Saturday, February 24, 2024, 12:00 Noon
ILWU Local 10
400 North Point St., San Francisco
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Gaza Strip Access Restrictions.pdf since 2007
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Free Speech Teach-In: Drop the Charges Against the Uhuru 3! Free Leonard Peltier!
Fight for Free Speech: Anti-Colonial Teach-In
Saturday, February 17th, 2024, 2 to 4pm
Tamarack, 1501 Harrison Street, Oakland, 94612
Uhuru Solidarity Movement
(510) 603-6150, oakland@uhurusolidarity.org
“Fight for Free Speech,” teach-in features Mwezi Odom, chair of the Hands-Off Uhuru Fight-Back Coalition, Penny Hess, Chairwoman of the African People’s Solidarity Committee and Dawn Lawson of the Leonard Peltier Ad Hoc Defense Committee.
· Hess is one of the “Uhuru 3” facing 10 years in prison under a bogus DOJ indictment attacking her free speech rights to support black liberation.
· Lawson will speak on the campaign to free Leonard Peltier, an Indigenous leader unjustly imprisoned for 46 years.
· Odom leads the Hands Off Uhuru Fight-back Coalition to fight the US government’s attempt to silence the anti-colonial freedom struggles.
“No More Genocide in Our Name” Uhuru Solidarity National Conference
March 9-10, 2024, 9:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.
Akwaaba Hall, 4101 W. Florissant Ave., St. Louis, MO. 63115 and online
NoMoreGenocide.eventbee.com
White people: go beyond protest and build the movement of anti-colonial solidarity with the African Revolution, under the leadership of the African People’s Socialist Party.
Oppose U.S.-backed genocidal wars in Occupied Palestine, Africa, Haiti, Latin America and within the colonial borders of the U.S.
Take action to demand the U.S. government drop the bogus charges against the Uhuru 3 - Uhuru Movement founder/leader Chairman Omali Yeshitela and Uhuru Solidarity leaders Penny Hess and Jesse Nevel - who face 15 years in prison for fighting for reparations to African people.
Defend anti-colonial free speech!
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We are all Palestinian
Listen and view this beautiful, powerful, song by Mistahi Corkill on YouTube at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQwuhbLczgI
Greetings,
Here is my new song and music video, We are all Palestinian, linked below. If you find it inspiring, please feel free to share with others. All the best!
Mistahi
We are all Palestinian
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Labor for Palestine
Thousands of labor representatives marched Saturday, December 16, in Oakland, California. —Photo by Leon Kunstenaar
Video of December 16th Labor rally for Palestine.
Bay Area Unions and Workers Rally and March For Palestine In Oakland
https://youtu.be/L9k79honqIA
For More Information:
bayarealabor4palestine@gmail.com
Production of Labor Video Project
www.labormedia.net
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Just Like The Nazis Did
By David Rovics
After so many decades of patronage
By the world’s greatest empire
So many potential agreements
Were rejected by opening fire
After crushing so many uprisings
Now they’re making their ultimate bid
Pursuing their Final Solution
Just like the Nazis did
They forced refugees into ghettos
Then set the ghettos aflame
Murdering writers and poets
And so no one remember their names
Killing their entire families
The grandparents, women and kids
The uncles and cousins and babies
Just like the Nazis did
They’re bombing all means of sustaining
Human life at all
See the few shelters remaining
Watch as the tower blocks fall
They’re bombing museums and libraries
In order to get rid
Of any memory of the people who lived here
Just like the Nazis did
They’re saying these people are animals
And they should all end up dead
They’re sending soldiers into schools
And shooting children in the head
The rhetoric is identical
And with Gaza off the grid
They’ve already said what happens next
Just like the Nazis did
Words of war for domestic consumption
And lies for all the rest
To try to distract our attention
Among their enablers in the West
Because Israel needs their imports
To keep those pallets on the skids
They need fuel and they need missiles
Just like the Nazis did
They’re using food as a weapon
They’re using water that way, too
They’re trying to kill everyone in Gaza
Or make them flee, it’s true
As the pundits talk of “after the war”
Like with the Fall of Madrid
The victors are preparing for more
Just like the Nazis did
But it’s after the conquest’s complete
If history is any guide
When the occupying army
Is positioned to decide
When disease and famine kills
Whoever may have hid
Behind the ghetto walls
Just like the Nazis did
All around the world
People are trying to tell
There's a genocide unfolding
Ringing alarm bells
But with such a powerful axis
And so many lucrative bids
They know who wants their money
Just like the Nazis did
There's so many decades of patronage
For the world's greatest empire
So many potential agreements
Were rejected by opening fire
They're crushing so many uprisings
Now they're making their ultimate bid
Pursuing their final solution
Just like the Nazis did
Just like the Nazis did
Just like the Nazis did
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Free Julian Assange
Immediate Repeated Action Needed to Free Assange
Please call your Congressional Representatives, the White House, and the DOJ. Calls are tallied—they do count. We are to believe we are represented in this country. This is a political case, so our efforts can change things politically as well. Please take this action as often as you can:
Find your representatives:
https://www.congress.gov/members/find-your-member
Leave each of your representatives a message individually to:
· Drop the charges against Julian Assange
· Speak out publicly against the indictment and
· Sign on to Rashida Tlaib's letter to the DOJ to drop the charges:
202-224-3121—Capitol Main Switchboard
Leave a message on the White House comment line to
Demand Julian Assange be pardoned:
202-456-1111
Tuesday–Thursday, 11:00 A.M.–3:00 P.M. EST
Call the DOJ and demand they drop the charges against Julian Assange:
202-353-1555—DOJ Comment Line
202-514-2000 Main Switchboard
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Mumia Abu-Jamal is Innocent!
FREE HIM NOW!
Write to Mumia at:
Smart Communications/PADOC
Mumia Abu-Jamal #AM-8335
SCI Mahanoy
P.O. Box 33028
St. Petersburg, FL 33733
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Leonard Peltier Update - Not One More Year
Coleman 1 has gone on permanent lockdown.
The inmates are supposed to be allowed out two hours a day. I have not heard from Leonard since the 18th.
The last time I talked to Leonard, he asked where his supporters were. He asked me if anyone cared about these lockdowns.
Leonard lives in a filthy, cold cell 22 to 24 hours a day. He has not seen a dentist in ten years. I asked him, “On a scale of 1 to 10, is your pain level at 13?” He said, “Something like that.” Leonard is a relentless truth-teller. He does not like it when I say things that do not make sense mathematically.
That is why Leonard remains imprisoned. He will not lie. He will not beg, grovel, or denounce his beliefs.
