Barghouti’s election shows Fatah congress matters

The eighth congress of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s leading movement, Fatah, was held in Ramallah last week. It concluded with the election of the group’s highest body, the 18-member Central Committee, and its quasi-legislative body, the 80-member Fatah Revolutionary Council.

Much has been said about Fatah’s lack of a clear political strategy for liberation and the efforts to engineer the elections to serve the ruling power in Ramallah, but one result is without question. It is an indisputable fact that the imprisoned Marwan Barghouti and some of his key supporters emerged victorious.

Despite languishing in prison, Barghouti received the highest number of votes in the Central Committee elections — 1,879 out of 2,514 — while his wife, Fadwa Barghouti, had the second-highest vote total for the Fatah Revolutionary Council following Dalal Saeb Erekat. A number of prisoners and recently released inmates did well. These are not symbolic results. They are a reminder that, more than two decades after his arrest, Barghouti remains the most important figure in Palestinian politics.

While the Palestinian leadership has largely been shunned by Israel (except for security coordination) and by the US (at the request of Israel), the fact that a popular, uncorrupt leader mustered such a high vote count while imprisoned dismisses the regularly repeated Israeli-American excuses for not engaging with the Palestinian leadership.

More than two decades after his arrest, Barghouti remains the most important figure in Palestinian politics

Daoud Kuttab

For the extremist Netanyahu government, Hamas is much easier to demonize than the moderate Palestinians, whether that is President Mahmoud Abbas or Barghouti. The popularity of Barghouti transcends the Fatah movement, and Palestinians at large, as his supporters and worldwide solidarity groups echo the support that South Africa’s Nelson Mandela received while in jail for a similar length of time.

What is little known is that, while in jail, Barghouti has had a positive influence on many fellow inmates, including hard-liners. In May 2006, he initiated a “Prisoner Document” that he convinced Hamas and Islamic Jihad leaders to sign. It called for the establishment of a Palestinian state on the June 1967 borders, putting aside the ambitions and public efforts of some to negate Israel. Barghouti has never changed his moderate stance, despite the constant attacks and humiliations by Israeli guards and politicians while in prison.

In the many interviews he has transmitted through friends and lawyers, Barghouti has insisted on the need for a Palestinian state alongside Israel. Barghouti, who is fluent in Hebrew as a result of his decades in Israeli prisons, can do more to present the need for a negotiated settlement based on the two-state solution and a nonviolent strategy for the liberation of Palestine than anyone else. No wonder that about 160 of the UN’s 193 member states have recognized Palestine on the June 1967 borders.

These might be dark times for Barghouti, being held in isolation and unable to communicate with the rest of the world, but his success in the Fatah congress sends a signal that uncorrupt, serious and moderate Palestinian leadership does exist.

Barghouti has never changed his moderate stance, despite the constant attacks and humiliations while in prison

Daoud Kuttab

People under occupation are not obliged to be totally democratic to gain freedom from an illegal foreign occupier. Nevertheless, to his credit, Abbas has carried out every pledge he made in New York last September, even though he was unjustly barred from attending the UN General Assembly in person. Efforts by Israel and the US to dismiss these reforms have proven to be an attempt to justify the continued rejection of the requirements of the peace negotiations.

The combined French-Saudi initiative known as the Global Alliance for the Implementation of the Two-State Solution has produced impressive results in terms of recognition of Palestine (despite German intransigence and the refusals of Italy’s Giorgia Meloni and former Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban). However, the recognition process also requires engagement with the new generation of Palestinian leaders emerging from various reform efforts.

Palestine held successful municipal elections, including one in Gaza City, last month and the Fatah congress last week. In the autumn, it is expected to finalize the new, smaller Palestinian National Council. This will be followed by the approval of a Palestinian constitution, which will lay the ground for legislative and presidential elections. Even if not released by then, Barghouti will no doubt be elected as the next Palestinian president.

For now, it is unacceptable to continue isolating and humiliating the Palestinian leader, who is being held in Israeli jails by occupiers whom he has refused to recognize as having the right to try him and imprison him.

It is incumbent on anyone genuinely interested in solving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict to engage with Barghouti, as well as his wife. The new crop of Palestinian leaders who are part of his orbit, such as Jibril Rajoub from the Hebron area and the recently released Zakaria Zubeidi from Jenin, must be empowered to usher in the post-Abbas Palestinian era with confidence, moderation and an insistence on the Palestinians’ right to self-determination and statehood.

• Daoud Kuttab is an award-winning Palestinian journalist and former Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton University. He is the author of “State of Palestine Now: Practical and Logical Arguments for the Best Way to Bring Peace to the Middle East.”

X: @daoudkuttab