Barghouti: He'll yet be their Mandela

He'll yet be their Mandela
By Avinoam Bar-Yosef

In the spring of 1985, I was the only Israeli journalist attending a huge demonstration at Bir Zeit University. I found myself in a car at the entrance to the campus surrounded by hundreds of angry youths, calling out violent slogans against Israelis, against Israel and against all that Israel symbolized in their eyes. There was a feeling of a near lynch. Only a few days earlier, at the same place, then-U.S. consul general Morris Draper's car was attacked.
Suddenly, a finger went up from the crowd, ordering it to cease. The surging mob froze in place and out of its midst strode a short stocky young man, gesturing with his hand to calm things down. "My name is Marwan Barghouti," he said. "I am the chairman of the student council here."

Over time, we began to converse and become friends, me, an Israeli Zionist, him a Palestinian committed to the struggle for independence. I learned that he earned his power and leadership through hard work in the refugee camps, establishing the Shabiba, the Fatah youth movement, and enlisting it in the cause of helping the weak in Palestinian society. He earned his place honestly, not through bribery and not through corruption. We kept our connection until a week before the outbreak of the Palestinian intifada in September 2000.

I am disgusted by the methods of attack on innocents that Barghouti adopted to advance political causes and justify every means used to combat those methods. I believe that the Israeli judicial system served justice when it sentenced him to five life sentences. As is his wont, he earned his punishment honestly as well.

Regrettably for the people of this land, Jews and Arabs, violence is one of the characteristics of the conflict. From that perspective, Abu Mazen and Abu Ala, Jibril Rajoub and Mohammed Dahlan, are not clean, and that group, which wants to take over the leadership of the Palestinian Authority, is also tainted with corruption. These are people who enjoyed Yasser Arafat's corrupt system of government, and took care of their homes before they took care of their people. They lost, "honestly," the trust of most of the Palestinian people, especially the younger generation, whose leadership in the Tanzim is leading the campaign for reforms.

If we want to use the window of opportunity that opened with Arafat's departure and President Bush's reelection, strategic decisions must be made on both sides. The Jewish people and Israel as their nucleus state are committed to the most painful concessions to ensure the existence of the Jewish state for generations to come, despite the threatening demographic trends. The Palestinians will be required to recognize the legitimacy of Israel as a state in the Middle East. That decision requires not merely conceding the right of return, but also recognition of an agreement that guarantees a Jewish majority in an Israel with narrow borders. It requires giving up the establishment of a binational state alongside the Palestinian state, so that one day in the future it becomes part of that state.

To achieve that, the two nations need leaders who in the eyes of their people have the political strength and honesty to make such decisions. Whether Barghouti's latest statement about running for president is final or was intended for bargaining purposes will become known in the coming weeks. But even if Arafat's successors do take up the leadership, it will be only for an interim period. Barghouti is not going to disappear from the stage.

At the end of the 1980s, then-defense minister Yitzhak Rabin decided to use an envoy, Maj. Gen. Shmuel Goren, who was then coordinator of government activities in the territories, to conduct a dialogue with Faisal Husseini ahead of his release from prison.

In 2004, there could be something for Israel to gain from contact with Barghouti. There won't be a "deal" - Israel will talk with him because it does not have a chance. But just so we're not surprised again when a once-in-a-generation chance comes in the Palestinian Authority's leadership, there should already be an examination of whether there is any basis to talks with Barghouti, the only one in the arena who has the potential to become a Palestinian Mandela.

The writer is director general of the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/510959.html