Who Is Marwan Barghouti – jailed terrorist or Palestinian Mandela? And why Hamas wants him released
Marwan Barghouti in court in 2002
Rachel Fink writes in Haaretz on 5 February 2024:
Hamas’ senior political leader Ismail Haniyeh announced last week that the group wants Marwan Barghouti to be among the Palestinians to be released in any cease-fire agreement with Israel. It was one of Hamas’ most specific demands since negotiations for the release of prisoners in exchange for Israeli hostages began.
Who is Barghouti, why is he in an Israeli prison and why are commentators referring to a jailed murderer as a possible next leader of the Palestinian people?
Early life
Marwan Barghouti was born near the West Bank city of Ramallah in June 1959, to a prominent Palestinian family that includes several significant political figures – including his distant cousin Mustafa Barghouti, head of the Palestinian National Initiative political party.
At age 15, he joined the Fatah movement led by Yasser Arafat, where he co-founded the Fatah Youth Movement in the West Bank. He was first jailed at age 19, in 1978, when he was convicted of being part of an armed Palestinian group. He served a five-year prison sentence, during which he completed his secondary education and taught himself Hebrew.
Barghouti began his rise to political power in the West Bank during the first intifada in the late 1980s, when he led Palestinian clashes against Israeli forces. He was eventually arrested for incitement and deported to Jordan, where he remained for seven years until he was permitted to return under the terms of the Oslo Accords in 1994.
In 1996, he was elected to the Palestinian Authority’s new parliament, the Palestinian Legislative Council. He promptly launched a campaign against human rights abuses by Arafat’s own security services and corruption among his officials, leading to widespread public support.
Initially, Barghouti was a strong supporter of the peace process after returning to the West Bank in the ’90s. During that time, he established close contacts with several Israeli politicians and members of Israel’s peace movement. But with the collapse of the Camp David Summit in July 2000, Barghouti became disillusioned and by the time the second intifada broke out that September, he was leading marches to Israeli checkpoints and inciting riots against Israeli soldiers.
He became the leader of Fatah in the West Bank and head of its armed wing, Tanzim. His charismatic speeches were intended to encourage Palestinians to use force to expel Israel from the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Life sentences
In April 2002, having survived an Israeli assassination attempt, Barghouti was arrested in Ramallah and charged with the killing of 26 people and belonging to a terrorist organization.
He was convicted on five counts of murder for the deaths of four Israelis and a Greek monk, as well as attempted murder and conspiracy to murder. In June 2004, he was sentenced to the maximum possible punishment for his convictions: five cumulative life sentences for the murders, and an additional 40 years for attempted murder and conspiracy.
Fadwa Barghouti, the wife of jailed Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti, in Ramallah in 2004
For the last two decades, despite operating from a prison cell, Barghouti has managed to retain much of his political power – including playing a major role in mediating between Hamas and Fatah in February 2007 (prior to the latter’s bloody expulsion from the Gaza Strip), and being elected to the Fatah party leadership in absentia in 2009.
Right from when he was arrested, there were voices in Israel warning that imprisonment would bolster Barghouti’s credibility and prestige among Palestinians. Shortly after Barghouti was captured, Ehud Barak, prime minister when the second intifada erupted, but by then a private citizen, lambasted the operation, saying it was “meaningless” in terms of confronting terrorism but a “brilliant scheme” to make him a future Palestinian national leader. Barak continued: “He will fight for the leadership from inside prison, not having to prove a thing. The myth will grow constantly by itself.”
In 2017, he organized a hunger strike of Palestinian prisoners across several Israeli jails, and in 2021 he announced that he would be running in parliamentary elections on a joint slate with Nasser Al-Qudwa, Arafat’s nephew and a former Palestinian foreign minister, in a party called ‘Freedom.’ It was widely seen as a prelude to Barghouti challenging Mahmoud Abbas for the presidency of the Palestinian Authority. However, Abbas postponed the May 2021 elections indefinitely, citing Israel’s refusal to permit the inclusion of East Jerusalem in the voting process.
Last March, Fadwa Barghouti began campaigning on her husband’s behalf in the hope that he might replace the 88-year-old Abbas as president. She held extensive meetings with senior officials in Arab countries and diplomats in the United States, Russia and Europe, asking them to work for her husband’s release. Often referred to by his supporters as the Palestinian Nelson Mandela, many in the West Bank see Barghouti, 64, as a natural successor to Abbas.
Fatah was driven out of Gaza after a brief but bloody battle with Hamas in June 2007, and Abbas reportedly hopes to regain control of the coastal enclave after the Israel-Hamas war ends. Abbas is deeply unpopular with Palestinians, though, because of corruption within the PA and due to its ongoing security coordination with the Israeli army.
In demanding Barghouti’s release, Hamas is seemingly aiming to rally public support for the much discussed “day after,” the replacement of Abbas as Palestinian president and its own continued involvement in Palestinian politics.
Barghouti has frequently received the greatest measure of support as potential leader in surveys of Palestinians conducted over the past decade, and today, during the war in Gaza, he remains the most popular Palestinian political figure.
In a December 2023 poll published by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, 55 percent of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza said they would vote for Barghouti ahead of Hamas’ Ismail Haniyeh and Abbas.
In an interview with the Associated Press last week, Qadoura Fares, who heads the Palestinian Ministry of Prisoner Affairs in the West Bank, sought to explain why Hamas has a vested interest in freeing Barghouti: “Hamas wants to show to the Palestinian people that they are not a closed movement. That they represent part of the Palestinian social community. They are trying to seem responsible,” he said.
Peace or war?
As Israel awaits Hamas’ response to the latest proposed hostage deal, it is unclear whether Jerusalem would ever agree to any demand to free Barghouti as part of the agreement. Hamas previously tried to secure Barghouti’s release during the negotiations to free kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. Shalit was eventually released in October 2011 in exchange for 1,027 Palestinian prisoners, but Barghouti was not among them.
Still, Barghouti has at times garnered support from certain sectors of Israeli society, who saw him as a moderate, and a potential counterweight to Hamas’ Islamist extremism. In the past, he has been visited by left-wing Israeli activists and politicians advocating for his release. In 2007, deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres said that if elected president, he would issue a pardon for Barghouti – a pledge that never materialized during his seven years as president.
Just last month, former Shin Bet security service chief Ami Ayalon told Haaretz that “as part of an overall deal that includes the return of all the hostages, we must release Marwan Barghouti.” “This is the case for two reasons,” Ayalon said: “Both because the return of the Israeli hostages is the closest thing possible to a ‘victory picture’ [for Israel] in the current Gaza campaign. And because 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.”
Despite such voices of support, Barghouti has spent most of his political career – including his time in prison – vacillating between a moderate vision of coexistence and more incendiary positions. In a statement he issued from prison last December, in which he marked the anniversary of the first intifada, he called on every Palestinian to take part in the “liberation campaign” underway.
“We must make every Palestinian home a stronghold of the revolution, and every man a soldier in this campaign. We must unite and prove to the world that we are a force that is unbreakable in our long and ongoing heroic campaign, created by the resistance, which is launching a new stage in our nation’s history,” he stated.
While Barghouti’s release is not likely given the current political climate, many Palestinians continue to pin their hopes on his presidential run. Fares, a Barghouti supporter, said that if he is released, he could become a galvanizing candidate for Hamas, Fatah and other Palestinian factions to rally behind.
Hamas is “stronger and more clever than ever before,” he claimed. “They understand how necessary it is for the Palestinian people to have consensus.”
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