Please raise your voice. Ask your representatives why they have abdicated their responsibility to oversee the Bureau of Prisons and ensure they adhere to Constitutional law.
Uhuru, The African People’s Socialist Party, has stepped up for Leonard. NOT ONE MORE YEAR.
Fight for Free Speech – YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FM8GDeGv90E
Leonard should not have spent a day in prison. Click “LEARN” on our website to find out what really happened on that reservation:
www.freeleonardpeltiernow.org
Write to:
Leonard Peltier 89637-132
USP Coleman 1
P.O. Box 1033
Coleman, FL 33521
Note: Letters, address and return address must be in writing—no stickers—and on plain white paper.
Sign our petition urging President Biden to grant clemency to Leonard Peltier.
https://www.freeleonardpeltier.com/petition
Email: contact@whoisleonardpeltier.info
Address: 116 W. Osborne Ave. Tampa, Florida 33603
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Updates From Kevin Cooper
A Never-ending Constitutional Violation
A summary of the current status of Kevin Cooper’s case by the Kevin Cooper Defense Committee
On October 26, 2023, the law firm of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, LLP wrote a rebuttal in response to the Special Counsel's January 13, 2023 report upholding the conviction of their client Kevin Cooper. A focus of the rebuttal was that all law enforcement files were not turned over to the Special Counsel during their investigation, despite a request for them to the San Bernardino County District Attorney's office.
On October 29, 2023, Law Professors Lara Bazelon and Charlie Nelson Keever, who run the six member panel that reviews wrongful convictions for the San Francisco County District Attorney's office, published an OpEd in the San Francisco Chronicle calling the "Innocence Investigation” done by the Special Counsel in the Cooper case a “Sham Investigation” largely because Cooper has unsuccessfully fought for years to obtain the police and prosecutor files in his case. This is a Brady claim, named for the U.S. Supreme court’s 1963 case establishing the Constitutional rule that defendants are entitled to any information in police and prosecutor's possession that could weaken the state's case or point to innocence. Brady violations are a leading cause of wrongful convictions. The Special Counsel's report faults Cooper for not offering up evidence of his own despite the fact that the best evidence to prove or disprove Brady violations or other misconduct claims are in those files that the San Bernardino County District Attorney's office will not turn over to the Special Counsel or to Cooper's attorneys.
On December 14, 2023, the president of the American Bar Association (ABA), Mary Smith, sent Governor Gavin Newsom a three page letter on behalf of the ABA stating in part that Mr.Cooper's counsel objected to the state's failure to provide Special Counsel all documents in their possession relating to Mr.Cooper's conviction, and that concerns about missing information are not new. For nearly 40 years Mr.Cooper's attorneys have sought this same information from the state.
On December 19, 2023, Bob Egelko, a journalist for the San Francisco Chronicle wrote an article about the ABA letter to the Governor that the prosecutors apparently withheld evidence from the Governor's legal team in the Cooper case.
These are just a few recent examples concerning the ongoing failure of the San Bernardino County District Attorney to turn over to Cooper's attorney's the files that have been requested, even though under the law and especially the U.S. Constitution, the District Attorney of San Bernardino county is required to turn over to the defendant any and all material and or exculpatory evidence that they have in their files. Apparently, they must have something in their files because they refuse to turn them over to anyone.
The last time Cooper's attorney's received files from the state, in 2004, it wasn't from the D.A. but a Deputy Attorney General named Holly Wilkens in Judge Huff's courtroom. Cooper's attorneys discovered a never before revealed police report showing that a shirt was discovered that had blood on it and was connected to the murders for which Cooper was convicted, and that the shirt had disappeared. It had never been tested for blood. It was never turned over to Cooper's trial attorney, and no one knows where it is or what happened to it. Cooper's attorneys located the woman who found that shirt on the side of the road and reported it to the Sheriff's Department. She was called to Judge Huff's court to testify about finding and reporting that shirt to law enforcement. That shirt was the second shirt found that had blood on it that was not the victims’ blood. This was in 2004, 19 years after Cooper's conviction.
It appears that this ongoing constitutional violation that everyone—from the Special Counsel to the Governor's legal team to the Governor himself—seems to know about, but won't do anything about, is acceptable in order to uphold Cooper's conviction.
But this type of thing is supposed to be unacceptable in the United States of America where the Constitution is supposed to stand for something other than a piece of paper with writing on it. How can a Governor, his legal team, people who support and believe in him ignore a United States citizen’s Constitutional Rights being violated for 40 years in order to uphold a conviction?
This silence is betrayal of the Constitution. This permission and complicity by the Governor and his team is against everything that he and they claim to stand for as progressive politicians. They have accepted the Special Counsel's report even though the Special Counsel did not receive the files from the district attorney that may not only prove that Cooper is innocent, but that he was indeed framed by the Sheriff’s Department; and that evidence was purposely destroyed and tampered with, that certain witnesses were tampered with, or ignored if they had information that would have helped Cooper at trial, that evidence that the missing shirt was withheld from Cooper's trial attorney, and so much more.
Is the Governor going to get away with turning a blind eye to this injustice under his watch?
Are progressive people going to stay silent and turn their eyes blind in order to hopefully get him to end the death penalty for some while using Cooper as a sacrificial lamb?
An immediate act of solidarity we can all do right now is to write to Kevin and assure him of our continuing support in his fight for justice. Here’s his address:
Mr. Kevin Cooper
C-65304. 4-EB-82
San Quentin State Prison
San Quentin, CA 94974
Call California Governor Newsom:
1-(916) 445-2841
Press 1 for English or 2 for Spanish,
press 6 to speak with a representative and
wait for someone to answer
(Monday-Friday, 9:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. PST—12:00 P.M. to 8:00 P.M. EST)
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The writers' organization PEN America is circulating this petition on behalf of Jason Renard Walker, a Texas prisoner whose life is being threatened because of his exposés of the Texas prison system.
See his book, Reports from within the Belly of the Beast; available on Amazon at:
https://www.amazon.com/Reports-Within-Belly-Beast-Department-ebook/dp/B084656JDZ/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8
Petition: https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/protect-whistleblowers-in-carceral-settings
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Sign the petition:
https://dontextraditeassange.com/petition/
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Tell Congress to Help #FreeDanielHale
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Resources for Resisting Federal Repression
https://www.nlg.org/federalrepressionresources/
Since June of 2020, activists have been subjected to an increasingly aggressive crackdown on protests by federal law enforcement. The federal response to the movement for Black Lives has included federal criminal charges for activists, door knocks by federal law enforcement agents, and increased use of federal troops to violently police protests.
