Marwan Barghouti
Marwan Barghouti, sometimes known by the kunya Abu Al-Qassam, is a Palestinian political leader who has served as an elected legislator and has been an advocate of a two-state solution since prior to his imprisonment by Israel.
Barghouti led street protests and diplomatic initiatives until 2002, the early Second Intifada, when he was captured, convicted, and imprisoned by Israel on charges of involvement in deadly attacks that resulted in the deaths of five people. Barghouti declined to recognise the legitimacy of the court or enter a plea, but stated that he had no connection to the incidents for which he was convicted. An Inter-Parliamentary Union report found that Barghouti was not given a fair trial and questioned the quality of the evidence.
Despite his imprisonment, Barghouti has consistently topped opinion polls asking Palestinians whom they would vote for in a Presidential election, ahead of both current Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas and leaders of Hamas. Several prominent supporters of a resumption of the Israel-Palestine peace process view Barghouti as the leader most able to unify the Palestinians and negotiate a compromise with Israel. He has been referred to as "the Palestinian Mandela".
During his years in prison, Barghouti has continued to be politically active. He was an instigator and lead author of the 2006 Palestinian Prisoners' Document, which proposed a political path to a two-state solution, and secured support from Hamas. He has organised education for fellow inmates, and in 2017 led a hunger strike that led to increased visitation rights. Since October 2023, he has been denied visits from his family and been severely beaten several times, leading to persistent damage to his health, according to his lawyer. Israeli authorities have rejected his complaints over the incidents. Several attempts to secure his release through negotiations have failed.
Early life, education and expulsion
Barghouti was born in the village of Kobar near Ramallah in the West Bank. Like his distant cousin Mustafa Barghouti, a fellow Palestinian political leader, he belongs to the extended Barghouti family. His younger brother Muqbel described him as "a naughty and rebellious boy."In 1967, when Barghouti was seven years old, Israel occupied the West Bank in the Six-Day War. According to The Economist, Marwan's "neighbours were beaten up or arrested for flying Palestinian flags. Military bases and Jewish settlements sprang up around their village. Israeli soldiers shot dead the family dog for barking."
Barghouti joined Fatah at age 15, and he was a co-founder of the Fatah Youth Movement on the West Bank. That year he was first imprisoned by Israel. At 18, he was imprisoned again. He later wrote that during the subsequent interrogation, he was forced to strip naked, spread his legs, and was struck on the genitals so hard that he lost consciousness. He completed his secondary education and received a high school diploma while serving a four-year term in jail, where he became fluent in Hebrew.
Barghouti enrolled at Birzeit University in 1983, though arrest and exile meant that he did not receive his Bachelor's degree until 1994. He earned a Master's degree in International Relations, also from Birzeit, in 1998. As an undergraduate, he was active in student politics on behalf of Fatah and headed the Birzeit Student Council. In 1984, he married Fadwa Ibrahim, a fellow student. Fadwa studied law and was a prominent advocate in her own right on behalf of Palestinian prisoners, before becoming the leading campaigner for her husband's release from his current jail term. Together the couple had four children. Before his eldest son was born, and while still a student leader, Barghouti was jailed for a third time. He missed the birth of his eldest son. In May 1987, Israel expelled him. Initially Barghouti and Fadwa moved to Tunis, and then in April 1988 to Amman.
First Intifada, the Oslo Accords and the aftermath
From exile, during the First Intifada, Barghouti continued to maintain contacts among activists in the West Bank. He simultaneously built relationships with the older generation of Fatah activists, who had waged their struggle from exile for more than three decades. He was elected to Fatah's Revolutionary Council, the movement's internal parliament, in 1989. When he was allowed to return to Palestine in April 1994 as a result of the Oslo Accords, Barghouti found that he was able to bridge the divide between the two groups.Although he was a strong supporter of the peace process, he doubted that Israel was committed to it. In 1996, he was elected to the Palestinian Legislative Council for the district of Ramallah. Barghouti campaigned against corruption in Arafat's administration and human rights violations by its security services. He participated in diplomacy and built relationships with a number of Israeli politicians, and with leaders of Israel's peace movement. A series of peace conferences in the wake of the Oslo accords featured "heated discussions." When Meir Shitreet fell ill during a peace conference in Italy, Shitreet said that Barghouti sat at his bedside through the night. In 1998 he attended a meeting with members of the Israeli Knesset, referring to those present as friends, and called to "strengthen this peace process." Haim Oron, a former Israeli cabinet minister, recalled that "he spoke about the right of the Palestinians, and when I spoke about the right of Jews, he understood". His assistant has claimed that Barghouti never refused to meet any Israeli.
By the late 1990s, Palestinians had become frustrated with the lack of progress toward an independent state that they felt had been promised by the Oslo accords, and by the privations of life under occupation. There were frequent demonstrations by civil society and political groups. According to Diana Buttu, "Marwan was somebody who was present at each and every protest for weeks and weeks and weeks on end. It became very clear that we were just never going to see freedom." Barghouti met with the central committees of almost every Israeli party, the journalist Gideon Levy has claimed, to warn them that, with an impasse in the peace process, the situation was tending toward violence. The formal position occupied by Barghouti was Secretary-General of Fatah in the West Bank. By the summer of 2000, particularly after the Camp David summit failed, Barghouti was disillusioned and said that popular protests and "new forms of military struggle" would be features of the "next Intifada."
Second Intifada
Outbreak of Second Intifada and political leadership
In September 2000, the Second Intifada began. Barghouti became increasingly popular as a leader of demonstrations, as a spokesperson for Palestinian interests, and as leader of the Tanzim, a grouping of younger activists within Fatah who had taken up arms. Barghouti described himself as "a politician, not a military man." Barghouti led marches to Israeli checkpoints, where riots broke out against Israeli soldiers and spurred on Palestinians in speeches at funerals and demonstrations, advocating the use of force to expel Israel from the West Bank and Gaza Strip. He has stated that, "I, and the Fatah movement to which I belong, strongly oppose attacks and the targeting of civilians inside Israel, our future neighbor, I reserve the right to protect myself, to resist the Israeli occupation of my country and to fight for my freedom" and has said, "I still seek peaceful coexistence between the equal and independent countries of Israel and Palestine based on full withdrawal from Palestinian territories occupied in 1967."As the Palestinian death toll in the Second Intifada mounted, Barghouti called for Palestinians to target Israeli soldiers and settlers in the West Bank and Gaza, but not within Israel. Others, such as leaders of Hamas, openly backed attacks on civilians within Israel.
Israel has accused Barghouti of having co-founded and lead the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades during this period, which he has denied. Israel attempted to assassinate him in 2001. That August, Israeli forces fired two missiles from an illegal West Bank settlement at a convoy of cars in Ramallah and injured Barghouti's bodyguard. At the time, Israeli security sources claimed that they had intended to kill another Fatah operative. The then-head of Shin Bet subsequently claimed to have made two attempts to assassinate Barghouti. Barghouti went into hiding.