134. Palestine's Most Popular Politician: Marwan Barghouti's Son on Occupation, Resistance, and Hope

28:24Because as long as the international community thinks that we are a bunch of puppets that they can move however they want and throw leaders at us and here is what the Palestinians need to do, we are the ones who have the right to decide what we want to do. And I'm telling you, here is a leader who is the most popular in Palestine. He believes in the two-state solution. He believes in unity. And I do think, honestly, if we were unified, we wouldn't be in this place at all. Awesome. Arab, I think time for a break.

28:59We had a situation in the UK recently where a guy who had been in prison for 38 years, and it turned out that the new DNA methods, they found out he was actually innocent. and they let him out after 38 years in prison. I remember thinking, how on earth do you cope with a world you've not been part of for 38 years? Now, your dad's been in prison now for two decades. Does he psychologically understand, I know he understands the issues inside out, but the extent to which the world has changed. So a lot of these people who are now in polls will say we support him, do they understand who he is and what he is and what sort of person he is?

29:42Because they don't know him. And I just wonder whether there's a danger that there's a sense almost of a mythology. Now, we have the Mandela experience where Mandela was in jail for 27 years and he comes out and he turned out to be this extraordinary leader. But do you have the confidence that he has the confidence to come out if it did happen and be the figure that in your mind you see him as? I have no doubt in that. And you brought up Nelson Mandela. And I think that many people have called my father the Palestinian Mandela. And the reason for that is that he is, again, someone who has the credibility into bringing all the Palestinians into one political vision.

30:22And I think this is exactly what we need right now. And the other thing is that, yes, he is mentally sharp. And he's someone who I think, you know, the most educated person I've ever seen. because he used to read 10 to 12 books a month. One period he was obsessed about the Chinese economy. Another period you will find him obsessed about, you know, the history of Europe and so on. He wanted me to learn Chinese. Have you got a degree yet? No, I told him I can't do Chinese. I compensate it with something else. But yeah, listen, he's this type of a leader. He's a learner. He loves to learn. He listens more than he speaks.

31:01He is the true leader that you have in mind. And that's why people have named him the Palestinian Mandela. And for the Palestinians, I think with the work that my mother has been doing for more than 20 years and having thousands of volunteers and so on, people know him. And, you know, when last year, end of last year, he's been assaulted and inside prison. And it was, it went public. and we were overwhelmed by the hundreds and hundreds of calls from Gaza, calling my mother, telling her that, listen, I've lost everything. I can't lose the last glimpse of hope that I have in this life, which is this man to come and rescue us.

31:39And I know these are like unfair expectations of someone in prison. He doesn't have the magic stick, but I think he has the ability to bring Palestinians together so we can go to a better future. I mean, one anxiety to return to Hamas is that your father represents the last voice of secular Arab nationalism, and that in many, many countries around the world, that has become more and more Islamist. And Hamas is part of a representation of this, and we saw equivalents of this in Egypt, and maybe we're seeing something like this in Syria. Do you think it's possible to return to the older vision of a secular Palestinian nationalism, which is not rooted in the Islamist beliefs of Hamas?

32:21You know, in 2006, one of my father's biggest political achievements is that he brought all Palestinian factions, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad. And they all together, they signed on the prisoner's document, which was the cornerstone for the Palestinian unit government afterwards. It's stated clearly that the Palestinian state will be built on the 67 borders. Resistance is limited to within the 67 borders and it's forbidden to target civilians regardless where they are. And they did sign on that. Even Yasser Arafat couldn't pull that off. And that shows you that, yes, he is capable of doing that.

32:58He is capable of bringing all Palestinians into the vision that makes sense. But at the end of the day, we worry about what we can control, which is uniting the Palestinian people, going for a better vision. But we can't control the end of the occupation. And that's what we need the international community's help with. rather than to make things worse like they did in 2006, like they're doing right now. We're inviting them not to make the mistakes again and to really help the Palestinian people in ending the illegal occupation. We have to be clear. If there is an illegal occupation, we need to stop complaining about everything else and we need to move forward.