The NLG National Office is releasing this resource page for activists who are resisting federal repression. It includes a link to our emergency hotline numbers, as well as our library of Know-Your-Rights materials, our recent federal repression webinar, and a list of some of our recommended resources for activists. We will continue to update this page.
Please visit the NLG Mass Defense Program page for general protest-related legal support hotlines run by NLG chapters.
Emergency Hotlines
If you are contacted by federal law enforcement, you should exercise all of your rights. It is always advisable to speak to an attorney before responding to federal authorities.
State and Local Hotlines
If you have been contacted by the FBI or other federal law enforcement, in one of the following areas, you may be able to get help or information from one of these local NLG hotlines for:
Portland, Oregon: (833) 680-1312
San Francisco, California: (415) 285-1041 or fbi_hotline@nlgsf.org
Seattle, Washington: (206) 658-7963
National Hotline
If you are located in an area with no hotline, you can call the following number:
National NLG Federal Defense Hotline: (212) 679-2811
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1) Palestinians in Rafah describe a ‘night full of horror’ during Israel’s operation.
Hiba Yazbek reporting from Jerusalem, Feb. 12, 2024
Mourning bodies at a hospital in Rafah on Monday. Credit...Fatima Shbair/Associated Press
Palestinians in Rafah described a night of fear as Israeli strikes pummeled the area early Monday, killing and wounding dozens, according to the Gazan health ministry, and highlighting the cost of Israel’s military operation to free its hostages.
“I swear to God it was an indescribable night,” said Ghada al-Kurd, 37, who is among more than a million people sheltering in the southern Gaza city. “The bombing was everywhere — we were convinced that the Israeli army was invading Rafah.”
Israel’s military said early Monday that it had conducted a “wave of attacks” on Rafah to provide cover for soldiers who freed two hostages held by Hamas. The health ministry in Gaza said that at least 67 people had been killed in the strikes, and that the toll was likely to rise. The ministry’s figures do not distinguish between combatants and civilians.
Dr. Marwan al-Hamase, the director of Abu Yousef al-Najjar Hospital in Rafah, said that the hospital had received 100 injured people overnight, along with the bodies of 52 who were killed.
Maher Abu Arar, a spokesman for the Kuwait Hospital in Rafah, said the hospital had taken in at least 15 bodies and 50 wounded people. “There were a lot of body parts,” said Mr. Abu Arar, following “successive and sudden” Israeli strikes.
Ms. al-Kurd said that people in Rafah were panicking and considered evacuating during the night, but “no one knew where to even go.” She added in a voice message that her young nieces “were crying and I was trying to calm them down,” even though she was also “very scared.”
Gazans in Rafah have been wondering if they should evacuate ahead of an expected Israeli ground offensive into the city. But many who have already been displaced multiple times since the start of the war have said that they have nowhere else to go.
Ms. al-Kurd sent five short voice messages she recorded during the night in which the sound of intense bombing and machine guns can be heard clearly. In the background of one of the recordings, a young girl cries and calls for her mother. In another message, Ms. al-Kurd says: “The bombing was very close.”
“To simply put it, it was a night full of horror, strikes, death and destruction,” said Akram al-Satri, 47, who is staying in the Shaboura refugee camp in Rafah. He said strikes there began at around 1 a.m. and that there were “very violent clashes.” He added in a voice message on Monday morning that several houses and a mosque in the area had been destroyed.
“The explosions caused a state of panic among men, women and children alike,” Mr. al-Satri said. “The state of panic pushed everyone to pack whatever they had, thinking that the ground invasion of Rafah had begun and that they would live what others have in Khan Younis, Gaza City and the north,” he added, listing areas of Gaza that Israeli ground troops have invaded over the past four months of war.
Majd Huwehe, 35, a freelance journalist, said that the strikes and clashes “started suddenly,” sending him and his family running to a nearby school for shelter because the tent they were staying in could not offer protection from shrapnel. “Everyone was terrified,” he added.
Iyad Abuheweila contributed reporting from Istanbul and Abu Bakr Bashir from London.
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2) Here’s what to know about the rescued hostages.
By Mike Ives and Matthew Mpoke Bigg, Feb. 12, 2023
A photo released by the Israeli military shows two freed hostages, Fernando Simon Marman, right, and Louis Har, second from left, being reunited with their families in Israel on Monday. Credit...Israeli military, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Israeli security forces said early Monday that they had freed two hostages who were being held in the southern Gazan city of Rafah, in only the second known rescue of its kind in Gaza since the start of the war. Officials in Gaza said that accompanying Israeli strikes had killed dozens of Palestinians in the city overnight.
The hostages, Fernando Simon Marman, 60, and Louis Har, 70, were undergoing tests at a hospital near Tel Aviv and were both in good condition, according to a joint statement from the Israeli military, the police and the domestic security agency, Shin Bet.
“Fernando and Louis, welcome home,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement. “I salute our brave fighters for the daring action that led to their release.”
Mr. Netanyahu’s office said that Mr. Marman and Mr. Har were both dual citizens of Israel and Argentina. They were among more than 240 people captured during the surprise Oct. 7 raid on southern Israel by Hamas and other militant groups. Israel said it launched attacks in Rafah to provide cover for the rescue.
The two men, looking gaunt but not visibly harmed, cried and embraced family members who had come to be reunited with them at Sheba Medical Center, according to video released by the Israeli military.
Mr. Har was pale and “a little in shock,” according to Idan Berjerano, his son-in-law, who visited him and spoke to Israel’s public broadcaster.
The Israeli military said that Mr. Marman and Mr. Har had been kidnapped from the same house in Nir Yitzhak, a kibbutz near the border with Gaza. They were taken hostage along with other family members including Clara Marman, who is Mr. Marman’s sister and Mr. Har’s partner. Ms. Marman and the other family members were freed in November as part of a weeklong cease-fire between Israel and Hamas.
An Israeli news website, Ynet, reported that the two men had told their captors that they were Argentine and had tried to make conversation by talking about soccer.
The rescue was the main story in the Israeli news media, but the public reaction appeared more muted than in November, when about 100 of the hostages were released during the cease-fire. This appeared partly to reflect the knowledge that more than 100 people remained in captivity.
“Not stopping till they all come home,” the organization Bring Them Home Now, which advocates for the release of the hostages, said in a social media post.
Last week, The New York Times reported that Israeli intelligence officers had concluded that at least 30 of the remaining 136 hostages had died since the start of the war.
Before Monday, Israeli forces had said they rescued at least one hostage, Pvt. Ori Megidish, who was freed during a military operation in October. But the military has released few details about that operation.
