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reviewFriday, December 23, 2011 www.thenational.ae The National

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Music Susan Boyle and the star-making machine r10

Books The literary giant and the other woman r12

Resistance writ large

Incarcerated in an Israeli prison, the

towering figure of Marwan Barghouti

continues to loom over Palestinian politics r4

The National thereviewFriday, December 23, 2011 www.thenational.ae Friday, December 23, 2011 www.thenational.aeThe National thereview 0504

cover Thatcher’s stock is sky high at the moment, claims Foreman. Her scepticism of the euro has been vindicated and, of course, she’s just about to hit our screens in a new biopic

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Palestinians across the West Bank and Gaza celebrated the return of their loved ones last Sunday as the final wave of prisoners were re-leased in an exchange between Ha-mas and Israel. However, one pris-oner was notably absent. Marwan Barghouti, the jailed Fatah leader known by many Palestinians as the “prince of resistance”, remains be-hind bars in Israel despite prom-ises from the Palestinian leader-ship that his freedom would be secured through the exchange of captive Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. On the eve of the prisoner swap, Barghouti released a 255-page book, written secretly behind bars and smuggled out via lawyers and family members detailing his ex-perience in Israeli jails.

Barghouti is a figure of towering reverence among Palestinians and even some Israelis, regard-less of political persuasion. Yet, he was reluctant to begin a life in the political spotlight. In fact, the Israeli occupation came to him, his long-time friend Sa’ad Nimer noted during a long conversation in a dank Ramallah coffee shop. When Barghouti was just 15, living in the small village of Kober just outside Ramallah, Israeli soldiers shot his beloved dog during a mili-tary sweep of the village. From that moment on, Nimer said in a haze of nostalgia, the occupation was a personal issue for Barghouti.

A natural leader with admira-ble charisma and an unwaver-ing hatred of Israeli occupation,

Barghouti has been an active po-litical leader since the early 1980s. At age 18, during one of his early stints in an Israeli prison for po-litical organising, he was elected the prisoner representative, a task which required him to unify competing political affiliations of prisoners and negotiate with Israeli authorities. The appoint-ment foreshadowed a long career of uniting Palestinians regardless of political agenda.

Despite his vocal support for the two-state solution and attempts at reconciliation with Israeli civil society, Barghouti has remained a puzzling and aggressive figure for Israel. “When Marwan got out of jail the second time [in 1982 at age 23], the Israelis did not know what to do with him,” said Nimer, who is the director of the Free Marwan Baghouti Campaign based in Ram-allah. In the early 1980s, Barghouti was a primary organiser in the Sha-bibia movement, a Fatah-based student group that campaigned for better education standards in Palestine. The movement, still ac-tive in the West Bank, was a prima-ry organising vehicle of the First Intifada.

While not overtly against the oc-cupation, Barghouti’s early politi-cal activity was understood by Isra-el as a threat and he was deported to Jordan under extraordinary cir-cumstances. According to Nimer, “Jordan was not taking deportees at the time, so the Israelis just put him on a helicopter and dropped

him into the middle of the Jorda-nian desert, desperate to get rid of him”.

From Jordan, Barghouti helped organise the First Intifada, relay-ing messages and tactics to Pales-tinians, mostly aligned with Sha-bibia, in the West Bank. After the signing of the Oslo peace accords in 1994 he returned to the West Bank as a member of the Palestin-ian Legislative Council (PLC), the parliament of the Palestinian Au-thority, and embraced the peace process wholeheartedly.

During his time as a PLC mem-ber, he maintained a tough stance on corruption inside Palestinian politics and won himself many en-emies in the upper echelons of power in the West Bank and Gaza. Unlike many of his colleagues in the PLC, Barghouti was never ap-pointed to public office and de-rived his political capital directly from the people who consistently provided him with strong electoral results.

For Kadoura Fares, the current president of the Palestinian Pris-oners Association and former member of the PLC, Barghouti’s pragmatic approach to peace dur-ing the 1990s demonstrated his overarching desire to end Israeli occupation at all costs. “We had a meeting with Israeli officials in Jerusalem in 1996,” Fares told me in his comfortable Ramallah office adorned with paintings of the Pal-estinian national poet Mahmoud Darwish. “I was very worried be-

cause of the negative reaction of many Palestinians towards meet-ing with the Israelis, but Marwan calmed me down. He told me that it was the time for peace and we must pursue it despite the public pressure. He would always say that there is a time for peace and a time for resistance. It was a time for peace.”

