The spectacle of Israel’s Itamar Ben-Gvir humiliating maybe the preferred of all Palestinians in his jail cell was as unedifying because the nationwide safety 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 instructed Marwan Barghouti, the figurehead of secular Palestinian nationalism, who appeared shocked and scared.
His lawyer instructed Al-Arabiya TV that Ben-Gvir threatened him immediately and that his life is in peril.
Imprisoned since 2002 on homicide fees and sentenced to 5 life sentences plus an extra 40 years for his function within the second intifada, the 67-year-old had not been seen in a few years.
Picture:
Marwan Barghouti throughout his homicide trial in 2002. File pic: AP
The sight of this drawn, diminished determine will shock many throughout the Arab world, the place he’s each vastly in style and thought of a possible Palestinian unity chief, had been Israel to ever launch him.
Barghouti’s face, his arms cuffed above his head, stares out from partitions and buildings throughout the West Financial institution – a potent image of Palestinian struggling and resistance within the face of the Israeli occupation.
His greater than two-decade imprisonment leaves him untarnished from the costs of corruption and ineffectiveness levelled on the Palestinian management, and opinion polls earlier than 7 October 2023 noticed his reputation exceed that of each Ismail Haniyeh, head of Hamas’ political wing, and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
Picture:
Palestinians stroll by a portrait of jailed Marwan Barghouti close to the West Financial institution metropolis of Ramallah. File pic: AP
In an announcement, the Palestinian Authority condemned Ben-Gvir’s go to as an “unprecedented provocation and organised state terrorism”.
It is usually a transparent abuse of Ben-Gvir’s authority as nationwide safety minister, the place he has final oversight over Israel’s jail system and subsequently direct entry to the report variety of Palestinian detainees at the moment imprisoned there.
Barghouti’s household say he has been held in solitary confinement for the reason that 7 October assaults and has been subjected to brutal assaults, one in every of which left him severely injured.
Israeli mistreatment
Barghouti will likely be no stranger to Israeli mistreatment.
In an op-ed from jail to the New York Instances in 2017, he detailed the primary time he was tortured on the age of simply 18, when an Israeli interrogator “forced me to spread my legs while I stood naked in the interrogation room, before hitting my genitals”.
He handed out from the ache, hitting his head, which scarred completely. Afterwards, he wrote, the Israeli interrogator mocked him, saying he would “never procreate because people like me give birth only to terrorists and murderers”.
Picture:
Marwan Barghouti in 2012. File pic: AP
Barghouti’s launch has been a key element of ceasefire negotiations between Israel and Hamas, with talks in February 2024 breaking down when Israel refused to let him go.
Regardless of worldwide stress on Israel to make sure the humane remedy of its prisoners, the ICRC has not been granted entry to Palestinian prisoners in Israeli detention for the reason that 7 October assaults.
String of provocations
Ben-Gvir and his fellow ultra-nationalist coalition companion, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, each excel on the provocative act.
Lower than two weeks in the past, Ben-Gvir was filmed visiting the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem the place he mentioned he prayed, which is in direct violation of the established order settlement governing relations between Muslims and Jews on the key holy websites on Temple Mount.
Picture:
Itamar Ben-Gvir in Jerusalem’s Outdated Metropolis final month. Pic: Reuters
Keep in mind, it was Ariel Sharon’s go to to Temple Mount in 2000, which launched the second intifada, and you’re going to get a way of fairly how incendiary that was.
Equally, on Thursday, in what seemed to be a direct response to worldwide requires recognition of Palestinian statehood, Bezalel Smotrich introduced that Israel would begin the long-delayed E1 settlement challenge between the West Financial institution and East Jerusalem.
This, he mentioned, would “bury” any notion of a Palestinian state as soon as and for all.
The video exhibiting the general public humiliation of a person championed by the likes of Desmond Tutu and Jimmy Carter because the Palestinian Mandela, was launched simply hours later.
It seems to be like an try by Benjamin Netanyahu’s ultra-nationalist allies to ship a message each to Palestinians and to worldwide supporters of Palestinian statehood {that a} state, and its potential management, is nothing however a pipe-dream.
Picture:
A protester within the West Financial institution holds a poster depicting Barghouti throughout a rally in solidarity with Gaza and prisoners held by Israel. Pic: AP
‘Nonetheless pursuing’ Barghouti in jail
In 2013, Barghouti’s spouse, Fadwa, launched a marketing campaign for his launch and that of all Palestinian prisoners from Robben Island, the place Mandela was imprisoned, to attract consideration to the similarities between South Africa through the apartheid period and the plight of Palestinians below Israeli occupation.
After the discharge of this newest video, she wrote on her Fb web page that she barely recognised her husband and was scared to think about what he had been subjected to.
However her phrases had been additionally 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.”