In December, the Israeli military said its forces had mistakenly killed three hostages in Gaza who had been waving a makeshift white flag.
With military analysts saying that rescue operations are not the path to freeing most of the captives, hostages’ families have been pressing Israel to prioritize negotiations for their release. Last week, Mr. Netanyahu publicly rejected Hamas’s latest proposal for another pause in fighting that would allow for some of the hostages being held by the militants to be released. But Israeli officials have also signaled that their government was still open to negotiation.
Asked in an interview televised Sunday with ABC News how many of the remaining hostages were still alive, Mr. Netanyahu said, “Enough to warrant the kind of efforts that we’re doing.”
President Javier Milei of Argentina — who last week made his first state visit to Israel as president — thanked the Israeli military for rescuing the two men. In a statement on Monday, Mr. Milei’s office said that he had raised the subject of Argentine hostages in his meetings with Israeli leaders.
Reporting was contributed by Gabby Sobelman, Myra Noveck and Cassandra Vinograd.
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3) A Dutch court moves to block the export of F-35 parts to Israel.
By Cassandra Vinograd, Feb. 12, 2023
F-35 fighter jets at an air base of the Royal Danish Air Force near Skrydstrup, Denmark, last year. Credit...Bo Amstrup/Ritzau Scanpix, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
A court in the Netherlands on Monday ordered the Dutch government to stop exporting parts for F-35 fighter jets to Israel, a move that reflected mounting alarm over the heavy civilian toll of Israel’s war in Gaza but was unlikely to have an immediate effect on the military campaign.
The Netherlands hosts a warehouse of U.S.-owned F-35 parts that are exported to countries that operate the fighters. Oxfam and two other human rights organizations filed a lawsuit against the Dutch government in December, demanding that it halt the exports amid concerns over potential Israeli violations of international law in Gaza.
In an initial ruling in December, a court declined to issue the order, but on Monday a court of appeals in The Hague said it agreed with the rights groups. It gave the Dutch government seven days to stop exporting F-35 parts to Israel.
“The court finds that there is a clear risk that Israel’s F-35 fighter jets might be used in the commission of serious violations of international humanitarian law,” it said in a ruling.
The Dutch government said it would lodge an appeal with the country’s Supreme Court against the ruling, which came as Prime Minister Mark Rutte was visiting Israel. Israel’s Defense Ministry declined to comment.
More than 28,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, according to health officials there, since Israel launched a retaliatory war against Hamas after the armed group’s deadly Oct. 7 attack. Rights organizations have increasingly called for countries to block weapons exports to Israel to protest how the country is carrying out its offensive.
Analysts said Monday’s ruling would have little impact on the Israeli military’s capabilities given that it has other weapons at its disposal, and because F-35 parts are available elsewhere.
“If one supplier isn’t able to deliver for any reason, the parts can be sourced from another,” said Gareth Jennings, aviation editor at the defense intelligence firm Janes.
For the moment, he added, the Dutch ruling seems to be “a symbolic act rather than one having any meaningful effect on Israel’s F-35 fleet.”
The F-35, made by the U.S. defense contractor Lockheed Martin, is considered to be one of the most expensive weapons programs in history. Each jet has a roughly $80 million to $100 million price tag; the aircraft are capable of avoiding enemy radar and use a highly advanced software system.
More than a dozen countries — including Israel, the United States and Britain — own or have placed orders for F-35s. Israel was the first known to have used one in combat, saying in May 2018 that it had used the F-35 in two airstrikes in the Middle East, without specifying the targets.
The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday. In December, American military officials confirmed that the United States had rushed extra support for the fighters to Israel after the Oct. 7 attacks.
“Since early October, the F-35 program has delivered surge support to Israel,” Lt. Gen. Michael Schmidt told a House Armed Services subcommittee.
Gabby Sobelman contributed reporting.
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4) Israel orders an evacuation of the largest hospital in Khan Younis, Gazans say.
By Raja Abdulrahim reporting from Jerusalem, Feb. 13, 2024
Smoke rising over Khan Younis in southern Gaza on Tuesday. Credit...Bassam Masoud/Reuters
As explosions sounded nearby, Israeli forces on Tuesday ordered the evacuation of one of the last functioning hospitals in the Gaza Strip, according to two doctors and the Gazan health ministry, raising fears that troops would attempt to storm a facility crowded with patients and displaced people.
Adding to the terror of those inside the hospital, Israeli forces fired on people who tried to flee the medical compound on Tuesday, with some being killed or injured, the doctors said.
The scope of the evacuation order at the hospital, the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis, was not immediately clear. Two doctors said the Israeli military had given assurances that patients and medical staff could stay at the hospital. But one of the doctors said the military announced on Tuesday, using a loudspeaker attached to a drone, that everyone had to leave immediately and that an attack was imminent.
“The situation is very dangerous,” said Khaled Al-Serr, a general surgeon at the hospital. He said that the Israeli military had indicated just a day earlier that the hospital, which has been surrounded by Israeli ground forces for weeks, was safe.
The surrounding city of Khan Younis has been a focus of Israel’s invasion of southern Gaza, with airstrikes killing hundreds of civilians and soldiers shooting people in the streets, according to the Gazan health ministry and Palestinian news media reports. Many Gazans who fled Israel’s military offensive in northern and central Gaza had sought shelter in Khan Younis, only to be forced to flee again as Israeli forces advanced deeper into the strip.
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to questions about the evacuation order and about the allegation that its forces had shot at those trying to flee.
The Israeli military says that Hamas uses hospitals as a cover for its operations, a claim that the group and medical officials have denied. Palestinians have sought shelter at hospitals even though Israeli forces have regularly launched strikes on and around them and in some cases raided hospital compounds.
Nahed Abu Taeema, the head of surgery at Nasser Hospital, said that explosions from airstrikes had grown closer to the hospital and more intense over the past few days. “But we won’t leave the hospital without our patients,” he said.
Amid the confusion over the evacuation order, many doctors and nurses, along with their family members who were sheltering at the hospital, had begun to pack their belongings and prepare to flee, Dr. Al-Serr said, even as leaving presented its own set of dangers.
There are about 8,000 people inside Nasser, he said, including badly wounded patients who have limb injuries and would be difficult to transport.
The situation inside the hospital has grown increasingly dire. Israeli strikes nearby caused fires that spread to the hospital’s medical equipment storage facility and supply warehouse, burning both nearly completely, said Dr. Ashraf Al-Qudra, the spokesman for the Gazan health ministry. Sewage has flooded into the emergency department, hindering the treatment of patients and threatening further spread of disease, he said.
