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.