When Oslo collapsed and the Second Intifada engulfed Israel and the Palestinian territories in violence, Barghouti embraced armed resistance. He assumed a leadership position in Fatah’s armed wing, coordinating attacks against the Israeli military in the West Bank and Israeli civilians in Tel Aviv. It is for these activities that Israelis understand Barghou-ti as a terrorist leader. His friends and colleagues maintain that his support of armed resistance as a vehicle to achieving an end to oc-cupation was in line with the pop-ular sentiments expressed on the street at the time.

“He got credibility for supporting armed resistance from the Pales-tinian street,” Laila Jamal, recalled a member of the Palestinian Au-thority’s media department from the village of Salfit in the central West Bank. “During that time, we saw the occupation in action and everyone supported armed re-sistance. He understood this and acted in line with the popular sen-timent.”

Barghouti was arrested by Israeli forces conducting sweeps in Ram-

allah in April 2002 while he was a sitting member of the Palestinian Legislative Council. He was quick-ly transferred to Israel for trial in a civilian court on multiple counts of murder including authorising and organising an attack in Tel Aviv in which three civilians were killed, attempted murder and membership in a terrorist organi-sation.

Citing the illegitimacy of the Is-raeli legal system over occupied Palestinians, Barghouti refused to accept the charges or stage a defence in the Tel Aviv court. Dur-ing the drawn out proceedings, he delivered impassioned and re-searched speeches arguing that the court and the practices of the Israeli military in the West Bank were illegal under international law.

He never recognised the author-ity of the Israeli court system from his first statement to the judge in which he proclaimed, “I am a polit-ical leader, a member of the Pales-tinian Legislative Council, elected by my people. Israel has no right to try me, to accuse me, judge me. This is a violation of international law. I have a right to resist occupa-tion.” Dismissing the allegation, Israel charged him with five life sentences for murdering Israelis and 40 years imprisonment for at-tempted murder, which he is cur-rently serving.

Since his conviction, Barghouti has done what he knows best; ac-tively campaigning for the reuni-fication of Palestinian political factions. After the 2006 Hamas-Fatah split, which resulted in bloody infighting among the fac-tions, Barghouti organised a pris-oner’s campaign with members of Hamas, Fatah as well as PFLP and DFLP that called for imme-diate reunification. According to those close to him, like Fares,

The politics of the personal

his work on Palestinian unity is a reason why so many Palestinian politicians are afraid of his free-dom and a possible reason why he was left out of the recent prisoner swap.

≥≥≥If there is one experience that has the potential to unify the Palestin-ian people, it is the experience of being a prisoner in an Israeli mili-tary jail. Barghouti’s new book, One Thousand Nights in Solitude, is, at its core, a book about deal-ing with the Israeli prison system as a Palestinian. Reading like an instruction manual for coping with the experiences of interroga-tion and prolonged detainment, the book breaks new ground in the underreported subject of Israel’s treatment of Palestinian political prisoners.

Israel’s military court system has processed roughly 750,000 Pales-tinians according to the Red Cres-cent, but exact numbers are hard to obtain. In fact, any sort of exact information about Israel’s military jail system is difficult to find given its role as one of the primary Israeli mechanisms of controlling Pales-tinian dissent and nascent resist-ance to the occupation.

According to a recent expose by the Israeli liberal daily Haaretz, military courts have an astonish-ingly high conviction rate of 99.74 per cent. Many Palestinian defend-ants are put through a programme of psychological and physical tor-ture that often results in coerced testimonies necessary in the main-tenance of a high conviction rate. Haaretz has also released reports seemingly confirming the wide-spread belief that torture is widely used and that Israeli military judg-es are often aware that informa-tion used in tribunals is obtained through psychological and physi-cal torture.

Barghouti continued on 6 →

Smuggled page by page from an Israeli jail, Marwan Barghouti’s new book tells of the terrible treatment endured by Palestinian political prisoners and hints at the role this towering figure may yet play in the future of the region, writes Joseph Dana

Marwan Barghouti pictured in the photograph that has become a symbol of Palestinian resistance. Heidi Levin / AP Photo

“He is trying to create a civil re-sistance inside the military prison system,” said Majad Abdel Hamid, a young artist and political activist in Ramallah. “If all Palestinians re-fused to recognise the legitimacy of the Israeli military court sys-tem, Israel would be in big trouble. This is partly what the new book is about.”