The United Nations’ World Health Organization said that one of its teams was denied access to the hospital on Sunday. The head of the agency, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, wrote on social media that he was “deeply concerned about the safety of patients and health personnel due to the intensifying hostilities in the vicinity of the hospital,” and warned that hospitals and health workers “MUST be protected at all times.”
Aaron Boxerman and Rawan Sheikh Ahmad contributed reporting.
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5) A bill with $14 billion for Israel’s war in Gaza passes the Senate, but may falter in the House.
By Matthew Mpoke Bigg and Karoun Demirjian, Feb. 13, 2024
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/02/13/world/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news#israel-orders-an-evacuation-of-the-largest-hospital-in-khan-younis-gazans-say
A vote on an aid bill came after an all-night Senate session in which Republican opponents made speeches denouncing various aspects of the bill. Credit...Valerie Plesch for The New York Times
A $95 billion foreign aid package passed by the Senate on Tuesday morning includes $14.1 billion for Israel’s war against Hamas, though the bill still faces uncertainty in the House.
The $95 billion legislation also sets aside almost $10 billion for humanitarian aid for civilians in conflict zones around the world, including Palestinians in Gaza.
President Biden has recently escalated his criticism of Israel’s campaign against Hamas, calling it “over the top.” Aid to Israel has also faced opposition from some Democrats, who have expressed alarm at the death toll in Gaza, which the territory’s health ministry says has passed 28,000, most of those women and children.
Mr. Biden has nonetheless continued to press for military support for the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In October, he requested the foreign aid package, including the $14 billion for Israel’s war effort.
Much of the debate on the measure has focused on the much bigger sum earmarked for Ukraine. Many Republicans oppose sending more money to the government in Kyiv, while others want to prioritize an immigration crackdown at the U.S. border with Mexico.
Speaker Mike Johnson has suggested that he has no intention of bringing up the bill in the House, where the majority of Republicans have opposed more aid for Ukraine.
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6) From one war zone to another: A Syrian family is stranded in Gaza.
By Abu Bakr Bashir, Feb. 13, 2024
A tent camp for displaced Palestinians in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip last week. Credit...Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/Reuters
Ameera Malkash, a 40-year-old mother of three, fled one war only to find herself in another.
In 2012, Ms. Malkash was living in Damascus and was desperate to escape the civil war in Syria. She and her husband, Elian Fayyad, made a fateful decision: They would seek safety in Gaza, which he had left when he was 17.
“The war was getting very close to where I lived with my family,” Ms. Malkash recalled about Syria at the time. “The bombardments were very intense and very close.”
Now war has come to them again. After Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks prompted Israel to launch a retaliatory military offensive, Ms. Malkash and her children fled their home in southern Gaza for a makeshift refugee camp set up in a school. Then, as Israeli forces intensified their attacks in the south, she and her children sought refuge at a shelter in central Gaza. (Mr. Fayyad, her husband, died of cancer soon after the family arrived in Gaza in 2012.)
“There is no life here, no future,” Ms. Malkash said by phone recently. She left school after seventh grade and has never worked. Even before the war, she said, she lived on charity in Gaza, which has long been blockaded by Israel and Egypt and where even longtime residents struggled to find work.
Since the war began, many people who held foreign passports have left Gaza after their countries secured permission from the Israeli government. But that did not include Syrians, leaving Ms. Malkash and her children trapped — like more than two million others in Gaza.
Ms. Malkash and her children, who were living in Al Qarara, east of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, first took shelter at the nearby Al Hinawi school, run by the United Nations, along with more than 5,000 others.
Her eldest son, Solaiman, 16, began suffering from severe stomach pains, but the nearest hospital turned him away because it was receiving “too many casualties,” she recalled. “They gave him some medicine and dispatched him.”
Solaiman recovered, but Ms. Malkash said she feared for the health of her children. U.N. officials report soaring cases of diarrhea, respiratory infections, meningitis and other illnesses in Gaza.
Ms. Malkash, whose Syrian passport has expired, said she would apply for a Palestinian passport after the war so she can leave Gaza for good. But she doesn’t know where to go. Syria was not an option, she said.
“Things in Gaza have always been harsh, but things in Syria have been extremely bad too,” Ms. Malkash said. She recently spoke to her sister-in-law there, who said she hadn’t had a decent meal in three years.
As the war rages, Ms. Malkash dreams of simple pleasures in a new home. “I want a place where I can feel alive and enjoy peace,” she said.
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6) Fresh attacks risk efforts to calm the Israel-Lebanon border.
By Gabby Sobelman and Cassandra Vinograd, Feb. 14, 2024
The rocket fire hit near Safed, Israel, which sits about eight miles south of the border with Lebanon. Credit...Jalaa Marey/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images (Screenshot)
Israel said that its air force was carrying out extensive strikes on southern Lebanon on Wednesday in response to a deadly rocket attack, a significant escalation in recent fighting that threatened to derail diplomatic efforts to stem cross-border tensions.
The rocket attack from Lebanon was the second in two days to cause casualties in northern Israel and was the latest in months of tit-for-tat strikes across the border that have fueled fears about a wider war as Israel battles Hamas in Gaza. There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but suspicion quickly fell on Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia and ally of Hamas that has regularly fired into Israel.
One woman was killed and at least eight others were wounded in rocket fire near the city of Safed, according to Magen David Adom, Israel’s nonprofit emergency medical service.
Within hours, Israel’s military said that it was carrying out strikes in Lebanon. Soon, images and videos of the strikes started coming in from Lebanese broadcasters, and the Hezbollah-owned Al Manar news station reported that at least four people had been killed.
Benny Gantz, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s emergency war cabinet, described the morning’s rocket attack as “a difficult event for which the response will come soon and powerfully.” He suggested that Israel could strike at Lebanese military targets in addition to those belonging to Hezbollah.
“It is important that we be clear — the one responsible for the fire from Lebanon is not only Hezbollah or the terrorist elements that carry it out, but also the government of Lebanon and the Lebanese state that allows the shooting from its territory,” Mr. Gantz said, adding: “There is no target or military infrastructure in the area of the north and Lebanon that is not in our sights.”
The latest strikes threatened to derail diplomatic efforts by the United States and others to defuse the cross-border tensions. A Western diplomat said on Tuesday that France had presented a proposal to Israel, Lebanon’s government and Hezbollah. The French proposal details a 10-day process of de-escalation and calls for Hezbollah to withdraw its fighters to a distance of 10 kilometers (six miles) from Lebanon’s border with Israel, according to the diplomat, who is involved in the talks and who requested anonymity to discuss the sensitive deliberations.
