The son of Marwan Barghouti, the Palestinian prisoner often described as the Nelson Mandela of the Palestinian movement, has called on the British government to put his father’s release at the heart of Palestinian democratic renewal.
Arab Barghouti warned the UK government that its recent recognition of a Palestinian state risks providing nothing but false hope unless it follows through by using diplomatic channels to secure his father’s freedom.
“Simply saying ‘we support a two-state solution’ without doing anything about it is deepening the problem, because you are just giving the Palestinian people false hopes,” he said.
Barghouti also insisted that nothing in law would prevent his father from standing in the Palestinian parliamentary elections due on 1 November, even if the Israelis keep him in jail.
A cross-party group of British MPs have been campaigning for the release of Barghouti, arguing he is a unifying figure who can hasten a two-state solution, the peaceful political outcome he has championed from inside jail. Successive opinion polls have shown he remains the most popular candidate to become president of the Palestinian Authority in succession to Mahmoud Abbas.
The Foreign Office has so far declined to back the calls for his release.
Barghouti, a member of the Fatah party central committee, has been held in jail for 22 years after being given multiple life sentences in September 2003 for five murders, at a trial that a lengthy Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) inquiry found failed to meet the standards of fairness. Barghouti, during the second intifada, said he opposed the targeting of civilians inside Israel, but defended the right to resist the occupation.
Israel has released more than 500 Palestinians serving life sentences in the last 15 years, but has always excluded Barghouti. His son warned a meeting in London: “The UK recognition of Palestine is going to be seen as symbolic in the history books as long as there are no actual steps being taken on the ground.”
He said: “Current Palestinian politics is dysfunctional and that can only be changed with democratic renewal, including a new leadership that really represents the people. We have not had elections for 20 years.”
“My father does not have a magic stick, he cannot change everything overnight, but people look at my father as a source of hope,” he said.
Barghouti said his father, freed from jail, would be in a position to sell any agreement to Palestinians, and so represented the best route to a non-violent solution, adding: “The reason he is not being released is because the Israeli government does not want a legitimate Palestinian leader, because it does not want a two-state solution.”
He said his father has been kept in solitary confinement since the 7 October attack on Israel and has been assaulted multiple times, most recently in October, leading to broken ribs. He said: “If that is not an invitation to speak out against the violations of international law, I don’t know what is. I would expect the UK government, as an upholder of international law, to go further and call for his release. He can change the status quo, Palestinian politics, and take us on a path to where there is real hope for a political settlement.
“We have not yet had brave enough British politicians when it comes to the highest level of politics.”
Labour MPs said there is a growing sense of frustration that the UK government has sat back after the recognition of Palestine, and that France and Spain have been more proactive.
Asked if the UK supports Barghouti’s release, the Foreign Office in written answers states it supports the International Committee of the Red Cross having access to Palestinian prisoners.
With some MPs reluctant to back Barghouti on the basis that he was found guilty by an Israeli court of organising the murder of four Israelis, and one Greek monk, the Barghouti campaign has been working to reassure MPs about his innocence and the many flaws in the Israeli judicial process.
The author of the 2003 IPU inquiry, Simon Henderson, told the Westminster meeting he compiled his highly critical report after full conversations with the Israeli attorney general. He said he discovered that, of the 96 witnesses, only 21 were in a position to testify to his involvement, and yet none did so, while 12 of them explicitly exonerated him. Israel claims that at the time of the second intifada Barghouti helped found the armed wing of Fatah, and that the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade had claimed him as its leader.
