Tariq Barghouth: How did the courts of Israel convert him from a lawyer to a resistance?

Mervat Sadiq-Ramallah

"I am tired of defending the prisoners in unfair courts," the Israeli press quoted Palestinian lawyer Tariq Barghouth as pleading guilty to participating in shootings against Israeli soldiers and settlers months ago.

The Israeli court of Ofer, west of Ramallah, on Tuesday convicted 43-year-old lawyer Tariq Mohammed Barghouth of participating in armed attacks on the settlements around Ramallah and Al-Bireh at the end of 2018 and the beginning of 2019. He was sentenced to 13 and a half years in prison with a fine.

According to the ruling, Barghouth participated in the shooting of Israeli buses and troops several times and three settlers were lightly injured.

Barghouth, who was known as the most prominent defender of prisoners in Israeli courts, was arrested in a violent raid on his house in Ramallah on 27 February. On the same day, the former leader of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, Zacarias al-Zubaidi, was arrested and charged with attacks on Israeli targets.

In order to pressure him, the occupation later arrested his wife Amal Barghouth from among her children. She showed him through a glass break and that was the most difficult stage of his investigation. She also received threats to deprive her and her children of his visit if she did not disclose her husband's activities.

The wife was released two days later, and the investigation continued with a 75-day flea at the Jerusalem Center for Misopecia. His family said he had refused to confess to the charges against him and was in direct confrontation with the investigators when he was severely beaten.

His eldest brother, Khalid Barghouth, said that he had been subjected to a ghost (sitting blindfolded and handcuffed with his legs pulled behind the chair) and interrogated for 19 hours a day and deprived of sleep for long days. He was also denied access to his lawyer for 35 days and was allowed to visit the Red Cross 16 days after his arrest.

During his trial, Barghouth ran his case with his lawyer and said in one of his arguments that he did his best to rid the prisoners of their suffering, but all this was in unfair courts.

Not alarmed
Shortly before his arrest, Barghouth was showing a clear bias to the resistance in his daily publications, using the poetry of Ibrahim Toukan. "Say to those who are silent, to create firmness in your mouth. He commented that "this house has a sharp description of the logic of the revolution, (it) comes without warning."

The Barghouth family does not believe that her son lived a turning point that made him leave the task of legal defense for the prisoners to struggle with weapons. His brother says that he has lived in the detention and incursions into the home of his family since his youth. He lived throughout his life as a lawyer and a humanitarian duty towards the prisoners and their families.

"Sometimes, Barghouth paid from his own pocket the financial penalties imposed on the prisoners, especially the children, so that their detention would not be prolonged," his older brother said. "He often left the courts not to his home but to the houses of the prisoners to support them."

His wife said that "the pains of the prisoner Israa al-Jabais, who was arrested after suffering severe burns and sentenced to 11 years in prison and the introduction of treatment, were his daily concern, and his children always occur about the captive child Ahmed Manasra, who was sentenced to 12 years in prison and was being fed and cared for during his first days of detention After being shot in 2015 ".

His eldest brother believes that Tarek saw Ahmad as his childhood advocate when he was abducted by the Israeli occupation from the house at the age of 12 in 1991 to pressure his brothers. He was arrested and imprisoned the following year for a year for throwing rocks at Israeli soldiers.

Tariq Barghouth, his youngest brother, lived in a family of four young men who were all hunted by the occupation. He began visiting them after being held in Israeli jails since the early 1980s. His father was arrested in the early stages of the Palestinian revolution, and grew up on the story of the martyrdom of his grandfather Hassan Barghouth during the fighting of the Zionist gangs in the Nakba.

Barghouth finished his law studies at the University of Casablanca in Morocco, usually directly to Palestine. From the beginning of his work in the legal profession, he has become an advocate of prisoners' issues.

His older brother Khalid says they sought to exhaust Tareq and physically pressure him during the interrogation to force him to confess. His family learned that the occupation used his condemnation with audio recordings and video footage showing his activities and even his daily life with his family in Ramallah and Jerusalem, and monitoring his latest moves ahead of the attacks he was accused of participating in.

In the last attempt to shoot, an Israeli execution battalion was waiting for Zubeidi and Barghouth, as the family learned, but the two men were not approached because of the suspicious deployment of the occupation forces.

His older brother said that Tarek had been serving his five-month trial, arguing that the struggle in all its forms was the right of every person living under occupation, whether by legal defense or military action.

"He did not have any doubt that the Israeli justice system was unfair, but it was a moral task he was doing to ease the prisoners," he said, not as a lawyer but as a national and humanitarian mission.