Barghouti’s Wife Leads Movement to Support Him as Possible Successor to Abbas

Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi met with Barghouti on July 26 (Foreign Ministry website)
Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi met with Barghouti on July 26 (Foreign Ministry website)
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Barghouti’s Wife Leads Movement to Support Him as Possible Successor to Abbas

Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi met with Barghouti on July 26 (Foreign Ministry website)
Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi met with Barghouti on July 26 (Foreign Ministry website)

Fadwa Barghouti, the wife of Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti, who is detained in Israeli prisons, has been renewing attempts to support her husband as a possible successor to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

In recent weeks, she held extensive meetings with senior officials in Arab countries, and diplomats in the United States, Russia and Europe, asking them to work for her husband’s release from Israeli prison.

Israeli Haaretz newspaper said that the meetings also aimed at rallying international support for her husband, as the right person to head the Palestinian Authority, after the end of the term of President Mahmoud Abbas.

Among the many officials Barghouti has recently met were Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi, to whom she conveyed a letter from her husband to King Abdullah II, the Secretary-General of Arab League, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, and Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry.

During her meeting with Safadi, Barghouti discussed the launch of a wide international campaign in Europe, South Africa, Latin America and Ireland, entitled “Freedom for Marwan Barghouti, the Mandela of Palestine.”

Barghouti sees her husband as “a savior for the Palestinian cause”, and stresses that he is “an urgent national need, as a symbol of national consensus, who is capable of ending division, and achieving and restoring the unity of the Palestinian people, the cause, and the land.”

Marwan Barghouti, 65, has been detained in Israel since 2002. He was condemned to five life sentences and forty years in prison on charges of leading the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the military arm of the Fatah movement, which is responsible for the killing of Israelis during the second Al-Aqsa Intifada that erupted in 2000.

His name appears in every talk about the successor to Abbas, as he has maintained a significant lead over other candidates in all opinion polls. Sources close to Barghouti’s circles said that he would not hesitate to run for office in the upcoming presidential elections, and would not give up this right.



Israeli Strikes Kill at Least 11 People in Northern Gaza

 Relatives mourn the death of Atef Al-Atout, a Palestinian man who his family said was shot dead as he fled Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip toward in Gaza City, in front of the al-Maamadani hospital on November 6, 2024. (AFP)
Relatives mourn the death of Atef Al-Atout, a Palestinian man who his family said was shot dead as he fled Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip toward in Gaza City, in front of the al-Maamadani hospital on November 6, 2024. (AFP)
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Israeli Strikes Kill at Least 11 People in Northern Gaza

 Relatives mourn the death of Atef Al-Atout, a Palestinian man who his family said was shot dead as he fled Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip toward in Gaza City, in front of the al-Maamadani hospital on November 6, 2024. (AFP)
Relatives mourn the death of Atef Al-Atout, a Palestinian man who his family said was shot dead as he fled Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip toward in Gaza City, in front of the al-Maamadani hospital on November 6, 2024. (AFP)

Palestinian medical officials say Israeli strikes have killed at least 11 people in the northern Gaza Strip.

A strike hit a house in the northern town of Beit Lahia, killing at least six people from the same family, according to the Gaza Health Ministry’s emergency service.

The dead include a mother and her three children, as well as the children’s grandmother and uncle, according to a list provided by the service.

In the urban refugee camp of Jabalia, al-Awda Hospital said it received the bodies of five men killed in an Israeli strike.

The military says it only targets fighters and tries to avoid harming civilians. It rarely comments on individual strikes, which often kill women and children.

Israel has been waging a major offensive over the past month in northern Gaza, the most heavily destroyed and isolated part of the territory, where it says Hamas has regrouped.