In a brief video circulated in mid-August, Israel’s extremist minister Itamar Ben-Gvir was seen threatening a frail-looking Palestinian prisoner inside the infamous Ganot jail. 

As the video went viral, it put the spotlight on the Palestinian prisoner – Marwan Barghouti – who has lived part of his 23 years of incarceration in solitary confinement.

The 66-year-old Barghouti, who was Fatah’s charismatic young leader in the occupied West Bank prior to his imprisonment, is one of nearly 10,000 Palestinian prisoners languishing in Israeli prisons.

But he will not be among the 2,000-odd Palestinian prisoners Israel has agreed to release as part of the ceasefire deal with Hamas.

Barghouti has long been at the top of lists for many prisoner swap deals negotiated between Israel and the Palestinians. 

But the Zionist state has not released him despite repeated pleas over the years by human rights groups, many Palestinian organisations, including Hamas, and even some Israeli bodies. 

During his time in Israeli prisons, Barghouti has been repeatedly tortured and subjected to inhuman treatment, according to different sources. 

Though Barghouti is a member of the rival Fatah group, Hamas has repeatedly sought the release of the charismatic leader, who is widely seen as a bridge between all Palestinian factions. 

Fatah, for the record, had launched the first Palestinian resistance against Israel in the late 1950s under the leadership of the late Yasser Arafat.

Since a 2006 vote, Hamas has governed Gaza while the Fatah-led Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) is in charge of the occupied West Bank. 

On Thursday, an Israeli government spokesperson categorically mentioned that Barghouti is not being released as part of the latest prisoner-captive swap.

But why is Israel so afraid of releasing this particular Palestinian leader?  

“Because Barghouti continues to have a huge political clout,” says Dan Steinbock, a leading political analyst and the writer of a recent book, The Fall of Israel. 

Recent Palestinian polls suggest that Barghouti is the most popular Palestinian leader, garnering more than 50 percent of the vote in the occupied West Bank and Gaza as opposed to other leaders from Hamas and Mahmoud Abbas, the current president of the Palestinian Authority. 

‘Palestinian Mandela’? 

Barghouti was jailed in 2002 on charges of being involved in attacks that resulted in the deaths of five people in different incidents. 

Barghouti denied not only the Israeli charges but also the legitimacy of the court which tried him. According to different reports, he did not face a fair trial with "numerous breaches of international law."

“The Israeli cabinet is afraid of Barghouti because he can do what Prime Minister Netanyahu has struggled against since the late 1990s: he can unify the Palestinians, as Nelson Mandela once united the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa,” Steinbock tells TRT World. 

Even some Israelis have similar views to Steinbock. 

Alon Liel, a former director general in the Israeli foreign ministry and the Israeli state's contact with Barghouti before his imprisonment, is among them. 

“Israel is afraid of Barghouti's ability to unite the Palestinian people behind him,” Liel tells TRT World. 

Leil draws attention to a stark similarity between Mandela and Barghouti – both were jailed for 27 years in total. 

Prior to 2002, Barghouti was jailed by Israeli authorities between different periods since the 1970s. He joined Fatah when he was a 15-year-old. Five years later, he was arrested and imprisoned by Israel for more than four years.  

Like Mandela, Barghouti has also been able to stay politically active during his imprisonment, launching different initiatives, including the Palestinian Prisoners' Document.

The document calls for a Palestinian independent state, with East Jerusalem as its capital and including all territories occupied in 1967.  

The document’s diverse authorship, written by members of Hamas, Fatah and other Palestinian resistance groups, sealed his ability to appeal to different factions. 

Ramzy Baroud, a Palestinian political analyst and writer, says that Barghouti represents “a less-factional, more nationalistic generation” of Palestinian leadership. 

If he were freed, Barghouti could finally catalyse a new, unifying national discourse that “transcends both factional divisions and geographical separation,” Baroud tells TRT World. 

Prominent Palestinian professor Sami al Arian describes Barghouti as “a Palestinian patriot paying a huge price for Palestinian self-determination”. 

In 2017, Barghouti led a hunger strike, which led to increasing visitation rights for Palestinian prisoners. Since Hamas’s October 7 attack, Barghouti has been held in solidarity confinement, being denied any interactions with his family and lawyers. 

‘A bridge from genocide to peace’? 

While Barghouti defended armed struggle in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, he advocated peaceful opposition in other areas under direct Israeli rule. As a result, he found allies not only in Palestinians but also in Israeli political circles, who seek a peaceful end to the conflict, according to Steinbock. 

From different perspectives – ranging from the Hamas-Fatah unification issue to modalities of peace with Israel – Barghouti gives the Palestinian cause and the resistance “leadership, direction and integrity,” says Steinbock.  

In the current stage, Barghouti’s status as a transcendental character over Palestinian factionalism can pave the way for a new joint Palestinian leadership, which can also help lay out a political ground for peace with Israel, according to experts. 

Barghouti can be “a bridge for going from genocide to a final political agreement with Israel,” says Zaha Hassan, a human rights lawyer and a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. 

Though there is a big question mark over who will govern Gaza in the proposed transfer-of-power scene, Hassan feels that Barghouti would be “acceptable” as the Gaza administrator for Hamas and most Palestinians. 

Under Trump’s plan, a technocratic Palestinian political entity is envisaged to manage day-to-day operations of Gaza while a Board of Peace led by the US president will oversee this structure.  

But Israel will push back on this notion, she adds, “because Netanyahu and his ultra nationalist coalition partners do not want to see Palestinian governance in Gaza that could support a two-state solution.”