Kept in solitary confinement for an extended period and put through various periods of psycho-logical and even physical torture, Barghouti’s book details the tenac-ity required to not wilt under such difficult conditions. In the first chapter, he describes in verbose language how Israel used various interrogators to coerce informa-tion out of him regarding senior Fatah leaders in the West Bank. This common procedure was ex-tremely tough on Barghouti since, in the words of Sa’ad Nimer, “they wanted information tying Yassir Arafat to terrorism and they never got it from Marwan”.

Following a political career best understood as leading by example, Barghouti sets out to demonstrate how Palestinians can achieve a meaningful non-violent resistance against the military court system. In addition to the practical infor-mation of surviving within the Is-

raeli prison system, he details his arguments for Palestinian politi-cal unity as a means of resistance to Israeli occupation.

The book devotes great detail to his three years housed in a tiny cell (measuring one by 1.5 metres) in solitary confinement. It is from this experience that the title, One Thousand Nights in Solitude was born.

Fadwa Barghouti is a carefully appointed woman who has spear-headed her husband’s awareness

campaign since the beginning of his current imprisonment. From the same village of Kober, Mrs Barghouti is a distant relative of Marwan, sharing the same fourth-generation great grandfather. Sit-ting in her comfortable office over-looking the Muqata compound where Yassir Arafat was confined by Israeli forces at the height of the Second Intifada, Mrs Barghouti re-mains confident that her husband will be released soon, but is visibly upset at the recent failure by Ha-

mas to gain his freedom. “I know why he was not released,” she told me sipping sugary tea, “but I am not going to tell you.”

Sitting under the ubiquitous photo of her husband surrounded by Israeli prison guards with hand-cuffed hands held high, she glow-ingly reports that he is using his time in prison to enrich himself intellectually.

He is a ferocious reader, consum-ing books in English, Arabic, He-brew and French on topics rang-ing from French colonial rule in Algeria to the latest biographies of the former US president Bill Clinton and Margaret Thatcher, the former British prime minis-ter. He also has a deep respect for the work of Paulo Coehlo and the Israeli philosopher Yeshayahu Liebowitz. Additionally, Barghouti has written two books and com-pleted his PhD from the University of Cairo entitled, The Legislative and Political Performance of the Palestinian Legislative Council and its Contribution to the Democratic Process in Palestine from 1996 to 2008. His doctorate, like the recent book, was smuggled out of jail one page at a time and took years to complete.

In addition to maintaining pub-lic and international pressure on Palestinian and Israeli leaders for the release of her husband, Mrs

Barghouti has had to raise her fam-ily without a father. One of their three sons is now living in the Unit-ed Kingdom while completing his higher education. His other two sons and one daughter live in the West Bank and are known in Ram-allah for their active social lives and lack of interest in Palestinian national politics. Mrs Barghouti’s dedication to her husband is dem-onstrated in the romantic lan-guage used to describe his mean-ing to the Palestinian people.

“Marwan Barghouti is the natural leader of the Palestinian people,” Mrs Barghouti said. “In opinion polls, he is regularly shown to be the choice of Palestinians because of his adherence to the two-state solution, his fight against corrup-tion and for the rights of women and democracy. The people want Marwan Barghouti to lead them in their fight against occupation.”

Palestinians are exhausted from the emotional and physical toll of the Second Intifada. Most express dismay at the infighting that has plagued the political establish-ment since the 2006 fallout be-tween Hamas and Fatah but offer little solution for dealing with it. There is also a sense that the po-litical establishment is no longer working in the interests of the people despite the highly popu-lar attempt to achieve statehood

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The pressure is on the politicians, all the politicians, to release Marwan if they want to move forward with negotiations with Israel Fadwa Barghouti

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Israeli society will continue to see Marwan Barghouti as a symbol of the violent Second Intifada, but after his inevitable release, they will likely be seeing him sitting at a negotiations table

Barghouticontinued from 5 →

recognition at the United Nations earlier this year, which Barghouti supported from jail.