33:34And moving forward, we'll need forgiveness from Palestinians way more than Israelis because we're getting hurt way more than Israelis. And we're willing to go for that as long as we have guarantees that we will have our own sovereignty and state and live in independence and dignity. You mentioned Arafat there, Yasser Arafat. And we interviewed President Clinton not long ago and sensed, in fact, he expressed a real frustration about Arafat and about the possibilities that went begging. What's your assessment of Yasser Arafat's place in history? I think Yasser Arafat is a great historical leader.

34:11I think that he's made some mistakes, of course, because when you hand a revolutionary the keys to a government, you're going to have many mistakes. and he did make some mistakes. But I don't think that I agree with the American narrative that Yasser Arafat was the problem to getting to a solution. Because what's happening, as long as you come to any negotiations in life and you don't have a good faith that, you know, here is what I want and here is what you want and let's meet in the middle. But the Israelis did not come with that mentality and they're not coming with it right now. That's why I have no hope with the current Israeli government.

34:49I mean, can you have hope with Bingvir and Smotrich and all these lunatics? I don't think so. That's why we need the international community. And that's why we're calling for this opportunity. When Yasser Arafat was the leader of Palestine, he just couldn't sign on things that would legitimize the illegal settlements, would legitimize the fact that we have nothing to do with Jerusalem anymore. He can't do that. Obviously, one of the really fundamental sticking points which are related to him is also this question of refugee return. Because from, again, to explain to listeners, he was very more than familiar for you, but for listeners, for Israelis, leaving the occupied Palestinian territories is one thing.

35:30Palestinians demanding that all Palestinian refugees who left what is now Israel return would mean for Israelis that they would no longer be the majority in their own country, and the idea of a Jewish homeland would be replaced by essentially another Palestinian state. Do you think that it's possible to address that issue in the negotiations? It has to be addressed. Half of the Palestinian population are out in the diaspora. They've been kicked out in 48 and 67 and they have been uh not allowed to to go back to palestine i mean to give you an example of apartheid i i'm born in jerusalem i haven't been able to go to jerusalem in 25 years you can go tomorrow a guy from a random jewish guy in from brooklyn can go and live there forever and get the legal papers to to do so how how fair is that and i think that if we can't address the difficult questions.

36:27Listen, I know this is the most complicated maybe issue in modern history. Jerusalem or the whole situation? Jerusalem is quite complicated. Oh yeah, that's like at the heart of the complication. But I think we have to start somewhere. If you look at, you know, Northern Ireland, the Irish experience, South Africa, Algeria, all of these countries, we learn from history and we have to get to a place where we can meet in the middle. You can't tell me that Palestinians who lived for century after century are not allowed, while European Jews can easily go and claim their citizenship in Israel. That's not going to work.

37:05We're talking not long after President Trump was in the Gulf states, and I think one of the most extraordinary things was this meeting he had with the new president of Syria, Ahmad al-Shara, who Roy and I met a few months ago. Did that give you hope? The fact that there's this guy who was not long ago was one of the world's most wanted men. And I remember when we talked to him, he was basically saying, you know, the kind of the big dream long in the distance is the Americans lifting sanctions. And there's Trump not long afterwards saying, give them a go. Very strange, because obviously the fact that we interviewed him, immediately people said, what are you doing?

37:44You're meeting a terrorist. Now Donald Trump is meeting him and people are not asking the same question. Listen, I always say that Trump's unpredictability is an opportunity. And I really hope that Trump comes to a point where he's tired of the current Israeli government, because it's very obvious they don't want any solution. There you have a man who speaks of the two-state solution, who speaks of long-term peace, living side by side with the Israelis, and he's been in solitary confinement for the last 19 months. While you have Netanyahu and Smotrich and Benkvira, and they're very public about their refusal of saying that Palestinians have a right of self-determination.

38:24They're open about their plans of ethnically cleansing the Palestinian people, and they're being welcomed in European and American cities like their heroes. And I think that needs to change. And I see that Trump is the only one with his unpredictability who's capable of doing that. He's capable of getting to somewhere that, listen, I'm sick of this. We need to get to an end of the human suffering in Gaza. Thousands and thousands of people are going through famine as we speak. Like a famine is happening deliberately, which is a war crime by the international community, which is illegal by the international community, which is Israel's slogan.

