Vincent Lemire & Anna C. Zielinska, “Marwan Barghouti, l’homme de l’espoir pour une Palestine démocratique”, The Conversation France, 28 Oct 2025

Imprisoned for twenty-three years in Israel for crimes he has always denied, Marwan Barghouti, now 66 years old, is according to all opinion polls the most popular political leader among the Palestinian population. If he were released and took part in the next presidential election promised by Mahmoud Abbas before the end of 2026, this senior Fatah figure could play a fundamental role in establishing a just and lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

Determined to achieve Palestinian independence within the 1967 borders, the Palestinian leader is equally opposed to attacks targeting Israeli civilians. Around the world, and in Israel itself, influential voices are calling for his release, which the Netanyahu government continues, for the time being, to oppose.

Marwan Barghouti was born in 1959 in Kobar, not far from Ramallah. From 1994 onward, he served as Secretary-General of Fatah in the West Bank and, from 1996, as a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, the parliament of the Palestinian Authority created following the Oslo Accords. A key figure in the Second Intifada (2000–2005), he went underground in 2001 and has been imprisoned in Israel since 2002. The Palestinian leader has always denied having ordered the crimes for which he was sentenced to life in prison.

He is sometimes referred to as the “Palestinian Mandela.” This comparison is challenged by some: whereas Barghouti took part in military actions, Nelson Mandela is said to have advocated non-violent struggle within the African National Congress (ANC). This is false. Mandela did in fact found and later lead, starting in May 1961, the organization Umkhonto we Sizwe (“Spear of the Nation”), the ANC’s armed wing.

Since his imprisonment twenty-three years ago, Barghouti’s release was for a long time demanded internationally only by left-wing political parties (notably the French Communist Party), but this demand has now become largely cross-party. In January 2024, Ami Ayalon, former head of Shin Bet (Israel’s domestic intelligence service), stated that Barghouti’s release is indispensable for creating a political alternative in Palestine, and thus an effective peace process.

In early October 2025, Ronald Lauder, a key figure in the American Jewish community and president of the World Jewish Congress since 2007, proposed traveling personally to Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt (where negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians were taking place) to include Barghouti’s release in the final ceasefire agreement — a proposal rejected by Benjamin Netanyahu. Hadja Lahbib, the current European Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Management and former Belgian Minister of Foreign Affairs from 2022 to 2024, who comes from the center-right, recently stated that she sees in Barghouti “the Palestinian Nelson Mandela” who could “win the trust of his people while leading them toward peace.” Finally, on October 23, 2025, Donald Trump, when asked about Barghouti in an interview with Time, replied: “This is the question of the day. So I’m going to make a decision.” The same magazine also reported that Marwan’s wife, lawyer Fadwa Barghouti, directly appealed to the U.S. president to ask him to contribute to her husband’s release.

If, for the time being, Benjamin Netanyahu refuses to consider such a possibility, this release now seems less improbable than in the past. But what does Marwan Barghouti really want, how influential is he on the Palestinian political scene, and what could his possible release change?

Barghouti’s political commitments

Holding a master’s degree in international relations from Birzeit University (West Bank), with a research thesis devoted to General de Gaulle’s policy in the Middle East, Barghouti was arrested several times for his activities at the head of student organizations. During the First Intifada, he was exiled to Jordan (1987–1993). His return to Palestine was made possible by the Oslo negotiations, and in 1994 he became Secretary-General of Fatah in the West Bank, a strong supporter of the peace process while opposing the continuation of settlement expansion.

Several sources attest to the Palestinian leader’s political project. In 1994, in an interview with Graham Usher, Barghouti presented himself as a bridge between two Palestinian political cultures: one shaped outside Palestine, the other under Israeli occupation. He viewed the Oslo Accords as the end of the dream of a “Greater Israel,” since the Israeli government had recognized the Palestinians as a people and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) as their representative. In his view, independence is the primary objective of the struggle, as it is the indispensable condition for democratic development in Palestine. He defends pluralism and feared that a Hamas victory in the 1996 legislative elections (in which the Islamist movement ultimately did not run) would lead to the establishment of Islamic law.

