Hamas has said that the group would only release all 240 Israeli hostages held in Gaza if Israel agrees to free all Palestinian prisoners. Among those locked up is Marwan Barghouti, sentenced to life imprisonment in 2004 for deadly attacks against Israelis. For many Palestinians, their “Nelson Mandela” is a leader-in-waiting.
After the gruesome attacks on October 7 that killed 1,400 Israelis and saw 240 men, women and children taken hostage by Hamas, a spokesman for the group’s military wing stated that the “price to pay” for the return of hostages was to “empty [Israeli] prisons of all Palestinian prisoners”.
Marwan Barghouti, nicknamed “Palestine’s Nelson Mandela”, is one of the most famous among them. Arrested by Israeli forces in 2002, the former leader of Tanzim, a militant faction of Fatah, was sentenced to five life terms in prison for multiple accounts of murder and membership of a terrorist organisation.
“Every time there’s an internal crisis or a flare-up with Israel, his name comes up,” said Jean-Paul Chagnollaud, head of the Institut de Recherche et d'études Méditerranée Moyen-Orient (iReMMO), a Paris-based think tank.
“He was arrested over 20 years ago, during the [2000-2005] Second Intifada. He was a very active Fatah leader and was not assassinated,” explained Chagnollaud. “That’s an important detail because at the time, there were many targeted assassinations and he wasn’t one of them. He was arrested and I don’t think that was by accident.”
Behind the bars of his prison cell, Barghouti has refused to be silenced. He played a key role in signing the Prisoner’s Document in 2006, written by Palestinian prisoners affiliated with Fatah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP).
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The text called for the creation of a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders, for Palestinian resistance to be limited to territories occupied in 1967, for a mutual ceasefire to be respected and for Palestinians to uphold their right to resist occupation in accordance with international law. Its goal was to form a coalition government in order to break the political deadlock brought on by Hamas’s 2006 electoral victory in the Gaza Strip. Considered a “terrorist organisation” by the EU, US and Israel, the Islamist group’s victory was never recognised and led to violent clashes between Fatah and Hamas supporters.
Popular among young Palestinians
Over the years, Barghouti has positioned himself as the only person capable of uniting rival Palestinian political groups. “He is close to Hamas and accompanied the group on several occasions, notably with the Prisoner’s Document. He managed to get Hamas and Fatah to agree. He’s someone who has the ability to bring people together, and that’s why he had a good chance of winning the legislative elections in 2021,” said Chagnollaud.
But the 2021 Palestinian elections never took place. Since the death of Yasser Arafat in 2004, Mahmud Abbas has been the sole president of the Palestinian Authority. Although his mandate officially expired in 2009, Abbas indefinitely postponed the elections, citing Israel’s refusal to allow the inclusion of East Jerusalem in the polls.
Many experts, however, believe the real reason behind the 88-year-old president’s decision was to avoid a crushing defeat. “The fairly reliable Israeli and Palestinian polls gave Barghouti a serious chance of winning over Abbas. He still has prestige among the Palestinian population,” said Chagnollaud.
French geopolitical scholar and Middle East expert Frédéric Encel agrees. “He spent many years in prison in Israel, which obviously gives him a reputation of probity, heroism and patriotism in the eyes of Palestinians,” Encel explained. “When he was head of Fatah he was in favour of an alliance with Hamas, which is not the case for all members of the Palestinian Authority.”
In recent years, Barghouti has emerged in Palestinian polls as the most popular figure among young people, far ahead of Abbas and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.
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In August 2023, his wife Fadwa Barghouti launched yet another international campaign calling for his release, called “Freedom for Marwan Barghouti, the Mandela of Palestine”.
“There have been campaigns to free Barghouti for years, namely to nominate him for a Nobel Peace prize. Like Mandela, he has spent more than 20 years in prison, so this reinforces his symbolic value as a political negotiator,” said Chagnollaud. “It’s quite logical because basically, it reinforces the notion that he has the capacity to be a unifying leader and get out of an impossible situation.”
A prison stay has long been a source of legitimacy for the Palestinian people, he noted. "Those who come out of prison are adorned with a halo, it’s a kind of resistance rite of passage,” said Chagnollaud.
On the political stage, few people can fill Barghouti’s shoes. “Potential leaders have no charisma and what’s more, are hated by the population precisely because they’re part of the Palestinian security apparatus that collaborates with Israeli security,” said Chagnollaud.
“When it comes to who’s more popular among Palestinians for example, it’s Barghouti and not Mohammed Dahlan,” Encel adds.
Dahlan was a former Fatah leader in Gaza and has been in exile in the UAE since Hamas took control of the Strip in 2007. In a recent and rare interview with The Economist, the businessman convicted of corruption spoke of the need to establish a government in the Gaza Strip made up of technocrats from Gaza and the West Bank for two years, after the war with Israel ends. After this transition period, he said elections could be held without the exclusion of Hamas, “which will not disappear”.
If Dahlan didn’t mention Barghouti it’s because he doesn’t believe in a single, fortuitous leader. For him, no one person can resolve the Palestinian crisis alone because, as he told The Economist, “the time for heroes passed with Arafat”.
‘Israel will not manage to eradicate Hamas’
The chances of Barghouti becoming a leader after the war ends are low, according to Chagnollaud. Israel has not responded to the Hamas call for a prisoner exchange and had demanded an unconditional release of the hostages held by Hamas. "An exchange of that sort is very rare, and anything can change from one moment to the next. If he were to be released, yes, he could play a role. But in the current chaos, I don’t see how that’s possible. Unless he is co-opted by Fatah, who don’t want him,” he noted.
For Encel, there is no guarantee that Barghouti will agree to "take on major responsibilities at the head of the Palestinian Authority and more specifically in Gaza”.
As the war between Hamas and Israel intensifies, the future of the Gaza Strip seems increasingly unclear. “I don’t believe that Israel will manage to eradicate Hamas, even its military wing,” said Chagnollaud. “And even if the Israelis managed, another military branch would pop up sooner or later.”
“Gaza, on the other hand, is going to be destroyed. It’s a total disaster and no one knows what the repercussions will be,” he concludes.
This article is a translation of the original version in French.
