Will Israel release Marwan Barghouti, the ‘Palestinian Mandela’?
Mural of Fatah leader Marwan Barghuti on a section of the separation barrier, 27 May 2017
Al Jazeera reports on 15 February 2024:
Marwan Barghouti’s supporters call him the Palestinian Mandela. Like the South African leader who was imprisoned by the apartheid regime for 28 years, the Fatah politician has been in jail for more than two decades.
Now, despite growing calls for his release — including from Hamas, a longtime rival of Fatah — his incarceration appears poised to continue. On Wednesday, Israel’s extreme right security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, announced that Barghouti had been placed in solitary confinement. Al Jazeera has independently confirmed this.
Barghouti was a prominent leader in the first and second Intifadas and was convicted by an Israeli court on five counts of murder in 2004, two years after he was jailed. His imprisonment by Israel has been among the most high profile and his release has long been a key aim of several of the groups opposing Israel’s occupation of Palestine.
Israel accused Barghouti of having founded the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades in the early 2000s and indicted him on 26 charges of murder and attempted murder attributed to the Brigades. He was sentenced by an Israeli court to five cumulative life sentences, plus 40 years for attempted murder and membership in a terrorist organisation.
Barghouti offered no defence, refusing to recognise the authority of the Israeli court and saying only that he supported the armed resistance but opposed the targeting of civilians.
Israeli reluctance
Barghouti’s absence from Palestinian politics has done little to dampen his popularity. According to a wartime poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, Barghouti is the most popular Palestinian leader, with support for him outstripping Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and the Western-backed Mahmoud Abbas, whose resignation 90 percent of those polled called for.