During the Second Intifada (2000–2005), he played a leading political role as head of the Tanzim, Fatah’s “popular organizations,” some elements of which engaged in armed struggle. The armed action of the Tanzim at that time was characterized by a rejection of suicide bombings and attacks on civilians, with operations focused on the Israeli occupation in Gaza and the West Bank. In August 2001, a few months before his arrest, his car was targeted by two anti-tank missiles and his bodyguard was killed.

At his trial in 2004, Barghouti reiterated that his role within Fatah was primarily political, and he has always denied ordering the murders of which he was accused. He advocates the creation of truly democratic institutions in order to preserve pluralism, and stresses that the future Palestinian government will have to respect opposition groups. Lastly, he sees the PLO as a transitional stage in the process of establishing the Palestinian Authority and then the Palestinian state.

He compares this role to that of the World Zionist Organization, which he describes as “an international institution that facilitates and supports the right of return.”

His ideal Palestinian state is, he explains:

“A democratic state, based on law, human rights, and respect for a plurality of faiths and diversity of opinions. All the things, in fact, that have historically been denied us in our struggle for a homeland. For Palestinians, nothing less will be acceptable.”

In another interview conducted in 2001, at the beginning of the Second Intifada, Barghouti said:

“The goal of the Intifada is to put an end to the Israeli occupation. This is a very clear goal, and there is consensus on that to mean independence. […] The Intifada will not stop until there is an end to the occupation of the entire Occupied Territories and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state on 1967 borders.”

At the same time, a few months after the outbreak of the Second Intifada and through a senior Shin Bet official, he proposed a credible truce to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who refused it. The fact that Barghouti has been in prison since 2002 did not prevent him from taking part in the Palestinian parliamentary elections of January 2006, the most recent to date, in which he was overwhelmingly re-elected.

A few months before his arrest in 2002, Barghouti published an op-ed in the Washington Post entitled “Want Security? End the Occupation,” in which he denounced Ariel Sharon’s supposedly security-based arguments:

“The only way for Israelis to have security is, quite simply, to end the 35-year-old Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory. 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. The lack of Israeli security is born of the lack of Palestinian freedom. Israel will have security only after the end of occupation, not before.”

These words have lost none of their blunt clarity or their force. Alongside the tragedy in Gaza, the occupation of the West Bank today causes incalculable harm to Palestinians, of course, but also within Israeli society, which is gradually being corroded by the systematic and deadly brutality of its settlers and soldiers.

As philosopher Sari Nusseibeh told us, Barghouti’s commitment to a free and democratic Palestinian state was already visible in the 1980s, when he was one of the few Palestinian activists to engage in open discussions with Labor members of the Israeli Knesset. His position has remained unchanged ever since. In the Washington Post article already cited, Barghouti spelled out his strategic line:

“I, and the Fatah movement to which I belong, strongly oppose attacks and the targeting of civilians inside Israel, our future neighbor. […] I do not seek to destroy Israel but only to end its occupation of my country.”

In a letter written in 2016, he also insisted on the profound reforms that would have to be initiated in Palestine in order to renew and strengthen the democratic contract between leaders and citizens:

“We cannot separate the liberation of the land and the liberation of the people. We need a revolution in our education, intellectual and cultural systems, as well as in our legal system in order to build the factors of perseverance for our people and provide the youth with hope and confidence in order for them to continue and develop their fight to gain freedom, the right of return and national independence.”

What his release could bring

Barghouti is currently serving five life sentences. His trial did not meet international standards: Barghouti and his distinguished lawyers — Jawad Boulus, Gisèle Halimi, and Daniel Voguet among others — argued that under international law, the Tel Aviv District Court did not have jurisdiction to try the acts of which he was accused. For this reason, Barghouti refused to respond in detail to the charges brought against him (the murder of the priest Georgios Tsibouktzakis and four other civilians), limiting himself to repeating his condemnation of terrorist attacks against civilians.