In recent weeks, Israel has warned that unless a diplomatic solution is reached, it would have to use military force to stop Hezbollah’s attacks in order to allow for tens of thousands of Israelis to return to their homes. Mr. Netanyahu has been wary of opening a second front while the Israeli military continues to press its invasion of Gaza, but has faced calls from hard-liners in his government to take stronger action.
Avigdor Liberman, a former top adviser to Mr. Netanyahu who now leads an opposition party, accused the government of waving a “white flag” at Hezbollah by failing to take strong enough steps to stop the rocket attacks.
“The war cabinet surrendered to Hezbollah and lost the north,” he wrote on social media on Wednesday.
Israel’s military said that rockets from Lebanon had landed in the areas of Netu’a, Manara and a military base in northern Israel. In Safed, a city of nearly 40,000 people that has four military bases nearby, according to Tamir Engel, a spokesman for the city, rocket warnings are not uncommon but fatalities and direct hits are rare.
In early January, Hezbollah fired rockets toward a small military base not far from the city. The group said then that it was retaliating for the assassination days earlier of a senior Hamas commander in Lebanon; Israel said at the time that the attack had caused no casualties.
Safed sits about eight miles south of the border with Lebanon, far enough away that it was not included in mandatory evacuation orders issued when cross-border hostilities flared after the deadly Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks on Israel.
Israel and Hezbollah have engaged in near-daily cross-border strikes ever since. The clashes have displaced more than 150,000 people from their homes on both sides of the Israel-Lebanon border.
Hwaida Saad, Euan Ward and Adam Sella contributed reporting.
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7) Hundreds flee a southern Gaza hospital after Israel orders an evacuation.
By Raja Abdulrahim reporting from Jerusalem, Feb. 14, 2024
Palestinians leaving Khan Younis, Gaza, in search of safer places last week. Credit...Mohammed Saber/EPA, via Shutterstock
Hundreds of displaced Palestinians were fleeing a major hospital in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, according to doctors and videos from the scene, after Israeli forces ordered them to leave and threatened military action to stop what it said was Hamas activity at the hospital.
Thousands of Gazans have been sheltering at the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis for weeks, having been forced to flee their homes and other parts of Gaza by Israel’s intense bombardment of the territory and military orders to leave their towns and cities. Hospitals have become places of refuge during the war, even as they have often become a focus of Israel’s military offensive.
Inside Nasser, which is one of the last functioning hospitals in Gaza, there was terror that Israeli forces would bombard or storm the complex, said Mohammed Abu Lehya, a doctor there. Previous Israeli warnings to evacuate hospitals, including Al-Shifa, the largest in Gaza, have often preceded military raids on the facilities.
“The situation is very difficult, difficult, difficult, difficult,” Dr. Abu Lehya said in a WhatsApp message Wednesday morning. “It’s beyond the imagination or description.”
A video shared on social media on Wednesday and verified by The New York Times shows crowds of people carrying belongings and bedding leaving the hospital as explosions are heard in the background. The Israeli military called for those sheltering to evacuate but said it had not called on patients and medical staff to leave the hospital.
Israel accuses Hamas, the armed Palestinian group that ran Gaza, of using hospitals for its military operations. Hamas and hospital administrators have previously denied such claims. Classified Israeli intelligence obtained and reviewed by The Times suggests Hamas operated under Al-Shifa, but falls short of proving Israel’s early claims that there was a command center there.
Doctors at the hospital and the Gazan health ministry said that some people who tried to flee the Nasser medical compound on Tuesday were shot at by Israeli soldiers, who killed some and wounded others.
In response to questions, the Israeli military said it had “opened a secure route to evacuate the civilian population taking shelter in the area of the Nasser Hospital toward the humanitarian zone.” It did not respond to questions about reports that it had shot at Palestinians trying to leave the hospital.
In a statement on Wednesday, the Israeli military accused Hamas of conducting military activity inside the hospital grounds and said it “was used to hold hostages.” The claims could not be independently verified, but they signaled the Israeli military’s intensifying focus on the hospital, which its forces have surrounded for weeks.
“We demand the immediate cessation of all military activity in the area of the hospital and the immediate departure of military operatives from it,” the Israeli military said. It called for civilians sheltering at the hospital to leave for “safer spaces” in southern and central Gaza.
It was unclear where those who left the complex could find safety, as Israel’s military has often bombarded areas of Gaza that it had previously said were safe. Israeli leaders have also vowed to invade Rafah, the southernmost city in Gaza, which is sheltering more than a million people.
Inside the hospital, some medical staff were packing their belongings and preparing their families to flee.
“We are all scared,” said Dr. Mohammad Abu Moussa, a radiologist at Nasser. He added that even though he worried about an assault on the hospital, he and his wife had made the difficult decision to stay for now. They and their two surviving children — a third was killed in an airstrike in October — have been staying at the hospital for weeks.
“I have no other choice,” Dr. Abu Moussa said. “I don’t have anywhere to go in Rafah, and I have young children and they can’t walk long distances like that.”
Hanin Abu Tiba, 27, an English teacher sheltering at the hospital, described dire conditions inside, with food running out and aid convoys all but unable to deliver supplies. In text messages overnight, she said that she had seen an Israeli military vehicle outside the hospital gate.
“I’m terrified to leave the hospital and get shot,” she said. But inside the complex, she said, “the electricity is cutting out, and the water, and the canned food is almost gone. We don’t know what to do.”
Throughout the four-month war, the Israeli military has stormed other Gaza hospitals, detaining medical staff, according to the health ministry.
“We are very concerned about the situation developing at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis,” the medical aid group Doctors Without Borders said on social media on Wednesday. It called on Israeli forces “to ensure the safety of all medical staff, patients and displaced people.”
Rawan Sheikh Ahmad and Aaron Boxerman contributed reporting.
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8) An Israeli minister blocks flour from reaching UNRWA in Gaza.
By Aaron Boxerman and Patrick Kingsley reporting from Jerusalem, Feb. 14, 2024
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/02/14/world/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news
Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s finance minister, issued an order blocking some shipments of food for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Credit...Amir Levy/Getty Images
The Israeli finance ministry has blocked deliveries of food for Gaza because the shipments were intended to reach the main U.N. agency for Palestinians, Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, said on Tuesday.
Mr. Smotrich, a hard-right settler leader, said in a statement that he had issued a directive not to transfer flour shipments to the agency, known as UNRWA, citing allegations that some of its employees were affiliated with Hamas, including 12 accused of participating in the armed group’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel.
