The daily Arabic independent online newspaper Elaph on Tuesday reported from Paris that secret meetings are being held between Israeli and Qatari delegations on a new exchange deal with Hamas that would include ten older prisoners serving long sentences in Israel, including Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti who is expected by many to take over when PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, who just celebrated his 88th birthday, goes to a, well, different place.
A senior diplomatic source told Elaph that the Israeli and Qatari delegations are working on preparing a new formula for an exchange deal that would include Israeli women, children, elderly, and young civilians, in addition to three senior IDF officers who were kidnapped by Hamas on October 7.
Three senior Fatah leaders are in the running to inherit Abbas in the role he inherited from Yasser Arafat in 2005:
Mohammad Dahlan, 62, the former leader of Fatah in Gaza, who was expelled with his surviving soldiers from the Strip by Hamas in 2007.
Hussein al-Sheikh, 63, secretary-general of the PLO executive committee since 2022, formerly the chief negotiator with Israel on Palestinian Authority affairs.
Marwan Barghouti, 64, the former leader of Tanzim, a military arm of Fatah, and the founder of the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, who is serving five cumulative life sentences for murders he committed or orchestrated, and an additional 40 years, a total of 140 years.
The source told Elaph that the Israeli delegation consists of Mossad and Shin Bet officers, one representative of the office of Benjamin Netanyahu, one from the National Security Council, and one from the IDF Military Intelligence Division. The Israeli delegation reportedly also includes a psychologist and a negotiations specialist. The meetings take place in the capital of a European country because previous meetings in Qatar and the repeated visits of the head of Mossad in Doha have generated criticism in Israel, according to Elaph.
Meanwhile, the London-based Arabic daily Al-Araby Al-Jadeed has learned that Cairo and some other Arab capitals are pressuring Washington to pressure Israel to release Barghouti, as part of “revitalizing the Palestinian Authority.”
An Egyptian source familiar with Cairo’s move said it “comes within the framework of implementing the American and Egyptian vision for a new form of the Palestinian Authority, which could include Barghouti.”
He added, “If Washington is working seriously to restructure the Palestinian Authority so that it is prepared to take over the reins in the Gaza Strip after the war ends, it must listen to other points of view.”
ANYONE BUT BARGHOUTI
From an Israeli perspective, Marwan Barghouti is likely the least desirable future PLO leader, although the left in Israel has been hailing the old murderer as the best of all possible solutions. On November 25, Prof. Dan Sagir, a researcher at the Leonard Davis Institute of International Relations at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, spelled out two romantic outcomes of the Gaza war: “In Israel, a centrist government and a coalition will be elected that will not include the religious extreme-right parties. Among the Palestinians, Marwan Barghouti will probably be chosen as the new Palestinian leader who will head the Palestinian Authority in place of Mahmoud Abbas, and the religious extreme right organizations of the Palestinians will lose their political power due to the disaster they brought upon their people in the Gaza Strip.”
Both “dreams” are possible only if the dreamer, in this case Prof. Sagir, ignores the fact that both the PA Arab and Israeli societies prefer their leaders right-wing and militant. On the Arab side, this is because rage and hate cast the surefire path to power, and on the Israeli side this is mostly because the no-nonsense right-wing approach is the only thing that works in this crazed region.
Sagir refers to Barghouti as “the Palestinian Nelson Mandela,” and urges the future “centrist” Israeli government to follow the example of the South African Apartheid government and release Barghouti so he could start doing a lot of peace stuff right away.
Last Friday, Barghouti called on the Fatah movement, the “Palestinian people,” and the Palestinian Authority’s security services to “rise against the occupation, confront its aggression, rally around the option of comprehensive resistance and activate it in all Palestinian territories.”
In a statement published by Quds Press, Barghouti declared: “O our great Palestinian people, our people in the West Bank, the winds of liberation are growing in the skies of Palestine and the blood of our people in the Gaza Strip has been flowing for more than two months, along with the blood that It is being shed daily in the West Bank at the hands of the criminal occupation. Do not be mere witnesses, but rather active soldiers in this decisive battle.”
He also urged the armed PA security services to lead the new war against Israel and to “let the anniversary of the first intifada, December 8, be a turning point and the beginning of an escalating state of engagement with the Israeli enemy in every place that it expects and does not and with whatever tools and capabilities are available, whether small or large. We call for a complete rally behind the option of comprehensive resistance and for activating it in all the occupied Palestinian territories to repel the brutal attacks on our people, our land, and our rights and to defend our women who are harassed by the occupation.”
Fun.
THE “PALESTINIAN NELSON MANDELA”
The campaign to rehabilitate Marwan Barghouti has been going on for several years now, and last Friday, The New Arab reported on a screening at the London Palestine Film Festival of the new documentary, the newspaper headlined: “Tomorrow’s Freedom: Documenting the Life and Imprisonment of Marwan Barghouti, ‘Palestine’s Nelson Mandela.’”
“Shot in 2017, the documentary takes an elastic band approach to storytelling, flashing back and forth in time to moments in Barghouti’s life that put him on the path to where he is today: serving five life sentences in an Israeli prison after being convicted of five counts of murder by directing terrorist attacks against civilians during the Second Intifada.
“Yet as French International Criminal Lawyer Simon Foreman points out, it is “impossible to regard it as a fair trial.”
Barghouti refused to present a defense to the charges brought against him, maintaining throughout that the trial was illegal and illegitimate. Barghouti insisted that he supported armed resistance to the Israeli occupation, but condemned attacks on civilians inside Israel. The prosecution proved beyond a doubt that he had supported and authorized such attacks.
Finally, according to Al Araby Al jadeed, a source close to the Barghouti family reported, “There have been intense movements over the past few days,” adding that the family “is no longer dealing seriously with such conversations, as they have heard many things from senior Arab officials, during previous periods, that they will make efforts” with the US administration and Israel to release the prisoner Barghouti.
If we’re lucky, he’ll stay put, munching on ample supplies of Israeli candy and pizza, his favorite foods during prisoners’ hunger strikes (CAUGHT IN THE ACT: Watch Marwan Barghouti Eating During the Hunger Strike).