His popularity among Palestinians is striking. According to a poll conducted in May 2025 by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, 39% of Palestinian voters (in the West Bank and Gaza) consider Barghouti the most suitable successor to Mahmoud Abbas, placing him in first position, far ahead of Khaled Meshaal, the political leader of Hamas in exile in Qatar, who came second with 12%.

Another poll conducted just before October 7, in September 2023, on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the Oslo Accords, already showed that in a presidential election, 34% of respondents would have voted for Marwan Barghouti in the first round, and 17% for Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. In the second round, Barghouti would have won easily with 60% of the vote against Haniyeh, whereas Haniyeh would have won with 58% against Mahmoud Abbas.

Not only is Barghouti the Palestinians’ preferred political figure and a barrier against Hamas, he also restores confidence in the political process itself. According to the same poll, voter turnout would be 20% higher if Barghouti were a candidate.

The release of Marwan Barghouti will not be enough to put an end to a conflict that has lasted for more than a century. He is a human being who can make mistakes and may put forward solutions that prove disappointing. But given what he represents today for Palestinians, his release appears to be an indispensable prerequisite for any political process.

Mahmoud Abbas’s cancellation of the legislative elections scheduled for May 2021, which were supposed to mark reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas, was met with distrust by Palestinian public opinion, which no longer identifies with this discredited, ineffective, and out-of-touch leader, both politically and economically. At this dramatic moment in their history, the Palestinian people urgently need to be able to debate their future freely, with new and constructive horizons.

The launch of a democratic process will not happen without Barghouti

Today, in addition to the trust he enjoys in international political and intellectual circles and among the Israeli public, Marwan Barghouti is supported by a large segment of the Palestinian population. If a viable and democratic state can emerge in Palestine, it will be with him.

There is an urgency, because the establishment of Palestinian governance in Gaza, if it is to have any chance of success, must be supported by the population — at a time when Israel’s far-right government is instead seeking to promote mafia-like clans in Gaza for the sole purpose of countering Hamas; and also at a time when Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s far-right minister in charge of prisons, has just physically threatened Barghouti in his cell and covers up the ill-treatment to which he is regularly subjected.

For a Palestinian government to be supported not only in the West Bank but also in Gaza, the structures of the Palestinian Authority must be profoundly rebuilt. For this, elections are indispensable. They were very close to taking place in May 2021 but, as mentioned earlier, were postponed indefinitely following Israel’s decision to ban polling stations in East Jerusalem, thus depriving the city’s 400,000 Palestinian residents of participation. Today, thanks to smartphones and new digital identification technologies, electronic voting would make it easy to overcome this obstacle.

Marwan Barghouti is today the uncontested favorite in future Palestinian elections. If they were held without him, they would thereby lose all credibility. He could of course run from inside prison, as in 2021. But recreating this situation of subjugation and hostility would not allow for a genuinely participatory, citizen-driven electoral campaign. Palestinians would continue to feel that their aspirations are being humiliated. Israelis would continue to see Barghouti only as an imprisoned “terrorist” and would be unable to imagine the emergence of a Palestinian state as an acceptable — or even desirable — future.

A man and a symbol

Presenting Barghouti as a providential figure capable of saving not only Palestine but also Israel sometimes provokes ironic reactions, including toward the authors of this text. This irony is misplaced.

In degraded political situations, every society needs unifying symbols. This was the case in South Africa with Nelson Mandela, in the United States with Martin Luther King, and also in Poland and Czechoslovakia: Lech Wałęsa and Václav Havel did not offer ready-made solutions, but their release and then their rise to power were part of a process of emancipation and political awakening for their respective peoples.

To embody a struggle is not a cult of personality. Certain charismatic leaders emerge in situations where all other sources of stability have collapsed. As a result, they become a crystallization of political aspirations — and this too must be taken seriously in the historical turning point we are going through.