The spectacle of Israel’s Itamar Ben-Gvir humiliating perhaps the most popular of all Palestinians in his prison cell was as unedifying as the national security minister’s extremist politics.
“You won’t win. Whoever messes with the people of Israel, whoever murders our children, whoever murders our women, we will erase him,” Ben-Gvir told Marwan Barghouti, the figurehead of secular Palestinian nationalism, who appeared shocked and scared.
His lawyer told Al-Arabiya TV that Ben-Gvir threatened him directly and that his life is in danger.
Imprisoned since 2002 on murder charges and sentenced to five life sentences plus an additional 40 years for his role in the second intifada, the 67-year-old had not been seen in many years.
Marwan Barghouti during his murder trial in 2002. File pic: AP
The sight of this drawn, diminished figure will shock many across the Arab world, where he is both hugely popular and considered a potential Palestinian unity leader, were Israel to ever release him.
Barghouti’s face, his hands cuffed above his head, stares out from walls and buildings across the West Bank – a potent symbol of Palestinian suffering and resistance in the face of the Israeli occupation.
His more than two-decade imprisonment leaves him untarnished from the charges of corruption and ineffectiveness levelled at the Palestinian leadership, and opinion polls before 7 October 2023 saw his popularity exceed that of both Ismail Haniyeh, head of Hamas’ political wing, and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
Palestinians walk by a portrait of jailed Marwan Barghouti near the West Bank city of Ramallah. File pic: AP
In a statement, the Palestinian Authority condemned Ben-Gvir’s visit as an “unprecedented provocation and organised state terrorism”.
It is also a clear abuse of Ben-Gvir’s authority as national security minister, where he has ultimate oversight over Israel’s prison system and therefore direct access to the record number of Palestinian detainees currently imprisoned there.
Barghouti’s family say he has been held in solitary confinement since the 7 October attacks and has been subjected to brutal assaults, one of which left him severely injured.
Israeli mistreatment
Barghouti will be no stranger to Israeli mistreatment.
In an op-ed from jail to the New York Times in 2017, he detailed the first time he was tortured at the age of just 18, when an Israeli interrogator “forced me to spread my legs while I stood naked in the interrogation room, before hitting my genitals”.
He passed out from the pain, hitting his head, which scarred permanently. Afterwards, he wrote, the Israeli interrogator mocked him, saying he would “never procreate because people like me give birth only to terrorists and murderers”.
Marwan Barghouti in 2012. File pic: AP
Barghouti’s release has been a key component of ceasefire negotiations between Israel and Hamas, with talks in February 2024 breaking down when Israel refused to let him go.
Despite international pressure on Israel to ensure the humane treatment of its prisoners, the ICRC has not been granted access to Palestinian prisoners in Israeli detention since the 7 October attacks.
String of provocations
Ben-Gvir and his fellow ultra-nationalist coalition partner, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, both excel at the provocative act.
Less than two weeks ago, Ben-Gvir was filmed visiting the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem where he said he prayed, which is in direct violation of the status quo agreement governing relations between Muslims and Jews at the key holy sites on Temple Mount.
Itamar Ben-Gvir in Jerusalem’s Old City last month. Pic: Reuters
Bear in mind, it was Ariel Sharon’s visit to Temple Mount in 2000, which launched the second intifada, and you will get a sense of quite how incendiary that was.
Similarly, on Thursday, in what appeared to be a direct response to international calls for recognition of Palestinian statehood, Bezalel Smotrich announced that Israel would start the long-delayed E1 settlement project between the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
This, he said, would “bury” any notion of a Palestinian state once and for all.
The video showing the public humiliation of a man championed by the likes of Desmond Tutu and Jimmy Carter as the Palestinian Mandela, was released just hours later.
It looks like an attempt by Benjamin Netanyahu‘s ultra-nationalist allies to send a message both to Palestinians and to international supporters of Palestinian statehood that a state, and its potential leadership, is nothing but a pipe-dream.
A protester in the West Bank holds a poster depicting Barghouti during a rally in solidarity with Gaza and prisoners held by Israel. Pic: AP
‘Still pursuing’ Barghouti in prison
In 2013, Barghouti’s wife, Fadwa, launched a campaign for his release and that of all Palestinian prisoners from Robben Island, where Mandela was imprisoned, to draw attention to the similarities between South Africa during the apartheid era and the plight of Palestinians under Israeli occupation.
After the release of this latest video, she wrote on her Facebook page that she barely recognised her husband and was scared to imagine what he had been subjected to.
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But her words were also a rallying cry.
“They are still pursuing you, Marwan, and chasing you even in the solitary cell where you’ve been living for two years,” she wrote.
“I know that nothing shakes you except what you hear about the pain of your people, and nothing defeats or pains you except the lack of protection for our sons and daughters. You are one of the people: wherever you are, you are among them, for them, with them.”