Last week, a subcontractor handling the shipments for UNRWA received a call from Israel’s customs agency — which is housed in Mr. Smotrich’s ministry — ordering it not to process any UNRWA goods in its warehouse, said Juliette Touma, an UNRWA spokeswoman.
About 1,050 containers — much of it flour — have been held up at the Israeli port of Ashdod, Philippe Lazzarini, the head of UNRWA, told reporters on Friday. The amount was enough to feed 1.1 million Gazans for a month, he said. Mr. Lazzarini said UNRWA still has enough supplies to feed Gazans for three months, but only because the food is now being routed through Egypt rather than Israel.
Mr. Smotrich said another aid distribution mechanism would be found “that would not reach Hamas,” which he said was utilizing UNRWA as a “key part of its war machine.” UNRWA has said it is investigating the allegations, but has stood by its work as essential humanitarian relief in a complex situation.
In an effort to get more aid into Gaza, American, British and European officials pushed last month for Israel to facilitate the entry of aid through Ashdod. Humanitarian aid already enters Gaza by land via the Rafah crossing with Egypt and the Kerem Shalom crossing with Israel, although it can be “very challenging to get deliveries going outside of Rafah north,” Stéphane Dujarric, a spokesman for the U.N. secretary general, António Guterres, said on Tuesday.
Under the plan, shipments would arrive at Ashdod before entering the Strip through Kerem Shalom. After a visit from Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken last month, Israeli officials indicated that the initiative would proceed. But their signals came before the allegations were unearthed, and the proposal, for now, appears to have been complicated by Mr. Smotrich’s order blocking the shipments.
The move could also complicate Israel’s international standing. The International Court of Justice last month ordered the Israeli government to take action to prevent genocide in Gaza, including by ensuring the provision of more humanitarian aid to ease the enclave’s worsening humanitarian crisis.
Aid officials say far more relief is necessary to ease the humanitarian crisis affecting the more than two million Palestinian residents of Gaza amid dire shortages of food, water and medicine.
Roughly 1.7 million people in the territory have been displaced, many of whom are facing extreme hunger, according to the United Nations. More than one million people have squeezed in and around the southern city of Rafah, joining swelling tent cities near the Egyptian border.
Farnaz Fassihi contributed reporting.
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9) The State Department is assessing reports of civilian harm in Gaza from U.S.-made arms.
By Michael Crowley, Feb. 14, 2024
“A State Department spokesman, Matthew Miller, told reporters on Tuesday that the Biden administration was “reviewing incidents” in the Gaza war under what it calls Civilian Harm Incident Response Guidance, which The Washington Post reported was established last August, several weeks before Hamas led sweeping attacks on Israel on Oct. 7.”
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/02/14/world/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news
In a damaged house in Rafah on Saturday. Credit...Haitham Imad/EPA, via Shutterstock
The State Department is reviewing reports of harm to Gazan civilians by Israel’s military as part of a new U.S. program that tracks cases in which foreign militaries use U.S.-made weapons to injure or kill civilians.
A State Department spokesman, Matthew Miller, told reporters on Tuesday that the Biden administration was “reviewing incidents” in the Gaza war under what it calls Civilian Harm Incident Response Guidance, which The Washington Post reported was established last August, several weeks before Hamas led sweeping attacks on Israel on Oct. 7.
The policy was instituted to create greater accountability for the use of American weapons by U.S. allies and partners. It aims to improve assessments of military incidents involving civilians and to create recommendations based on them but does not include automatic triggers for policy responses or penalties.
Mr. Miller suggested that the review was not likely to lead to short-term changes in America’s military support for Israel, which has become a polarizing political issue for the White House. The Biden administration has repeatedly bypassed Congress for weapons sales to Israel since the war began, and the Senate passed a foreign aid package on Tuesday that included more than $14 billion in aid for Israel, though the bill still faces uncertainty in the House.
“That process is not intended to function as a rapid response mechanism,” Mr. Miller said. “Rather, it is designed to systematically assess civilian harm incidents and develop appropriate policy responses to reduce the risk of such incidents occurring in the future.” He added that it also intended to promote “military operations in accordance with international humanitarian law.”
The State Department has not publicly discussed details of the policy before. But President Biden mentioned it in a Feb. 8 national security memorandum.
That memorandum instructed the secretaries of State and Defense to, among many other things, provide an assessment within 90 days of credible reports determining whether U.S.-supplied weapons had been used in ways that did not follow “established best practices for mitigating civilian harm.” It also ordered them to catalog any “incidents reviewed pursuant to the Department of State’s Civilian Harm Incident Response Guidance.”
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10) South Africa asks the U.N.’s top court to act against Israel’s plans for Rafah.
By Lynsey Chutel and Marlise Simons, Feb. 14, 2024
A child in a destroyed building in Rafah, the southernmost city in Gaza, on Monday. Credit...Haitham Imad/EPA, via Shutterstock
With Israel continuing to warn that it plans a ground invasion of Rafah, the southernmost city in Gaza, South Africa has asked the International Court of Justice in The Hague to issue new constraints on Israel’s military offensive to prevent genocide.
In a filing on Monday, the South African government said that it was “gravely concerned” by Israel’s planned ground advance into Rafah, where more than a million Gazans have sought shelter, which it said “has already led to and will result in further large-scale killing, harm and destruction.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, who has described Rafah as Hamas’s last stronghold, said on Sunday that a ground invasion would move forward there as soon as Israel completed plans for the more than a million people sheltering in the city to be allowed to move to safety.
In December, South Africa filed a case with the International Court of Justice, the U.N.’s highest court, accusing Israel of genocide and asking the court to step in with emergency orders.
In response, the court ordered Israel last month to ensure that its actions would not lead to genocide and to increase humanitarian aid to Gaza. But the court did not order a halt to fighting in the Gaza Strip. The process of considering whether Israel is committing genocide could take the court several years.
In its request on Monday, South Africa argued that a ground invasion of Rafah would be in breach of the court’s January orders and that the court should consider further emergency measures, though it did not lay out what it believed those should be.
The court said that it had asked Israel for comment. Under court rules, the judges will have to consider South Africa’s request as a matter of priority. That could mean scheduling a hearing or issuing a new order as early as Monday. The court is also starting a six-day hearing on another issue involving Israel on Monday.
Israel’s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday, but Israel has rejected accusations of genocide.
On Monday, Israeli forces freed two hostages held in the city in a nighttime commando operation, which was accompanied by a series of airstrikes. The health ministry in Gaza said at least 67 people had been killed in the strikes. Overall, the ministry says, more than 28,000 people in Gaza have been killed.
