Family of most prominent Palestinian prisoner denounces torture in Israeli prisons | International

There is one name that stands out in the current negotiations between Hamas and Israel to achieve a ceasefire. It represents one of the keys to accessing the exchange of hostages held in Gaza for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons. This is Marwan Barghouti, 64, behind Israeli bars since 2002 and sentenced to five life sentences. “I am optimistic,” simply responded, with a smile and without further evaluation, Fadwa Barghouti, his wife, this Tuesday in Ramallah, the administrative capital of the West Bank.

Hamas leader himself, Ismail Haniye, called for the release of the best-known Palestinian prisoner, even though he is a man from Fatah, a group that rivals the Islamist movement in the ins and outs of power in Palestine. For Israeli authorities, Barghouti is a terrorist. For many Palestinians, a hero capable of bringing together the different factions, secular or religious, of a people shaken by war and the resignation of a government in crisis. The fellow prisoners, now released and who participated in this report through their testimony, go further: they directly idolize him. It is not for nothing that some consider him the Palestinian Nelson Mandela.

Israeli prison authorities punished Barghouti with solitary confinement in a single cell while maintaining contacts in Paris, Cairo and Doha to agree a pause in the war. The family estimates that this decision became effective in mid-December. “They kept my father for 12 days permanently in one of these isolation cells in Rimonim prison, with very powerful lights and loudspeakers, shouting slogans in Hebrew,” denounces Arab Barghouti, 33, the youngest of four children. The restrictions also take the form of less food, less water, less hygiene or less clothing, he details during an interview with EL PAÍS in front of a large portrait of his father next to a another of Mandela.

Israel’s Minister of National Security, the controversial ultranationalist Itamar Ben Gvir, took responsibility and boasted about the toughening conditions, as he posted on his X profile (formerly Twitter) on February 14. “Today, murderer Marwan Barghouti was transferred from Ofer Prison to solitary confinement due to reports of planned riots. » This alleged call for violence, to which some Israeli media refer, does not come from his father, Arab Barghouti defends. “We don’t expect anything from Ben Gvir,” he concludes.

It was precisely in Ofer prison that they forced him to handcuff him behind his back and injured his arm a few weeks ago, Arab adds. During these almost three months of isolation, his father’s dancing in Israeli prisons located both in Palestine and Israel was constant, the son describes: “From Ofer to Ramleh, then Rimonim, back to Ramleh , then Maggido”, according to the latest information. the family did it. Arab has not had direct contact with his father for 22 years and his wife, Fadwa, has not been allowed to visit him for over a year. The lawyer was able to spend time with him in late January. Despite everything, the family remains optimistic while continuing negotiations behind the scenes, but “the priority is to stop the genocide in Gaza and the release of all political prisoners”, not just his father, Arab says.

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Abdelqader Badawi, 29, was imprisoned by Israeli authorities as a teenager for resisting the occupation in the streets. He remained behind bars from 2012 to 2019, and between 2016 and 2018 he spent several periods locked in a cell alone with Barghouti. “It had a big influence on me. He is the human being, the teacher, the friend… He welcomed me into the prison with a smile. It’s an ocean of generosity,” he draws in a portrait that he tries to idealize as much as possible by showing the photo of the two taken in prison in 2017.

Thanks to Barghouti, whom he calls the doctor, and his insistence that they be trained, Badawi says he obtained his school certificate and two diplomas from the University of Al Quds (Jerusalem in Arabic). . “Marwan Barghouti is undoubtedly the solution. I believe he can achieve a unity government with all factions and political trends,” he says from his office in Madar, the Fatah-linked study center where he works.

The war that broke out on October 7 caused an earthquake at all levels. On that day, Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since 2006, killed around 1,200 people in Israel in the worst attack in the country’s 75-year history. The Israeli army’s response has already killed more than 30,000 Palestinians in Gaza alone. Domestically, Hamas’s popularity has continued to grow to the detriment of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), whose interim government since its resignation on February 26 has been led by Fatah.

Future president?

But The figure of Barghouti remains the most appreciated In a possible presidential race, it does not matter whether he faces current President Mahmud Abbas or Ismail Haniye, according to the latest poll released in December by the Palestinian Center for Political Research and Survey (PSR).

After almost two decades without elections, “there must be presidential elections and the Palestinians must choose who they want as leader,” comments Arab Barghouti. “The impact that Marwan Barghouti can have is that he can be an element of unity, fight against corruption and against the occupation,” he adds, criticizing the internal division, the bad reputation which surrounds the Palestinian leaders and the Israeli yoke. But he admits he’s not sure his father would enter the race to lead Palestine at that time.

Barghouti, who had tried from his cell to be a presidential candidate in the elections which ultimately did not take place in 2021, was already on the list of people to be released when, in 2011, Israel exchanged more than one thousand prisoners against soldier Gilad Shalit, who had been kidnapped in Gaza for five years. Ultimately he was kicked out of the deal, but the one who got out of prison was Islamist Yahia Sinwar, now head of Hamas in Gaza and the man most wanted by Israel as the mastermind of the attack from October 7.

Former Abdelqader Badawi laughs and remains silent when asked about the increasingly questioned current president, Mahmud Abbas. “I’m not going to answer,” he said. “We need leadership that will lead us on the path to rebuilding the ANP” because “unfortunately, politics has not had the wind in its sails over the last two decades,” he comments while emphasizing that the circumstances today are different from those that led to Barghouti’s imprisonment. in 2002, in the middle of the second Intifada, even accused of a few murders. Today, he adds, the emphasis must be on ending the “bloodbath in Gaza”.

“If it depends only on Israel, Barghouti is not going to get dirty (of prison), but only to see the negotiations and how Hamás juegas sus cartas”, opined Abdelfatah Doleh, who was confined between 2006 and 2011, period in which this group was also the same. with him. “If Hamas thinks of the good of all Palestinians, it needs Barghouti,” understands Doleh, spokesperson for one of the sections of Fatah and another of those who have the most famous prisoner on a pedestal.

Hamas “needs Barghouti because there is a lot of pressure against the Islamists at the international level” after October 7 and “knows that after the war it will be very difficult to manage and rule Gaza again and to rebuilding it, that’s why Barghouti can help,” said Sari Orabi, a political analyst and writer who, because he belonged to Hamas, spent five years in Israeli prisons and three in those of the ANP. Already placed in a “neutral” zone and without direct contact with the leaders of the Islamist movement to “avoid a return to prison”, Orabi believes that it was the high echelons of Fatah who blocked the release of Barghouti in 2011 and those who attempted to do. to corner those who supported him in 2021 with the training he planned to present.

“Barghouti is the solution for many, but it’s not for me.” Unlike other people consulted, Nashaat Aqtash, professor at Birzeit University and collaborator of Hamas’ electoral campaign during the last elections in 2006, sees the prisoner with a lot of support among the new Fatah promotion, but not among the leaders veterans. He believes that, despite the war, international pressure against Islamists and elections, neither Abbas nor Barghouti will win a presidential election against a Hamas candidate.

Surrounded in one of Fatah’s headquarters by posters of the late President Yasser Arafat, veteran activist Haifaa Qudsia, 68, fears that Israel will want to ban Barghouti abroad once she is released, but believes that she will retain her leadership role. . “The only way out for Hamas in the current circumstances is Marwan Barghouti,” he defends. Others, like Abdelqader Badawi, cling to the phrases they learned like a mantra behind bars from their teacher and former cellmate: “The last day of occupation will be the first day of peace.”

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