There’s one Palestinian who could help end the conflict. He’s in an Israeli jail.
This spring I took a walk through the farming village of Kobar in the West Bank. Its low-rise buildings wound around shrubs and bushes; pale pink blossom was just starting to bloom on the almond trees. On the surrounding hillsides you could see Jewish settlements – neatly ordered rows of identical villas with red tiled roofs. In the months before my visit, armed settlers from places like these had been attacking Palestinian villagers, largely with impunity. The buildings of Kobar were covered in graffiti, some of which read “Death to Israel”.
Yet on the day I was there the mood in the village was cheerful. I was being shown around by the son of Marwan Barghouti, Palestine’s most famous prisoner. Arab Barghouti, a smartly dressed life coach in his early 30s, cuts a different figure to his scruffy, moon-faced father, whose image is stencilled all over the walls of Kobar. Palestinian drivers who spotted us flashed victory signs as they passed by. “One more week!” they shouted. The release of Arab’s father, everyone felt, was imminent.
Barghouti, a Palestinian politician, activist and militant leader, was convicted of murder by an Israeli court more than two decades ago for ordering operations that killed five civilians. Though he has been shut away from the outside world since then, he is more popular with Palestinians than any other politician. A poll published in March 2024 by Khalil Shikaki, a Palestinian researcher, suggested that if there were an election he would win more votes than both his nearest rivals combined. When Hamas seized 250 Israeli hostages during a murderous assault on Israel on October 7th last year, it raised the possibility of a prisoner exchange in which Barghouti might finally be freed.
The Israelis seem to be contemplating such an outcome. Weeks before I was in Kobar, a senior Israeli intelligence officer had come to the home of Barghouti’s younger brother, Moukbil. The officer politely asked if the family had heard any news about the famous prisoner. Moukbil sensed that the Israeli, who obviously knew far more about Barghouti’s situation than the family, was fishing for insights into what might happen if he were freed. Would Barghouti protest? Seek office?
Fight?
It is a strange moment in the long-running Israeli-Palestinian conflict. By most measures the situation is bleak. The brief optimism sparked by the Oslo accords in 1993, which were supposed to usher in a Palestinian state existing peacefully alongside Israel, was extinguished years ago. The current round of fighting is the deadliest of any since the state of Israel was created in 1948: nearly 40,000 Gazans are reported to have been killed and around 1,500 Israelis. In both cases the dead are mostly civilians. Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, shows no inclination to stop the campaign.
Yet Netanyahu remains under pressure to free the Israeli hostages, which will almost certainly mean an exchange. A mediator involved in discussions told me Barghouti’s name is second on the list of prisoners Hamas wants out. If he is released, the dynamics of the conflict could shift. Unlike the lethargic head of the Palestinian Authority (PA), Mahmoud Abbas, he is widely respected.
Hamas’s Islamist commanders speak of him with admiration, even though he is from a secular faction. And unlike them, he has a track record of campaigning for a two-state solution. He is said to speak Hebrew flawlessly and without an accent. Several Israeli politicians count him as a friend.
“The only leader who believes in two states and will be elected against any other competitor is Marwan Barghouti,” said Ami Ayalon, the former head of Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency. “It’s in our interest he’ll compete in the next Palestinian elections – the sooner, the better.”
There are many Israelis who believe Barghouti is not interested in peace now – if he ever was – and that his release will come back to haunt them. Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’s military leader, was freed in a prisoner exchange in 2011, and went on to plan the massacres of October 7th. “Barghouti is as bad as Hamas,” said one retired intelligence chief. “He didn’t change in prison. He became more extreme.”
In truth, it is hard to say what Barghouti believes these days. His most recent interview took place almost 20 years ago. The last known photograph of him – shackled, pale, stubbly, with thinning hair – is more than a decade old. Who is the man incarcerated beneath the high walls of Meggido prison? And could he really be, as some claim, the Palestinian Mandela?
The region known as Palestine was ruled by the Ottomans for hundreds of years until the British took it over in 1917. The British quickly found themselves enmeshed in a messy intercommunal conflict, exacerbated by the promises they had made to both sides. The land contained holy sites to which both Muslims and Jews claimed ownership, and both groups went on to oppose the British presence – violently at times.
In 1948 the British withdrew and the new state of Israel fought its Arab neighbours in a war for independence. During the fighting Israeli forces drove hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes. They were not allowed back.
When an armistice was reached, Israel established itself within a boundary that became known as the “green line” (supposedly after the colour of the pen used to mark it on a map).
Barghouti was born just over a decade later in the West Bank, which fell outside Israel’s green line and was under Jordanian control. His family of nine lived crammed into a two-bedroom house; the sleek white Bauhaus buildings of Tel Aviv shimmered in the distance. There were few jobs to be had in the village: Barghouti’s father, who was a builder, sometimes travelled as far as Beirut in search of work.
In 1967, when Barghouti was nearly eight, the six-day war broke out and Israeli forces seized East Jerusalem, Gaza and the West Bank. The Barghoutis now lived under Israeli occupation. Their neighbours were beaten up or arrested for flying Palestinian flags. Military bases and Jewish settlements sprang up around their village. Israeli soldiers shot dead the family dog for barking.
According to childhood friends Barghouti became involved in the communist party, which was influential in the occupied territories at the time. While some parties called for the destruction of Israel, the communists believed in non-violent resistance and the two-state solution. After school, Barghouti would march round central Ramallah at the head of protests. When he wasn’t studying or protesting, he helped his father build an extension on their relatives’ house and tried to steal glimpses of the family’s daughter, Fadwa.
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