Mustafa Barghouti (, ; born 1 January 1954) is a Palestinian physician, activist, and politician who serves as General Secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative (PNI), also known as al-Mubadara, and head of the Palestinian Medical Relief Society.
He has been a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council since 2006 and is also a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Central Council.
In 2007, Barghouti was Minister of Information in the Palestinian unity government. He is an advocate of the use of non-violence and civil disobedience to confront Israel's illegal occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem.
Early life and education Mustafa Barghouti was born 1 January 1954 in Jerusalem. His family is from what is today Bani Zeid, a municipality of over 6,000, founded in 1966 when the villages of Deir Ghassaneh and Beit Rima merged during Jordanian rule. He grew up in Ramallah and his father was the municipal engineer for the nearby village of Al-Bireh. Barghouti has said that his family "has always been very political, very active," noting that under the Mandate, his grandfather and great-uncle "were jailed by the British." He has said that he "grew up surrounded by internationalist, progressive literature," and has described his family's politics as always being "shaped by opposition to social injustice, rather than by nationalism." His father, he has noted, "used to speak to us of his Jewish comrades in Tiberias or Acre."
He has said that he was "reshaped" by the Six-Day War. "I felt a huge amount of responsibility. My childhood ended then. We were now under occupation. It was the beginning of a life mission: how do we become free? The feeling of injustice was very strong. Though still a child, I felt the whole world sitting on my shoulders…. Some gave in to defeatism—Nasser had it wrong, it was better to adopt a pro-American stance—but our position was: no, we have to resist, but in a stronger, better way. I've never felt I was fighting for the liberation of the Palestinian people on purely nationalistic grounds, one people against another. It was a fight against oppression, against occupation."
Barghouti has said that he was "very active" as a student activist in the West Bank. In 1971, he went to Moscow to study medicine and spent seven years there completing his medical training.
Career
Returning home in 1978, Barghouti specialized in internal medicine and cardiology at Maqased Hospital in Jerusalem. At that time he was active in the Palestinian Communist Party. After the signing of the Camp David Accords, Barghouti said that he and his comrades "realized...that we couldn't rely on Egypt, Syria or any other country, that we could expect nothing from outside. We would have to be self-reliant, self-organized. Resistance would have to mean defying the Occupation, defying the Israeli rules."
While he was at Maqased, he and "five or six" medical colleagues founded Medical Relief (MR), a volunteer organization that has developed into "a whole network of primary health-care centres, mobile clinics and outreach programmes." By 1986, "there were MR committees all over the Occupied Territories, including Gaza." During this time, Barghouti pursued further studies in Jerusalem, then received an MSc. in Business Administration and Management from Stanford University.
Barghouti served as Secretary-General of the Palestinian People's Party (formerly the Communist Party) and represented it in the Palestinian National Council, the legislative body of the PLO, until his resignation from the PPP in 2002. He stood for election in the 1996 PLC elections, running as a candidate in the Ramallah district, but lost out narrowly after a recount.
Barghouti is the President of the Palestinian Medical Relief Society, an NGO that provides health and community services to people in the Occupied Territories. He is also the Director of the Health Development Information and Policy Institute, an independent Ramallah-based think-tank that engages in policy research and planning for the Palestinian health-care system in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Additionally, he was one of the founders, in October 2001, of Grassroots International Protection for the Palestinian People, a program that seeks to protect Palestinians, including those engaged in nonviolent protest, by arranging for international civilian witnesses to be present at potentially violent encounters between Palestinians and settlers or members of the IDF.
Barghouti was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize in 2010 by Mairead Maguire, who had won the prize in 1976.
Madrid Conference of 1991 In 1991, Barghouti was a delegate to the Madrid Conference, which was held with the aim of ending the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the First Intifada.
At Madrid, he has said, "we sought to consolidate Palestinian unity—it was crucial that Israel should not succeed in erecting a wall between internal and external representatives." Barghouti has complained that "Oslo was decided behind the back of the Palestinian delegation to Madrid, and by extension, behind the back of the Palestinian people." He has described the Oslo negotiations as "a technical and political disaster," complaining that while "the Madrid team had been well briefed and had 600 experts at its disposal, the PLO's Oslo negotiations were conducted by amateurs." Israel, he has said, took "gross advantage of the naïvety of the Palestinian negotiators," but the result was "so disastrous, so unjust, that even the signatories couldn't make it stick....This is why democracy is so important in these cases: because it renders the negotiators accountable to the people, answerable for every document they sign."
