Palestinian Mandela? Marwan Barghouti, imprisoned preacher of unity.

Among Palestinians, Marwan Barghouti’s popularity is unsurpassed.

Politician and professor – and a peacemaker now imprisoned for armed resistance – the man regarded by many as Palestinians’ “Mandela” looms larger than ever amid the devastating Israel-Hamas war in Gaza and spiraling violence across the West Bank.

Rising from humble farmhand to community organizer to a leader of the national Fatah party, Mr. Barghouti became known for his soaring oratory and common touch.

His message of democracy, unity, and resistance to occupation is resonating today with Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza who are under attack, who distrust their autocratic leadership, and who would vote for him if given the chance. He is the only political figure who outpolls Hamas.

Serving five life sentences after being convicted by an Israeli court for involvement in militant killings in the second intifada, Mr. Barghouti remains the rare – perhaps the only – figure trusted by all Palestinian factions.

With his release from Israeli prison demanded by Fatah’s rival, Hamas, and even advocated by a former Israeli spy chief, the mere possibility of Mr. Barghouti’s return to the scene is stirring up Palestinian politics, and hope, at a historic crossroads.

Many believe that Mr. Barghouti, if released from prison, would go straight to Gaza to reconcile Fatah with Hamas – whose infighting he describes as a “catastrophe” – and form a new, broad national unity government that could resolve the current conflict with Israel.

“We must achieve unity, and then liberty,” multiple associates quote him as saying recently.

“If the international community is serious about solving the conflict in Gaza, they will push for Marwan’s release,” Barghouti comrade Mahmoud Jabri says from the office of the Free Marwan Barghouti Campaign in Ramallah.

“He is the key to any future political solution.”

Grassroots

Mr. Barghouti was born and raised in Kobar, an agricultural village north of Ramallah, to a family of farmhands.

Volunteering with a local youth club, he repaved roads and cleaned up the local cemetery, civic works that introduced him to Fatah, the then-banned Palestinian nationalist movement. His Fatah activism soon landed him, at the age of 19, in an Israeli jail, where he came under the wing of veteran Palestinian activists and fighters.  

These experiences forged in Mr. Barghouti the belief that in order to liberate and build a nation, one had to act locally, recounts his younger brother, Muqbel Barghouti.

“Marwan loved to serve and volunteer,” he says. “It was from this desire to serve, and his first years in prison, that he became committed to the national struggle.”

Mr. Barghouti took a grassroots approach to his work in Fatah – as youth leader in the West Bank, in leadership in exile in Jordan, and then as secretary-general of Fatah, the party that controls the Palestinian Authority (PA), when he returned to the West Bank in 1994.

Residents recount how, as the right-hand man of President Yasser Arafat, he would drop work to help harvest dates in Rafah, pick olives near Nablus, attend a funeral in Jenin, or visit the site of an industrial accident.

“No matter the occasion, he had to be there on the ground. This is why to this day, people across the West Bank and Gaza feel close to him,” says PA official Qadura Fares, a Fatah colleague and adviser.

Personal credibility

Mr. Barghouti’s reputation for being honest and blunt, and for following through on his word, has earned him credibility rare among Palestinian leaders today.

Which is why, many believe, Hamas is pushing for his release.

“Hamas and everyone know that Marwan says what he believes, and what Marwan says, he does. He doesn’t say what you want to hear,” says Mr. Fares. “Marwan is someone who says he wants to reconcile Palestinian factions and will immediately set out doing it.”

In contrast, PA President Mahmoud Abbas, who has not allowed elections since 2006, has engaged in endless rounds of reconciliation talks with Hamas while refusing to implement agreements and working to isolate and undermine the Islamist organization.

From prison, Mr. Barghouti has advocated for democracy at all levels of Palestinian politics and society, and for broad participation in governing.

“You shouldn’t be afraid of others winning; all you need to focus on is improving your policies to win votes,” colleagues quote him as saying.

Palestinians still recall how, in the 1990s, Mr. Barghouti led anti-corruption protests against his own boss, Mr. Arafat, and the Palestinian Authority.

PA corruption persists as a major issue for the local public and for exasperated Arab and Western allies.

Yet Mr. Barghouti’s family members do not appear to have enriched themselves and still live modestly in Kobar, neighbors attest, in contrast to other senior PA and Fatah officials who have built lavish villas in the West Bank and abroad.

“Marwan was clean. He would give out the last shekel in his pocket before the end of the day,” recounts Youssef, a driver and former Fatah officer who served under Mr. Barghouti in the late 1990s and early 2000s. He declined to use his last name.

“That is why Abbas’ circle don’t want him released,” he says.

Peace and resistance

Yet his core popularity today is as a man of both peace and resistance.

Some Israelis remain open to dealing with Mr. Barghouti, who, as an adviser on the Oslo Accords between Israel and the PLO, was a fervent supporter of the peace process for several years.

As a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, he regularly met with Israeli party leaders and toured Europe in joint Israeli-Palestinian parliamentary delegations. Colleagues say he was on a first-name basis with half the members of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament.

In 1996, when Hamas began a string of suicide bombings against civilians in Israel, Mr. Barghouti led a pro-peace march alongside Israeli activists, denouncing the attacks.

“Marwan believed in Oslo as an opportunity to invest in peace and state-building,” says Mr. Fares. “He believed we must build a culture of peace for the Palestinian and Israeli peoples.”