After the rescue mission, Mr. Netanyahu said that “only continued military pressure, until total victory, will bring about the release of all of our hostages.”
Johnatan Reiss contributed reporting.
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11) Why So Many Palestinians and Israelis Are Talking About Marwan Barghouti
By Serge Schmemann, Feb. 14, 2024
Mr. Schmemann is a member of the editorial board and a former Jerusalem bureau chief for The Times.
Marwan Barghouti has been in an Israeli prison, serving life sentences for murder and for membership in a terrorist organization. During that time, his popularity among Palestinians has continued to grow. Credit...Hussein Malla/Associated Press
A senior Hamas leader this month declared that any deal to end the fighting in Gaza must include the release of Marwan Barghouti. Three weeks before, a former Israeli security chief had identified Marwan Barghouti as “the only leader who can lead Palestinians to a state alongside Israel.”
His name may not be familiar to many Americans. But most Palestinians, whether in the West Bank or in Gaza, know it well. So do many senior Israelis. Thirty or so years ago, Mr. Barghouti was among the most promising of a new generation of Palestinians poised to succeed Yasir Arafat, the revolutionary who had led the Palestinians through armed resistance to a measure of self-rule.
For most of the years since, Mr. Barghouti, a figure in Mr. Arafat’s Fatah party, has been in an Israeli prison, serving several consecutive life sentences for murder and for membership in a terrorist organization. During that time, his popularity among Palestinians has continued to grow; today he consistently leads surveys of Palestinians in the West Bank and in Gaza on who should lead them next.
It is hard to imagine that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a hard-line opponent of Palestinian statehood whose government includes virulent Israeli nationalists, would ever assent to the release of Mr. Barghouti. And in their fury and anguish over the vicious Hamas attack on Oct. 7, most Israelis would probably agree.
But the search for a Palestinian leader has become more pressing, as the attention of Israel’s allies and its Arab neighbors turns to “after Gaza,” as Israelis refer to what will follow the extraordinarily destructive and deadly war there. Negotiations involving the United States and Arab states for a way to stop the fighting are intensifying, and one crucial unresolved question is whether there is anyone not linked to Hamas or the corruption in the Palestinian Authority who could take charge in a ravaged Gaza and replace the unpopular leader in the West Bank, the 88-year-old Mahmoud Abbas.
In an interview with The Guardian last month, Ami Ayalon, a highly decorated Israeli official who had served as naval commander in chief, head of the internal Shin Bet security service and cabinet member, said that man is Marwan Barghouti, now 64. “Look into the Palestinian polls,” Mr. Ayalon said. “He is the only leader who can lead Palestinians to a state alongside Israel. First of all because he believes in the concept of two states, and secondly because he won his legitimacy by sitting in our jails.”
Why Hamas, a radical Islamist movement with a history of conflict with Fatah, the movement in which Mr. Barghouti was reared, might seek his release is less clear. One line of speculation among Israelis is that the exiled political leadership of Hamas, headed by Ismail Haniyeh from Qatar, may believe that securing the freedom of the popular Mr. Barghouti would help salvage the group’s standing among Palestinians after the catastrophic war.
I first encountered Mr. Barghouti in 1996, when I was the Times bureau chief in Jerusalem and he was a new member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, created as part of the partial self-rule granted the Palestinians by the Oslo Accords. A small, intense man of 37, quick to smile, he was always available to reporters and huddled frequently with colleagues in the halls. He soon built close contacts with Israeli politicians and members of the peace movement, then still robust. The Oslo Accords, he told me, were “the biggest step in our history.”
He had come to the Council by a path familiar to many of his contemporaries: He was 15 when he was first detained, he wrote; in 1978, at age 19, he was sentenced to prison and endured the ordeal of torture and interrogations, which he later described as an “illegal system of mass arbitrary arrests and ill-treatment.” But he also used the time in prison to finish secondary school and learn Hebrew. When he completed his sentence, he enrolled at Birzeit University in the West Bank, a hotbed of Palestinian student activism, and became one of the major leaders in the West Bank of the uprising known as the first intifada.
Arrested and deported to Jordan in 1987, he returned to Israel under the terms of the Oslo Accords and was elected to the Legislative Council. In an article for The Times Magazine in August 1996, I listed Mr. Barghouti among a group of young, charismatic and energetic members of the Council — “Arafat’s Heirs.” Unlike Mr. Arafat and his cohort, who had worked and fought from exile, Mr. Barghouti and the others had grown up in the West Bank or Gaza and were intimately familiar not only with life under occupation, but also with the achievements and history of the Israelis. Many spoke and were familiar with the freewheeling give-and-take of Israeli democracy, which they sought to emulate in their own government.
The young Palestinians were even prepared to challenge Mr. Arafat and his old guard, driving the autocratic chief to fulminate, threaten and even stalk out of Council meetings. At one session, the young legislators demanded that Mr. Arafat, who had just ordered several hundred militants of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad movements detained over a spate of bombings, follow the laws of the new Palestinian Authority and make the detainees’ names and charges public. To Mr. Arafat, accustomed to unquestioned obedience in secretive organizations, this was incomprehensible, especially as Israel and the United States applauded the roundup.
The idealism of Mr. Barghouti and his peers soon faded, as the process that Oslo was meant to initiate foundered. Before long, Mr. Barghouti was at the barricades again, ready to exhort Palestinians to use force against Israel. In 2002, he was arrested and brought to trial in a civilian Israeli court on charges of murder and terrorism. At his first court appearance, he refused to cooperate and instead shouted in Hebrew that he wanted to present his own charges against Israel. The second appearance was even more tempestuous, but in the end, Mr. Barghouti was sentenced to five life sentences and an additional 40 years — the maximum possible penalty.
With the help of his wife, Fadwa Barghouti, a lawyer, Mr. Barghouti has remained politically active and vocal from prison, alternating between visions of coexistence and calls for resistance. He organized a hunger strike of Palestinian prisoners in several Israeli jails in 2017, which he described in a guest essay in The Times.
Last August, Ms. Barghouti was reported to have held meetings with senior officials and diplomats from the United States, the Arab world and European countries to lobby for her husband’s release so that he could succeed Mr. Abbas as head of the Palestinian Authority. The meetings are said to have included the foreign ministers of Jordan and Egypt and the secretary-general of the Arab League, but no details have been made public.
It is difficult to envision Mr. Barghouti’s release in the current situation — particularly with Mr. Netanyahu’s grip on power so far intact. But then, there was a time when Mr. Arafat’s return to Israel as acknowledged leader of the Palestinians seemed equally impossible.
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