“I think what is needed now from the leadership is to have honesty and self-reflection. In a way, this is one of the strengths of Marwan Barghouti in that he is honest with Palestinians. He doesn’t b****** us. We are sick and tired of Pal-estinian leaders who [do],” said Majd Abdel Hamid, who is part of the March 15th youth movement that demanded reconciliation of political factions earlier this year after the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia reshaped the Middle East. He does not support any Palestin-ian political party, like many in the March 15th movement, but be-lieves that Barghouti has the power to open a new chapter in the Pales-tinian national struggle if only he is released from jail.

Dancing around the subject of the recent prisoner swap, Fadwa Barghouti remains confident that the current political leadership is

afraid of a free Barghouti. For five years she was told by Fatah and Hamas leaders that her husband’s freedom would come in the form of the captive Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. But, at the last minute, a month before the controversial deal between Hamas and Israel was signed in Egypt, Barghouti along with nine other senior politi-cal prisoners were dropped from this list.

“I believe that there was a weak attempt in the prisoners swap to free my husband,” Mrs Barghouti said, asserting that securing her husband’s release was indeed pos-sible. “I am talking about the Pal-estinian leadership of Hamas and Fatah. The people have been de-manding his release for the last 10 years and they simply ignored the people’s will”

Indeed, Marwan Barghouti is often cited as a potential replace-ment for Palestinian Author-ity President Mahmoud Abbas. Barghouti along with Kadoura

Fares and Mohammad Dahlan threatened to begin an independ-ent party called, Al-Mustaqbal (The Future), in 2005 after Abbas offered Barghouti second place in the Fatah despite clear indications that Barghouti would win national election. Ultimately, according to Fares, Barghouti felt that a second party would harm Palestinian uni-ty and ran on the Fatah party ticket, securing a seat in the PLC as a Fa-tah member.

Due to the belief that Barghouti would be part of the recent prison-er swap, the grassroots movement to free him has lost momentum in recent years.

But, according to Fadwa Barghou-ti, things have changed and with the release of his new book there are renewed efforts to pressure the Palestinian leadership to negoti-ate his release. The Free Marwan Barghouti campaign is planning to stage several demonstrations in March under the banner that Pal-estinians refuse negotiations with

Israel without a free Barghouti to lead them.

“The pressure is on the politi-cians, all the politicians, to release Marwan if they want to move for-ward with negotiations with Is-rael.” Mrs Barghouti told me. “Pal-estinians want their leader to move them forward and the political es-tablishment will have to deal with this reality in the new year.”

Whenever discussions arise about Marwan Barghouti in Is-rael or Palestine, one name is una-voidable: Nelson Mandela. In the 1990s, dovish Israeli politicians and political thinkers such as Uri Avenry began calling Barghouti Palestine’s Mandela. The com-parison is not without merit: both leaders have refused to swear off armed resistance, both have spent long periods of time in jail, unwill-ing to cooperate with authorities, and both have enjoyed a unique loyalty from their people that has transcended political affiliations. Israeli society will continue to see

Barghouti as a symbol of the vio-lent Second Intifada, but after his inevitable release, they will likely be seeing him sitting at a nego-tiations table working to end the conflict and dismantle the Israeli occupation.

After the largely successful state-hood campaign in the UN that failed to achieve independence, Palestinians are left with a power vacuum and a tough road to rec-onciliation. Now, more than ever, a leader is required to bring Pales-tine’s political factions together. When asked who might be the leader to open a new chapter in Palestinian politics, Kadura Fares paused, and took a long drag from his ever present cigarette, “it is not necessarily one individual who can do that with the snap of his fingers. Abu Mazen tried, he did a lot, but it was not enough, but I do think that Marwan could be the person.”

Joseph Dana is a journalist based in Ramallah.

Relatives of the Palestinian prisoner Younis Jahjouh decorate a street in the Qalandia refugee camp near the West Bank city of Ramallah ahead of his release from an Israeli prison on December 17. Majdi Mohammed / AP Photo

Fadwa, Marwan Barghouti’s wife, photographed in 2005 as she is briefed by a security official on her arrival at the El-Tufah checkpoint in Khan Yunes in the southern Gaza Strip. Mrs Barghouti believes that her husband “is the natural leader of the Palestinian people ... [they want him] to lead them in their fight against occupation.” AFP / Marco Longari