Yet the peace process – and Mr. Barghouti’s views – would change.

In light of the 1995 assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who signed the accords, the rightward tilt of Israeli politics, and the lack of progress on final-status talks, Mr. Barghouti began to believe Israelis were dragging their feet to run out Oslo’s five-year window and expand settlements, to render a Palestinian state impossible.

This sentiment hardened after the failure of the 2000 Camp David summit between Mr. Arafat, President Bill Clinton, and Prime Minister Ehud Barak.

A peace process, Mr. Barghouti concluded, could not succeed without pressure on Israel.

Instead, he believed the Palestinians should pursue both negotiations and resistance – armed, if necessary – in order to push Israel to follow through on its commitments and agree to a Palestinian state.

“The occupation is negotiating with us while maintaining its occupation; therefore, we want to negotiate while maintaining resistance,” Sa’d Nimer, political science professor at Birzeit University and former Barghouti campaign manager, remembers him saying. “You can’t have occupation and peace at the same time.”

Today, this approach is in line with majority Palestinian opinion and straddles both camps of thought: those who believe in negotiations and institution-building to achieve a state, and those who believe armed resistance is the only path to statehood.

“Negotiations for the sake of negotiations with no Israeli partner has led us to disaster,” says one senior Fatah official. “Marwan’s approach can bring us back on the path to statehood.”

Putting this approach into practice during the second intifada led to Mr. Barghouti’s imprisonment after he initially led protests at Israeli checkpoints in hopes of restarting talks.

As the intifada turned more violent, and amid competition with Hamas for support, Fatah established the armed Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade under Mr. Barghouti’s authority. He did not direct the brigade, colleagues claim, but gave it rhetorical backing while insisting its forces attack only military targets in the occupied territories.

Yet as the violence got out of control, they say, the decentralized brigade violated those parameters, killing civilians.   

After an Israeli assassination attempt on him failed, Mr. Barghouti was arrested, tried, and convicted, though he refused to recognize the court’s legitimacy.

Popularity

Mr. Barghouti’s charisma and at-times contradictory philosophies have enhanced his popularity, which polls show has only increased as the current war drags on: He wins any electoral matchup.

In an early March poll by the Ramallah-based Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, 40% of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza said they would support Mr. Barghouti in an election. Just 23% said they would support Hamas’ overall political leader, Ismael Haniya, and 8% Mr. Abbas.

Mr. Barghouti’s presence in a race for president boosts voter turnout from 52% to 72%. In any hypothetical presidential race without Mr. Barghouti, Hamas wins handily.

Another indicator of his popularity are young Palestinians in the West Bank who describe themselves as “Sinwar and Marwan” supporters, saying they identify with Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and Mr. Barghouti for both their support for armed resistance and the long periods they spent in prison.

“Marwan has lived our reality. He has been in prison, suffered, and paid a personal price. He represents us because he too has gone through the struggle that we go through,” says 18-year-old Mohammed in the Tulkarem refugee camp, shortly after being released from Israeli military detention.  “Sinwar and Marwan: These are the leaders who represent us.”

Many Hamas supporters, who preferred to remain unnamed to avoid arrest, told the Monitor they would vote for Mr. Barghouti for president.

“Revolution of Light”

Even from behind bars, Mr. Barghouti has continued his push for unity by influencing the next generation of Palestinians.

Until Oct. 7, he taught an accredited bachelor’s degree program in international relations to fellow prisoners, while also providing courses in English and Hebrew.

This prison educational program, which Mr. Barghouti has coined “Revolution of Light,” is designed to teach young Palestinians “that you must want to live to serve your country, not die for your country,” notes Mr. Jabri of the Free Marwan Barghouti Campaign.

Jehad Manasreh, one of some 600 Palestinians who have graduated under Mr. Barghouti’s tutelage, recounts an introductory course designed to break down factionalism and biases.

“Marwan taught us that it is not acceptable to stay in your small ideological corner,” says Mr. Manasreh. “I have to see how others think, accept them, and understand their views – even if they are against what I believe.”

Key themes in Mr. Barghouti’s lessons: unity and community.

“Marwan taught us that you can perhaps succeed 50% of your goals as an individual, but you can succeed 90% as a group,” says Mr. Manasreh, a former high school dropout in prison who earned a master’s and is now a political activist.

“We must ... build coalitions with those who disagree with us, because differences in opinions strengthen your decisions.”

Mr. Barghouti recently began teaching a master’s course – in Israeli affairs.

Relatives and colleagues worry that Mr. Barghouti’s role as a unifying figure is hurting his chances of release; the far-right Israeli government and Mr. Abbas both have vested interests in his imprisonment. His living conditions have reportedly deteriorated since far-right Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir ordered him detained in solitary confinement in December.

Relatives have not been able to communicate with him. According to his lawyers, he has had limited access to medical care and has suffered rapid weight loss.

During a March 25 visit by his lawyers, Mr. Barghouti exhibited extensive bruising and said he had been beaten by prison guards on March 6 until he collapsed, family members say.

Yet they insist he is in good spirits.

When asked about the way forward, Muqbel Barghouti quotes his brother’s words.

“We Palestinians have our ‘Mandela.’ We are waiting for an Israeli de Klerk.”