Hundreds of Palestinians were released from Israeli jails as part of an exchange at the heart of the ceasefire deal brokered between Hamas and Israel, but one was conspicuously absent: Marwan Barghouti, a prominent Palestinian leader who has been jailed for more than two decades.
The 66-year-old former Fatah commander is serving five life sentences after being convicted of involvement in attacks that killed Israelis during the second intifada, or Palestinian uprising, which started in 2000 and lasted about five years.
Israel also accused him of founding the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a US-designated terrorist group that operated as the armed wing of Fatah before the movement announced its dissolution in 2007. He refused to recognize the court’s authority, saying it had no jurisdiction over him as a Palestinian living under occupation.
Barghouti’s name was top of a list that Hamas negotiators presented during talks to end the two-year Israel-Hamas war. However, Israel said he also acted as a liaison between late Palestinian president Yasser Arafat and Fatah’s armed groups, allegedly overseeing the transfer of weapons, funds and orders for operations.
For right-wing politicians, setting him free is a “red line.”
For Palestinians, the decision is seen as a move not to “grant Hamas this victory, one that could empower a person capable of uniting everyone around him and offering a new political ambition for the Palestinian movement,” said Jehad Harb, head of the Ramallah-based Thabat Survey Research and Opinion Polls.
Barghouti is often described by supporters as the “Palestinian Mandela.”
Under the first phase of the ceasefire deal, Netanyahu’s government released about 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and Hamas is releasing the remaining hostages it took on Oct. 7, 2023, when its fighters attacked Israel, killing 1,200 people.
In Israel’s retaliatory war on the group — which ruled Gaza, and is considered a terrorist organization by the US and the EU — at least 67,000 Palestinians have been killed, the Hamas-run health ministry said.
The question of governance of the Palestinian Territories is one of the thorniest questions left to negotiate.
In August, Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar Ben Gvir posted footage on social media showing Barghouti in his prison cell. His frail, gaunt look sparked concern for his health. Palestinian rights groups said he has been held in solitary since the Oct. 7 attacks, and has been “brutally assaulted” by guards.
Barghouti’s political rise began in the 1980s during the first intifada, when he emerged as one of its most prominent young leaders. He was deported to Jordan by then-Israeli minister of defense Yitzhak Rabin, returning years later to the West Bank — the larger of the two Palestinian Territories — where he was born.
He survived several assassination attempts, including an Israeli airstrike on his convoy near his office in Ramallah in 2001, and a year later was arrested then sentenced to prison.
Even from behind bars, Barghouti retained influence, issuing statements urging national unity and political reform. He was among the authors of the 2006 “Prisoners’ Document,” which sought to bridge internal divisions and reaffirm support for a two-state solution.
His ability to maintain ties across multiple factions made him a rare figure respected by both organizations, whose months-long fight ended in 2007 with Hamas taking over Gaza and Fatah leading the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.
“It’s clear that Barghouti is one of the major Palestinian kingpins in Israel’s prisons now,” said Michael Milshtein, who directs Palestinian studies at the Moshe Dayan Center at Tel Aviv University.
Referring to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, Milshtein added that Barghouti is “very much looking to succeed Abu Mazen.”
“If he ends up contesting and winning an election from behind bars, it’ll be a cause of great consternation for Israel and in Ramallah,” Milshtein said. “Israel will face enormous pressure to release him, as he will be the Palestinian president. In Ramallah, meanwhile, there will be confusion as to how to administer power with the president in prison.”
With assistance from Fares Alghoul,Dan Williams and Fadwa Hodali
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has long been expansionist and contemptuous of international law. Under Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), the CCP regime has become more despotic, coercive and punitive. As part of its strategy to annex Taiwan, Beijing has sought to erase the island democracy’s international identity by bribing countries to sever diplomatic ties with Taipei. One by one, China has peeled away Taiwan’s remaining diplomatic partners, leaving just 12 countries (mostly small developing states) and the Vatican recognizing Taiwan as a sovereign nation. Taiwan’s formal international space has shrunk dramatically. Yet even as Beijing has scored diplomatic successes, its overreach
For Taiwan, the ongoing US and Israeli strikes on Iranian targets are a warning signal: When a major power stretches the boundaries of self-defense, smaller states feel the tremors first. Taiwan’s security rests on two pillars: US deterrence and the credibility of international law. The first deters coercion from China. The second legitimizes Taiwan’s place in the international community. One is material. The other is moral. Both are indispensable. Under the UN Charter, force is lawful only in response to an armed attack or with UN Security Council authorization. Even pre-emptive self-defense — long debated — requires a demonstrably imminent
Since being re-elected, US President Donald Trump has consistently taken concrete action to counter China and to safeguard the interests of the US and other democratic nations. The attacks on Iran, the earlier capture of deposed of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro and efforts to remove Chinese influence from the Panama Canal all demonstrate that, as tensions with Beijing intensify, Washington has adopted a hardline stance aimed at weakening its power. Iran and Venezuela are important allies and major oil suppliers of China, and the US has effectively decapitated both. The US has continuously strengthened its military presence in the Philippines. Japanese Prime
After “Operation Absolute Resolve” to capture former Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro, the US joined Israel on Saturday last week in launching “Operation Epic Fury” to remove Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his theocratic regime leadership team. The two blitzes are widely believed to be a prelude to US President Donald Trump changing the geopolitical landscape in the Indo-Pacific region, targeting China’s rise. In the National Security Strategic report released in December last year, the Trump administration made it clear that the US would focus on “restoring American pre-eminence in the Western hemisphere,” and “competing with China economically and militarily
RSS