The prisoner Israel received’t free

In August, a 13-second video made the rounds on Israel’s right-wing Telegram channels — and electrified Palestinians.

Within the video, Israel’s far-right minister of nationwide safety Itamar Ben-Gvir lectures a gaunt, aged man. “You’ll not win,” the ultranationalist chief of the Jewish Energy get together says.

Earlier than the person can reply, the video cuts out.

It was the primary public sighting in years of a person Palestinian admirers have known as their “Mandela”: Marwan Barghouti.

Jailed for the previous 20 years for his position within the second intifada, the 66-year-old Barghouti is — by far — the preferred Palestinian chief since Yasser Arafat.

He was deported to Jordan within the Nineteen Eighties, led armed resistance in opposition to Israel’s occupation within the early 2000s, helped organise college courses in an Israeli jail, and embraced negotiations and the two-state resolution.

Arrested in 2002, when he ran Tanzim, the armed wing of Arafat’s Fatah get together, he was handed 5 life sentences by an Israeli court docket on counts of homicide and membership of a terrorist organisation, after declining to supply a defence and refusing to recognise its authority.

Although he has barely been seen or heard from since, polls present Barghouti is fashionable sufficient to unite disparate Palestinian factions — Islamists like Hamas, secular nationalists like Fatah, and leftist revolutionaries just like the PFLP — right into a single opposition to Israel.

And so, when Israel let loose almost 2,000 prisoners from its jails this week to safe the discharge of its remaining hostages from Hamas captivity, Barghouti was not amongst them.

Whereas most of these launched had not even been placed on trial, not to mention convicted, 250 of them had been what Israel calls “heavies” like Barghouti, convicted on terror prices for his or her position within the killing of Israeli civilians. However in contrast to Barghouti, they weren’t well-known.

“It’s actually easy — Israel is prepared to launch individuals who did actually dangerous issues, however not those that are well-known,” stated Amir Avivi, a retired Israeli brigadier normal. “It has no curiosity to launch symbols.”

Influential leaders like Barghouti “will carry extra incitement and degrade the safety state of affairs”, stated Avivi. “We don’t view him as anyone who’s about peace. He’s a really radical particular person.”

Within the negotiations that led to this present ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, Barghouti’s identify was close to the highest of Hamas’s “VIP checklist” of prisoners it needed Israel to launch, in keeping with an Israeli official.

In change, Israel would get again 20 dwelling hostages, and the our bodies of 28 — the final of the 251 hostages Hamas took in its October 7 2023 assault on Israel that triggered the two-year conflict in Gaza.

Qatar, one of many essential intermediaries between Israel and Hamas, was stated to assist the bid to free Barghouti, two folks conversant in the method stated, seeing him as a unifying power that might galvanise the Palestinian Authority, which has restricted self-rule in components of the occupied West Financial institution.

“They perceive that Palestinian politics wants renewal and so they need that transition to be a peaceable transition by way of elections,” stated Arab Barghouti, Marwan’s son. “He’s somebody who is usually a voice of purpose, who’s trusted, who has knowledge to know find out how to attempt to transition to the subsequent interval, the place we unify the Palestinian folks.”

The PA is despised not solely by the Israeli proper however by many Palestinians, who see it as concurrently corrupt and impotent. It has failed to carry elections since 2006, misplaced management of Gaza to Hamas in 2007 and has since 2004 been run by 89-year-old Mahmoud Abbas and a bunch of loyalists.

Against this, supporters contemplate Barghouti, who co-authored a 2006 doc seen as a street map for uniting rival Palestinian factions, as ideologically steadfast.

“The overwhelming majority of Palestinians have by no means seen him or heard his speeches [but] all the pieces that he’s written and talked about has all the time been centring Palestinian freedom first,” stated Diana Buttu, a Palestinian lawyer who has labored on prior peace talks with Abbas. “So for generations folks know him, love him and think about him as their Mandela.”

His household lives in Ramallah, and fellow prisoners have described their time with him as transformative. Barghouti taught courses inside an Israeli jail — nicknamed the Hadarim Open College — urging Palestinian detainees to review and get distance studying levels.

Circumstances in Israeli prisons — which come beneath the purview of Ben-Gvir, the ultranationalist chief who harangued Barghouti within the video — have deteriorated severely since October 7 2023, in keeping with human rights teams, Israeli medical whistleblowers and testimony from launched prisoners.

Israel’s safety dragnet rounded up hundreds extra Palestinians, stuffing them into already overcrowded prisons, with guards accused of meting out beatings and meals rations reduce, in keeping with rights teams.

A minimum of 70 have died in Israeli custody because the conflict started, they stated, and Ben-Gvir has bragged of constructing jail circumstances harsher.

For Barghouti, that has in impact meant almost two years of solitary confinement, in keeping with his attorneys, household and launched detainees, throughout which one former prisoner who spoke to the Monetary Occasions stated he would shout directions to inmates to maintain finding out.

His attorneys, household and launched detainees say Barghouti has been overwhelmed by Israeli jail guards on a number of events, most lately final month.

Peering out of the small home windows of their cells in Israel’s Megiddo jail, Palestinian detainees noticed guards drag an unconscious man into a close-by cell, in keeping with testimony from launched prisoners to his household. Two of them glimpsed him as he was taken previous, and noticed blood, in keeping with their testimony.

As the person gained consciousness, they realised that their new neighbour was none apart from Barghouti, who informed them he had been overwhelmed whereas being transported.

“These are false claims,” the Israel Jail Service stated. “The Israel Jail Service operates in accordance with the regulation, whereas making certain the security and well being of all inmates.”

Barghouti additionally informed them, in keeping with his son Arab, what occurred in the remainder of the video with Ben-Gvir, following the ultranationalist’s tirade. “My father’s reply, in keeping with the prisoners, to Ben-Gvir was: ‘I see a whole lot of gray hair in your head. Will you by no means mature and develop up?’”