39:02They don't care about international community. And I think that world leaders need to think, what would that do to the future? What has happened over the last 20 years? I mean, when your father went to prison 20 years ago, the Palestinian issue was very, very central in the Middle East. You know, people really focused on what was happening in Egypt and Jordan and Lebanon and Syrian Palestine. And since then, we've had a massive shift of power to the Gulf and a sense that UAE, Saudi seem to be quite comfortable normalizing with Israel and much less focused on the Palestinian issue. That was the case in the past.

39:37What is this story? What's happened in the last 20 years? Well, I think there has been a shift and it's a shame that some of the countries forgot about the Palestinian cause. And what happened is internal. So apartheid has been very comforting for the Israelis and the region and all of that. We're being quiet about apartheid. No one is complaining anymore. And the thinking was of Netanyahu in this camp, and he was always telling them, see, I'm right about what I did, is forget about the Palestinian cause, forget about like what Ishak Rabin said, that we have to give the Palestinians their state in order for us to have security, which makes all the sense in the world.

40:16And he said, no, let's go to the Arab world, normalize with them, and then the Palestinian cause will be forgotten in a few years. And that exploded in his face. Why do you think the Gulf countries were willing to normalize and listen and be positive towards this idea? I think the only ones that did normalize, to be clear, are Bahrain and UAE. Saudis didn't normalize. But they seem to be getting towards it. But I think they made it very clear that their condition for normalization is the creation and establishment of the Palestinian state. So what was happening in places at UAE? Why were they prepared to change positions?

40:51I don't know why, honestly. I think it's… And was it a big blow to the Palestinian cause? Yes, 100%. We felt betrayed when that happened. Because all we're asking for is that if you want to normalize, at least have the condition of the Palestinian state. as Arabs, we have the Arab nationalism. My name is Arab. My father named me because he feels that he's loyal to the Arab nationalism and so on. So I really wish that we can be unified into putting that as a precondition to any normalization future deals with Israel as Arab countries overall. And moving away from the Arab world, what's your feeling about how Europe and European leaders have been conducting their foreign policy in relation to the Middle East since October the 7th?

41:41So it's been a journey. It's been a journey. At the beginning, I was, and all Palestinians were really, really disgusted by Western leaders, to be honest. Because there was, you know, like Ursula and the EU and even the UK government at the time and so on. there was obviously a genocide about to happen and and they all they cared about is that Israel has the right to defend itself Israel has the right to defend itself it became like they're they're just saying that without feeling what they're doing and without knowing the consequences of that and that was really harmful I think that history will not go easy on those leaders but I think that you know seeing Macron and in in the last few days is very encouraging I would love for the UK government to be more courageous as well.

42:33And seeing a few leaders around the world that are getting sick, I really hope that Trump gets there. And we can say that he's maybe getting there at the moment. So yeah, we felt disgusted as Palestinians because, you know, the double standards are there. Like one example of the double standards is prisoners versus hostages. You're talking about 12-year-old and 14-year-old Palestinians and calling them prisoners and calling Israeli soldiers hostages. That's not fair. And why is everyone losing their minds about Israeli hostages and not losing their minds about the Palestinian kids who are taking hostage?

43:08And, you know, they make them sign on Hebrew documents without a guardian and without. What about the administrative detention, which is unfortunately a British legacy that's left in Palestine, which is bringing someone and leaving them in prison without going to trial, without knowing why they're there. and unfortunately the double standards and again the unconscious racism is what caused them to talk about you know only the Israeli suffering and so on but I think that people have you know this is the time this is timing is everything and I think this is the time to shift this is the time to really see what's really happening there and I can argue that if you're a pro-Israeli you need to be against the current Israeli government because it's taking the current Israeli state into becoming an isolated state.

44:00And I truly think that the current people who are becoming more and more shifting, the young people who are shifting into the pro-Palestinian camp will not have mercy on apartheid in the future. And they are the ones who will really change the politics, hopefully, in the future. And sanctions will come to Israel and so on. And you'll never be able to protect the future. So if you're Israeli or pro-Israeli, you have to be against what your government is doing at the moment. What is it like having to travel around the world doing these kinds of interviews? What do you find most frustrating about it and annoying?