Barghouti said that after 1993, he and his colleagues "were conducting a struggle on two fronts," against the Israeli Occupation and against the Palestinian Authority. "Not only were our leaders completely inept at negotiating with Israel, but they were rapidly transforming themselves into a gigantic security apparatus…consuming 34 per cent of the budget." The PA, he has complained, "has functioned along the same lines as the totalitarian Arab governments that gave it refuge," trying "to control every aspect of life."
1996 Injury During Medical Duties In 1996, Barghouti, was shot by an Israeli sniper while providing medical assistance to injured civilians in the West Bank as part of his role in the Palestinian Medical Relief Society (PMRS). He credits this incident to deepening his commitment to nonviolent resistance and human rights advocacy.
Palestinian National Initiative
In June 2002, Barghouti, Haidar Abdel-Shafi, Ibrahim Dakkak and Edward Said established the Palestinian National Initiative (PNI), al-Mubadara al-Wataniyya al-Filistiniyya, an attempt to build a reformist, inclusive alternative to both the established Palestine Liberation Organization and to Islamic militant groups such as Hamas. Barghouti currently serves as the PNI's general secretary.
Barghouti has explained that the PNI's "origins lie in the uprising of September 2000." When the Second Intifada broke out, "we were in the streets arguing that this was the Independence Intifada—whereas Hamas called it the Al-Aqsa Intifada." The leaders of the PPP, he charged, "didn't understand the importance of this distinction, this affirmation of secularity." Accordingly, Barghouti decided that the time was ripe "to found an alternative democratic opposition without the Party," and to that end he "got in touch with Abd al-Shafi, Ibrahim Dakkak and Edward Said, who became a very close friend during his last years." Barghouti's goal was to bring about "a renaissance of the Palestinian movement, on a footing that the outside world could understand." The PNI's manifesto, issued in October 2000, presented "a secular programme for a non-violent, non-militarized Intifada, signed by 10,000 supporters." The organization, however, was not officially established until June 2002, "at the time of the Israeli re-invasion."
PNI opposes the Israeli Occupation, calls for a sovereign Palestinian state, and supports the Palestinian right of return. Among the PNI's stated objectives are the establishment of a united Palestinian leadership, the promotion of democracy in the Occupied Territories, and the strengthening of contacts between Palestinians. It describes itself as focusing on the release of prisoners and detainees in Israeli jails, mobilizing Palestinians in the Occupied Territories and abroad, empowering civil-society organizations, and building international support for the Palestinian cause. The group's ultimate goal is to establish an independent Palestinian state that is secure, democratic, free, and governed according to the rule of law.Barghouti describes the PNI as "a democratic coalition" that is open to the whole range of secular left-wing individuals and groups—unions, the women's movement, civil-society organizations. He claims that it seeks "to become an umbrella for various movements." According to Barghouti, the PNI's "one uncompromising rule" is that it "will only accept groups that are completely independent, both from Hamas and other fundamentalist movements, and from the Authority." It has "worked with a variety of Israeli groups—Women in Black, Gush Shalom, Yesh Gvul, Ta'ayush—demonstrating against the invasion of Iraq or against the apartheid Wall." Its strategy, Barghouti has said, "is to try to link popular struggle against the Occupation with action on the ground designed to help people stay where they are—for if they stay, Israel has failed; whereas if they go, it's we who are defeated." It is important to the PNI both to provide "direct assistance" to Palestinians and to resists "the fundamentalists", Barghouti has said.
On 3 January 2003, Barghouti was arrested following an international press conference in East Jerusalem, on charges of disturbing the peace and entering the city illegally. During his detention, Barghouti was interrogated and suffered a broken knee, which, according to his account, was inflicted by blows from a rifle butt; he also reported that he received head injuries. He was released several days later. Barghouti was also detained on 3 January 2006 while campaigning in the Arab quarter of East Jerusalem and was taken for questioning to a local police station. A statement on his behalf read: "Dr Barghuthi was meeting with ordinary Jerusalemites near Damascus Gate, discussing their needs and the situation of Palestinians in east Jerusalem, when he was approached by six undercover Israeli security agents, arrested, and taken to the Russian Compound jail where he remains under detention."Israel arrests Palestinian candidate , Aljazeera.Net, 3 January 2006.
In a 2012 interview, Barghouti emphasized that the PNI is committed to nonviolence, which "works better because it allows everybody, and not just a small group of people, to participate. It works better because it does not allow the Israelis to claim that they are victims in this conflict. It reveals and exposes them as they are in reality: the oppressors, the occupiers, and the creators of an apartheid system."