Bethlehem -
“If Israel had to leave its land for any reason, it would take Abdullah Barghouti with it”;
This is what the Israeli officer in charge of the file of the prisoner Barghouti said, after the military trial in which he was sentenced to 67 life imprisonment and 5,200 years, on charges of carrying out 7 commando operations that killed 67 Israelis and wounded more than 500 others.
Abdullah Al-Barghouti entered his 20th year of captive in the Israeli occupation prisons, after he was arrested by Israeli special forces in the city of Al-Bireh in the middle of the occupied West Bank by chance, on the fifth of March 2003.
Do you know who is the owner of the highest ruling in human history and the owner of the 67 is life indefinite and 5200 years in perfect and complete “I mean if this ruling is distributed to a tribe, no one will come out of it living”
To the first time you hear the ruling, you are curious to know its owner, what did he do?
The owner of the historical ruling Abdullah Al-Barghu / The #Assir_not_number
— Safaa Abdullah Al Barghouthi 𓂆 (@Safabarghouthi) September 12, 2021
Al-Barghouti is considered one of the most dangerous resistance fighters to Israel during the second Palestinian intifada, which began on September 28, 2000. He had revived the Al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas in the occupied West Bank, after the occupation's assassination of its martyr leader Yahya Ayyash in 1996.
On the anniversary of the arrest of # Prince_of_Shadow.. Leader # Abdullah_Barghouti
, God willing, Tahrir is closer pic.twitter.com/F3p4UgK20N
— mohammed Abu Qtaish (@MohammedQtaish) March 5, 2022
Jordanian engineer
Al-Barghouti was born in Kuwait in 1972, and moved to live in Jordan after the second Gulf War in 1990, and held Jordanian citizenship, before joining a South Korean university to study electronic engineering for 3 years, and it was a reason for him to learn the manufacture of explosives, he did not complete his studies because of obtaining an entry permit to Palestine.
He entered Palestine for the first time in 1997, and worked in the city of Jerusalem in the maintenance of electronic devices, and then in 1998 he married his relative in the town of Beit Rima, northwest of Ramallah in the central West Bank, and had three children from her;
Tala, Osama and Safaa, although he has not obtained a Palestinian identity until today.
He joined the armed resistance action against Israel, with the beginning of the second intifada in 2000, and became the engineer of guerrilla operations in Palestine, and was arrested for a month by the Palestinian Preventive Security Service, after carrying out the first operation in the "Sbarro" restaurant in Tel Aviv in August 2001, In which 15 Israelis were killed, and dozens of others were wounded.
“If Israel was forced to leave its lands for any reason and under any circumstances, it would take Abdullah al-Barghouti with it, because he poses a danger to it wherever he is.”
In the words of the "Shin Bet" officer responsible for the prisoner's file # Abdullah_Barghouti, the owner of the highest ruling in the history of the captive movement
, today, the Emir of Shadow, has completed 20 years in prison from 67 life imprisonment pic.twitter.com/qWaoKtjKXH
— Sami (@samijaradat00) March 5, 2022
Captured by chance
After that, the Israeli occupation chased him for two years, and his wife, son, Osama, and daughter Tala, were moving with him undercover from one place to another in the city of Ramallah, and he was able to prepare Palestinian suicide bombers to carry out bombing operations in various areas of occupied Palestine (48) and the city of Jerusalem.
His wife, Umm Osama, told Al Jazeera Net that during the second intifada, the Palestinians viewed Abdullah as the successor to the martyr Yahya Ayyash, the leader of the Qassam Brigades in the 1990s.
Barghouti was separated from his family for 20 days, and arrived at the family to take his son to a doctor in the city of Al-Bireh, before he was arrested by chance by Israeli special forces, and was taken for interrogation for 3 consecutive months, during which he tasted all kinds of psychological and physical torture, and was brought before the military court twice Just.
In the second trial, dozens of families of the Israeli dead attended, and he was sentenced as the longest sentence in the history of the occupation. Others even described it as the longest prison sentence in history, amid threats from the families of the dead to take revenge on him.
Isolate and prevent visits
He was transferred directly to solitary confinement, during which he moved between several prisons, and remained isolated for 10 years, during which he was exposed to great psychological and physical pressures, including the inclusion of mentally ill persons into his isolation, and the admission of agents to live with him.
He went on a hunger strike that ended his solitary confinement, and during the years of detention he was able to maintain excellent physical and mental health, as his wife describes to Al Jazeera Net, although the occupation wanted the opposite, because he loved judo from his childhood.
His wife, who is the only one of his relatives with their children in Palestine, visited him only 6 times during 20 years of detention, and his last visit was in 2019, during which he did not see his parents and relatives who all live in Jordan.
Al-Barghouti was nicknamed "The Prince of Shadow", after he wrote a book from his prison called "The Prince of Shadows", in which he talks about his life since his birth and his movement from Kuwait to Jordan, South Korea and Palestine, and the details of the resistance operations he carried out with other martyrs and prisoners, and described in the book how He was inserting explosives through Israeli military checkpoints, how he carried out remote detonation operations, and other subtle details.
Free with a bargain
The Al-Qassam Brigades in Gaza responded by naming the unit that was responsible for capturing the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in 2006 as the "shadow unit", after him, and promised him that he would be at the head of any exchange deal, but he refused to leave in the "Wafa Al-Ahrar" deal. Or the "Shalit" deal, and he gave priority to those with high sentences at the time in 2011, in addition to Israel's refusal to include it in any deal at the time.
The occupation was surprised in 2015 when Barghouti contacted one of the local radio stations in the Gaza Strip from his prison cell, and sent a message to the Al-Qassam Brigades not to rush into concluding a prisoner exchange deal, which was the reason for his return to isolation and investigation again.
Al-Barghouti is the author of several books, including "The Prince of Shadow", and several novels, most notably "Al Majida" and "The Guillotine".
During the years of his arrest, he also obtained a bachelor’s degree in history from Al-Aqsa University, a master’s degree in political science from the Ummah University, a master’s degree in regional studies from Al-Quds University, and an honorary doctorate from a Moroccan university.
His eldest daughter Tala graduated from Birzeit University, and his son Osama is studying computer at the same university in the third year.
As for his youngest daughter, Safaa, she was 35 days old when he was arrested in 2003, and she recently enrolled in the Faculty of Medicine at An-Najah University in Nablus, after obtaining a GPA of 98.3 in high school, when her father wished her on one of the visits to wear a white coat, which she seeks. to achieve it.
You always make us proud of you and your accomplishments 🤍 pic.twitter.com/IrKwIQA2cL
— Safa Abdullah Al Barghouthi 𓂆 (@Safabarghouthi) March 10, 2022
His wife, Umm Osama, told Al-Jazeera Net, that he is in very high spirits and excellent health, confirming her confidence in God first, and the Palestinian resistance second, to include him in any future prisoner exchange deal, because he smiled when he was sentenced, and said, "I will come out despite your noses."
Indeed, in one of the press interviews inside his prison, he told an Israeli journalist as well, “I will go out to see my family, and spend the rest of my life on the beach and swimming, and you will visit me in Ramallah while I relax in the jacuzzi inside my house.”