44:34What do you wish people asked you? What do you wish people didn't ask you so much? And what's your experience of the way in which us and dozens of other people who interview you approach these situations that is strange or frustrating? I think the things that frustrate me are only when the line of questioning is, you know, there is some racism hidden in there and there is no respect for Palestinian suffering and there is no equality when we talk about both sides. Not taking into account again that 90 % of the suffering is on the Palestinian side and not the Israeli side. You know, what I would like to talk about always is what it feels to go and day to day live under apartheid and under occupation.

45:20And I always tell people that, you know, come to the West Bank and I promise you in two hours, you will tell me that this is apartheid. It's very, very easy. If you and I go to Hebron, which is part of the Palestinian Authority under international law, you'll be able to go to streets that I can't access because I'm Palestinian and because of my ethnicity. And And I think the most important thing for people to understand is that I'm not trying to say that we as family and our suffering. You know, my eldest brother, Kassam, at the age of 18, he was coming back from Egypt where he was studying. And to surprise my mother on her celebration of the master's degree at the borders, because my father was going under interrogation, they wanted to take him aside and to ask him a few questions.

46:05They kept him in prison for four years with no charge. This is just one of the experiences. And what I'm trying to say is that I'm not trying to say that we're special and we are trying to single my father out. This is the story of thousands and thousands of Palestinians. 65 Palestinian political prisoners have been killed since October 7th. No one speaks about them. And, you know, the abuse, the disgusting argument about if they can rape prisoners or not in Israel is really disgusting. Ninety something percent of the Kinesid does not believe in Palestinian state. And I think that, you know, these are the things that I would like to single out.

46:46And the fact that we are going through a human experience that is all about suffering. But my father taught me that there is a difference between being a victim and acting like a victim. He doesn't want me to act like a victim. That's why I'm proposing a better future. That's why I'm not here to complain about the past or what's happening. But what's happening needs to change. My last question, Arab, and thanks for giving you so much of your time, is let's imagine your father doesn't get out of prison. Let's imagine that he spends the rest of his days in prison. Do you see yourself or your brothers as politicians?

47:22Do you feel you would step up to try to become a politician? or do you see yourself as a politician already? I don't see myself as a politician. I don't think that I'm going to go into politics for my future. I have a mission when it comes to the tech world and making Palestine one of the tech destinations in the future because I'm following what my father wrote, which is Palestinian struggle is way more than just being a politician or a freedom fighter or anything like that. You can be a good citizen. You can bring people together. You can build a better future for Palestinians in the future.

47:55regarding if he doesn't get out of prison. My father used to always say hopelessness is a privilege that we Palestinians don't have. So that's why I've deleted hopelessness from my dictionary. It does not exist. I can't think of that. He's definitely getting out. And I promise you, and I promise you that he will do an interview with you guys, hopefully. When you do the first one, we're very competitive with... I mean, there is a lot of competition there, but I can't promise that. Well, listen, thank you. And that would be quite an interview to do, I think. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you so much for having me.

48:30It's a pleasure. Thank you. Well, Arab Marghouti, that was quite powerful. It's very powerful. And I do agree with him that the focus on the optimism is really central to the whole thing. that moving the story onwards to hope and to try and talk about a two-state solution. Now, there's one thing there, though, that is obviously a really big problem, just on that, if I'd pushed harder, which is that most people I know from the international side who's been involved in the two-state negotiations think the demand for refugee return into Israel proper cannot happen. It doesn't matter whether you're talking Oslo or you're talking some future deal.

49:18Very difficult for Israel to move settlements, but possible, but almost unimaginable for Israel, is the idea that they become a minority in their own country. No, but what I think was interesting about him, so we're talking to him. Let's be frank, he's a really smart guy. He's a really intelligent guy. And he's obviously got a lot of interesting things that he's doing. But were it not for his dad, we would not be talking to him. Okay. So what I think he is doing is talking about his father and keeping this sense of, there is somebody currently in jail who actually could speak to what the international community says it wants, which is a two-state solution, Israel and Palestine living next to each other in peace.

