likely follow the carnage presents a historic opportunity that neither side can afford to miss: Israel must free Marwan Barghouti, the only Palestinian with the authority and vision to bring peace within the ambit of possibility.
JEROME KARABEL professor of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, is the author of ‘The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton’ and several other books.
BERNAT ARMANGUE/AP PHOTO
Imprisoned Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti is seen here making the victory sign in front of the media during a January 25, 2012, appearance in a Jerusalem court.
After Hamas’s brutal massacre of over a thousand Israeli civilians and Israel’s massive military response, peace may appear inconceivable. Certainly, few would blame those unwilling to forgive the shocking violence of days past. Yet peace does not demand forgiveness of the unforgivable—and shattering events have a way of producing unanticipated consequences.
A prisoner exchange—which historical patterns suggest is likely—could, despite it all, reopen a path to peace. In 2011, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu traded 1,027 Palestinian prisoners (280 of them serving life sentences) to obtain the release of a single Israeli soldier captured five years earlier. Israel now claims that Hamas holds 199 hostages. Meanwhile, an estimated 5,200 Palestinians languish in Israeli jails—and among them is one man who may hold the key to peace: Marwan Barghouti, considered by some to be Palestine’s Nelson Mandela.
Though Israeli authorities labeled Barghouti a “terrorist” after Israeli courts convicted him on five counts of murder, the idea of releasing him is far from a fringe position: Indeed, Alon Liel, formerly Israel’s most senior diplomat, has proposed just that. Deeming him “the ultimate leader of the Palestinian people,” Liel believes “he is the only one who can extricate us from the quagmire we are in.”
More from Jerome Karabel
As early as 2008, polling data revealed that Barghouti was far more popular among Palestinians than any other possible leader, including President of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. But his very popularity was a problem for Prime Minister Netanyahu.
As Hebrew University professor Dmitry Shumsky has pointed out, it has long been the unannounced policy of Netanyahu to undermine the more moderate Palestinian Authority by bolstering Hamas, which shares his hatred of the two-state solution. As confirmed by a former Israeli Cabinet minister, Netanyahu actually propped up Hamas, approving the channeling of substantial funds from Qatar to the radical Islamist organization. Paradoxically, then, there has been a de facto alliance between the hard-line Netanyahu and Hamas, long irreconcilably opposed to the existence of Israel.
In this context, the popular and charismatic Barghouti has posed a unique threat to Israel and its persistent claim that it had no plausible interlocutor with whom to negotiate. The influential Israeli newspaper Haaretz captured the underlying dynamic well as far back as 2012, stating flatly in an editorial, “If Israel had wanted an agreement with the Palestinians it would have released him from prison by now. Barghouti is the most authentic leader Fatah has produced and he can lead his people to an agreement.”
Both Mandela and Barghouti arrived at a hard-won recognition that, after years of relentless struggle, they would have to learn to live with their longtime enemy.
The parallels between Barghouti and Mandela, while imperfect, are striking. Barghouti has spent 27 years in prison and in exile—precisely the number of years Mandela spent in a South African prison. While imprisoned, Mandela’s convictions drove him to learn Afrikaans, the language of his captors. Barghouti, in turn, has spent his time in jail becoming fluent in Hebrew. Critically, both men advocated for peaceful coexistence with—not the annihilation of—their adversaries.
One should not romanticize. Neither Mandela nor Barghouti were devotees of Mahatma Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr.’s nonviolent philosophy; both believed that armed resistance to oppression was sometimes justified. As early as 1953, Mandela advocated armed resistance; classified by the South African regime as a “terrorist,” he six times refused offers of release conditioned in part on his renunciation of violence. And while Barghouti rejected violence in the early years of the Oslo peace process, claiming in 1994 that “the armed struggle is no longer an option for us,” he later embraced armed struggle as he watched Israel expand settlements in the West Bank and consolidate control. But by 2012, Barghouti admitted that the turn to violence during the Second Intifada had been a grave error, and has repeatedly stated that he supports only unarmed resistance.
Crucially, both Mandela and Barghouti arrived at a hard-won recognition that, after years of relentless struggle, they would have to learn to live with their longtime enemy. Recognizing, as he put it in his eulogy of Mandela, that they must “defy hatred and … choose justice over vengeance,” Barghouti supports, in exchange for an end to the Israeli occupation that began in 1967, permanent peace between Israel and Palestine as “independent and equal neighbors.” As such, he stands in stark contrast to Hamas’s leader, Ismail Haniyeh, who steadfastly refuses to recognize Israel.
Like Mandela, Barghouti earned the respect of his people through decades of sacrifice and commitment to the cause. And despite his over two decades in prison, Barghouti remains popular among Palestinians in both Hamas-controlled Gaza and the Fatah-controlled West Bank. Indeed, a December 2022 poll by the Palestine Center for Policy and Survey Research showed that if Barghouti were to run in a presidential election, he would defeat Haniyeh in a landslide victory.
Barghouti’s release would hardly guarantee an expeditious or smooth peace agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians; entrenched animosity and the continued occupation of Palestine by more than half a million Israeli settlers spread out over 199 settlements and 220 outposts may well prove insurmountable. Excruciating concessions must be extracted from both sides, necessitating a receptivity to compromise that would no doubt arouse fierce, and possibly violent, backlash. Yet both the Israelis and the Palestinians must ultimately choose: either an endless escalation of the cycle of violence and hatred or a grudging recognition that they must find a way to live together.
Though the intensifying conflict between Hamas and Israel is a genuine tragedy, the exchange of prisoners that will likely follow the carnage presents a historic opportunity that neither side can afford to miss: Israel must free Marwan Barghouti, the only Palestinian with the authority and vision to bring peace within the ambit of possibility.
JEROME KARABEL professor of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, is the author of ‘The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton’ and several other books.
Marwan Barghouti, born in the West Bank village of Kobar in 1962, is a prominent and popular political figure associated with Fatah, currently serving five life sentences in an Israeli prison. He is a member of the Fatah Central Committee, and of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC).
Often described by Palestinians as the ‘Palestinian Mandela’ he is viewed as one of the strongest leadership candidates to succeed Mahmoud Abbas and is expected to run in the July 2021 presidential elections. Together with Nasser Kidwa, he also co-leads the ‘Freedom‘ list which will be competing in the May 2021 legislative elections.
In the run-up to the First Intifada, Barghouti was a student leader at Bir Zeit University involved in popular protests. He was deported by Israel to Jordan in May 1987 and was only allowed to return to the West Bank in 1993 as part of the Oslo Accords. The following year, in 1994, he became secretary-general of Fatah in the West Bank. During the Second Intifada, he allegedly directed military attacks against Israeli targets. Israel accuses him of having established the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades (AMB) at the time.
Barghouti was arrested and sentenced by an Israeli military court in 2002 to five consecutive life sentences for orchestrating attacks on Israelis. Since his imprisonment, Barghouti has been active in the prisoners’ movement and has published various articles from prison to communicate with the outside world. While in prison, he helped draft the 2006 National Conciliation Document of the Prisoners — which he co-signed with Abdulkhaleq al-Natsheh (Hamas), Bassam Sa’adi (PIJ), Abdel Rahim Mallouh (PFLP), and Mustafa Badarneh (DFLP). In 2017, he led a large-scale hunger strike to demand improved rights and conditions for prisoners.
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