Although he has been imprisoned for twenty-two years, his popularity among Palestinians remains intact. With his release, Hamas would score a point, but for Israel he is a “killer” and a potential challenge to the status quo.
His name has led polls among Palestinians for two decades. The image of him, with his hands cuffed and the gesture with his fingers in a V of victory, is one of the most portrayed in the occupied West Bank. His profile, in essence, resurfaces in each crisis as a unifier of the Palestinian cause.
It is therefore not surprising that Maruan Barguti is once again on everyone's lips. He is one of the few prisoners – of the more than 8,000 in Israeli prisons – that Hamas has claimed by name in negotiations with Israel for an exchange of Palestinian prisoners for hostages in Gaza. A condition that Beniamin Netanyahu's Government does not seem willing to accept.
Barghouti is, in Israeli eyes, a “murderer” and “terrorist”, as Netanyahu himself defined him in 2017 after ranting against The New York Times for publishing a column written by this Palestinian figure from the Hadarim prison, near Tel Aviv. He then went on a hunger strike with more than a thousand Palestinian prisoners demanding better conditions.
And Israeli prisons have been part of the career of this 64-year-old man, originally from the Palestinian village of Kobar. He met them for the first time at the age of 15 and then frequented them during his university days, when he became a student leader within Yasir Arafat's secular Fatah movement.
He based his popularity on his charisma and his appearance as an ordinary Palestinian, and was also the face of the two intifadas. In the first, his role as a protest organizer earned him deportation to Jordan, where he remained until he was allowed to return after the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993. In the second, disillusioned by the peace process and as head from an armed faction of Al Fatah –Tanzim–, he led funerals and marches against the occupation until he was arrested by Israel in 2002.
Accused of founding the Al Aqsa Brigades (the armed wing of Al Fatah with ties to Tanzim), Barghouti was sentenced to five life prison sentences for his alleged participation in five murders of Israeli civilians. During the trial he did not defend himself because he refused to recognize the authority of the Israeli court, although outside he always rejected the charges.
For Fathi Nimer, an analyst at the Palestinian think tank Al Shabaka, “having been imprisoned for twenty years has strengthened” Barghouti's figure. “Palestinians consider that the legitimacy of their political leaders comes from their contribution on the ground and whether they are part of the resistance,” he assures La Vanguardia.
This is also the origin of his nickname, the Palestinian Nelson Mandela, due to his parallelism with the former South African president, not only for his years in prison but for being a defender of peaceful resistance, without ever renouncing violence as a response to the ocupation.
Likewise, in his years as a legislator, Barghout denounced the corruption and human rights abuses of the Arafat government, and has progressively distanced himself from Al Fatah, today associated with the failed management of Mahmoud Abbas in the Palestinian Authority.
“This means that he is conceived as someone who is not corrupt, who has spent his life in the resistance and in prison,” says Nimer. He is accepted not only by Al Fatah followers, but by the majority of independents and is one of the few non-Hamas members who has sympathy among his supporters.”
Being seen as “a kind of middle ground” between “two polarizing forces” like Al Fatah and Hamas is, according to the Al Shabaka political scientist, one of the reasons why the Islamist group is pushing for his release. “They see him as a unifying force and, if there is any hope of reunifying the West Bank and Gaza and resurrecting a national project for the Palestinians, Barghouti is the most capable of doing it.”
Along these lines, Nimer adds, he could “mobilize people” and “challenge the status quo,” something that makes him a potential feared leader for Israel, which “is very happy with the status quo.”
“This allows it to have complete control of the territory between the [Jordan] river and the [Mediterranean] sea without assuming any responsibility towards the population it occupies,” he adds.
Hence, for this analyst, Barguti is “almost an expression of wish” because “there are no real indications that he can be released.” It is also not clear what style would be assumed by someone who has been behind bars for decades and whose influence lives on thanks to his indefatigable wife Fadwa.
An increasingly unlikely scenario, especially since the Israeli Security Minister, the extremist Itamar Ben-Gvir, ordered him transferred from prison for the third time in five months and placed in solitary confinement. This after accusing him of planning “a new intifada.” A way to plunge deeper into darkness the man who, for many Palestinians and even some Israeli analysts, represents a unique hope.