50:00And I think on that, he was compelling. And I think it's a bigger story, isn't it, which you'd know much more about than me, which is actually the story of families talking for others. I mean, we had it with Navalny's family, a great example of a family continuing to campaign after Alexei Navalny was, well, first when he was in prison and then when he was killed. But I think there's strong traditions there, aren't there, in Ireland and South Africa and many other places. Yeah, because you have lots of the key figures in this, Mandela being the most obvious example. Marwan Bhaguti sometimes compared with Gerry Adams.

50:33Gerry Adams who never got into prison for 20 years, but was in prison for quite a few times. And I do find that thing extraordinary, is on the one hand they're in prison because the authorities want them kept out of circulation sometimes to stop them being effective yeah and yet somehow he's in prison and turning the thing into a into a kind of college and of course what happened a lot with irish terrorism a lot of the the terrorism techniques were discussed and and developed and honed by people who were in prison So I find him, look, he's a fascinating story. I think it was the economist who said he's the world's most important prisoner.

51:14And it is interesting to have that sort of thing on your shoulders when actually you don't know if you're ever going to get out. You don't know whether you're going to die in prison or not. There's an issue which I guess I have to return to, which is to try to think about the position of an Israeli listening to that interview. And my sense is that what they would say is this man was convicted by an Israeli court, that he was clearly associated with the armed resistance. He got five life sentences plus 40 years. and they would say he's a terrorist. And they would also say that we are underestimating the sense in which many Israelis feel that there is no security for them.

52:02And that October the 7th revealed to people, and I think it's the way in which people feel about it, that it's revealed to them that there were people out there who really wanted to kill them all. And that therefore, This question of right to self-defense and how they relate to the two-state solution has moved very quickly, I think, from the moment his father went into jail over the last 20 years from a position where most of the Israeli political and defense establishment in the 90s would say our only long-term security and peace is a two-state solution, that we're never going to get peace for Israel unless the Palestinians have their state towards the world that Netanyahu has been driving, which is to say, no, no, no.

52:43A Palestinian state is an existential threat to Israel, and therefore we're going to do all we can to build settlements, crush and push for what they call in inverted commas the voluntary exile of people from Gaza. And how successful Israel has been in convincing countries like UAE and others to sign up for that narrative. Another viewpoint that somebody listening to this who doesn't remotely share the Palestinian perspective might say is that we've talked to now him, recently talked to al-Shara, as we discussed, talked to Francesca Albanese, who's got very, very strong views on this issue, talked to the Palestinian ambassador in London, and we haven't had so many…

53:28On the other hand, just to push back for a second. No, let me just finish. So we have had Yuval Noah Harari. We've talked to Ehud Olmey. And the truth is, we have tried to talk to the former Israeli national security advisor, which ought to be a Mossad guy. But we have been clear with the Israeli government that we really would like to talk to somebody senior from the Israeli government, but not if they're just going to come on and shout talking points at us. I actually thought it was interesting. You said this is Arab was leaving that that form of communication, where, as you say, he's not accepting hopelessness.

54:01He was, I'm sure some Israelis, he says October 7th was terrible, we condemn all civilian attack, but he does very quickly pivot to there is a massive double standard going on here. And that would upset some listeners. However, I just think that there is a case for the Israelis who are very good at this propaganda stuff and very good at communications on a certain level. But actually, I think for us to sit down with an Israeli voice, a government person, who is not going to have us the whole time rebutting, arguing about detail, I think some of the interviews these guys are doing at the moment are utterly counterproductive for them.

54:46So we're repeating in public what we've said in private, very, very happy to have more Israeli voices on, but not if they're just going to come on and shout talking points. And I left politics aside with a, I mean, I think it'd be obvious from both of us interviewing with a huge sense of sympathy and affection, both just as a child who has barely seen his father since he was 16, but also somebody who I think is a bit, describe himself as a slightly more introverted guy who wants to get on with coding and tech and who's found himself drawn into these things. and I think does it with a lot of dignity and actually a real quiet charisma.

55:25Yeah. Okay. Well, see you soon. See you soon.