Fatah looks to the past after Abbas

Kareem Shaheen

• Last Updated: November 06. 2009 10:06PM UAE / November 6. 2009 6:06PM GMT

Marwan Barghouti before he was imprisoned in 2004. Heidi Levine / AP Photo

It has not been the best week for the Middle East peace process. First, the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, riled the Arab world by praising the Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu for what she said were “unprecedented concessions” for the cause of peace by agreeing to slow down settlement expansion.

The reconciliation of Fatah and Hamas remains stalled despite a call by the Palestinian Authority for elections in January next year; and then, Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, said he would not stand for re-election.

While Mr Abbas may have left himself enough wiggle room for a change of heart, the decision has highlighted the dearth in potential successors. But one possible candidate may hold the key to Palestinian unity, if he is let out of prison.

Marwan Barghouti, 50, came to prominence as one of the leaders of the first Palestinian intifada in 1987, when Yasser Arafat and the rest of the Fatah leadership was exiled in Tunisia. For his role in the uprising, he was deported to Jordan, only to be brought back in 1994 after the signing of the Oslo Accord. He became a Palestinian legislator two years later.

He cemented his position as a member of Fatah’s dynamic “young guard”, a counterbalance to the staid leadership of long-time Fatah supremos, when he assumed a populist, agitator role in the second intifada that began in 2000. As the leader of Tanzim, a militant wing of Fatah created in 1995 by Arafat, Barghouti led several marches on Israeli checkpoints that often resulted in outbreaks of violence.

He was arrested in April 2002 in Ramallah. His indictment listed 37 charges, including accusations of involvement in 26 killings and planning numerous suicide bombings.

Barghouti and opponents of his incarceration protested against the arrest and trial as illegitimate, on the grounds it had occurred on Palestinian land outside Israel’s jurisdiction. The campaign also argued that the arrest violated Article 49 of the fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits the transfer of people from an occupied territory to the land of the occupying power. Opponents also say that Barghouti had diplomatic immunity as a parliamentarian, and that his treatment following the arrest violated international treaties against torture.

He was ultimately found guilty for five of the killings and ordered to serve five life terms in an Israeli jail.

Since the political deadlock stemming from Hamas’s parliamentary election victory in 2006 and its forcible takeover of Gaza, calls for the release of Barghouti have intensified, with many seeing him as a potential leader of a Palestinian unity government.

Prior to his arrest in 2002, Barghouti wrote an op-ed for The Washington Post in which he declared his support for a two-state solution, claimed that Israel had tried to assassinate him and denounced violence against Israeli civilians, while maintaining the legitimacy of armed resistance against the military. “Israelis must abandon the myth that it is possible to have peace and occupation at the same time, that peaceful coexistence is possible between slave and master,” Barghouti, a fluent Hebrew speaker said. “Israel will have security only after the end of occupation, not before.”

The way forward in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he said, was to “end the occupation, allow the Palestinians to live in freedom and let the independent and equal neighbours of Israel and Palestine negotiate a peaceful future with close economic and cultural ties”.

He condemned US policies at the time for their failure to stop settlement expansion, calling Gen Anthony Zinni, America’s envoy to the PA and Israel, “hapless”.

“While I, and the Fatah movement to which I belong, strongly oppose attacks and the targeting of civilians inside Israel, our future neighbour, I reserve the right to protect myself, to resist the Israeli occupation of my country and to fight for my freedom,” he said, adding that he was neither a terrorist nor a pacifist.

He remains a powerful voice within the Fatah leadership. During the party’s 2009 congress, he was voted while in prison into the Central Committee, the party’s policymaking body.

His lawyer reportedly told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that he was considering running in the next Palestinian presidential elections following his congress success. Barghouti had planned to run in the 2005 presidential elections against Mahmoud Abbas, but pulled out just before the vote.

Danny Ayalon, Israel’s deputy foreign minister, said Barghouti would not be pardoned if he won the presidential elections.

Nadim Shehadi, a Middle East expert and associate fellow at Chatham House, an international affairs debate group based in London, was sceptical about the possibility of Barghouti’s release. “For me it’s all speculation. People have been saying for years that he is being prepared to be a new Mandela,” he said.

Still, if Barghouti is released, and without that release being used as a partisan tool to derail Hamas, he has the potential to be a unifier of the Palestinian factions, said Mr Shehadi.

Barghouti’s tenure in prison earned him the respect of fellow leaders from other Palestinian factions, including Hamas, Jo-Ann Mort, the chief executive of ChangeCommunications, a strategic communications firm operating in the US, Israel and the Palestinian territories, wrote in an article for Foreign Policy magazine.

“The man in prison, Marwan Barghouti, seems to be the right man for the job,” said Ms Mort.

Still, the prospect of a pardon has raised the ire of some Israelis. In 2005, then-foreign minister Silvan Shalom said: “We must not forget that he is a cold-blooded murderer who was sentenced by the court to five life sentences.”

Hamas wants Barghouti released, along with hundreds of other prisoners, in a swap for kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. From inside prison in 2006, Barghouti, along with members of other Palestinian factions, issued guidelines for a Palestinian unity government called the National Conciliation Document of the Prisoners. The release of the manifesto was derailed the following month when Mr Shalit was kidnapped.

kshaheen@thenational.ae