A Palestinian political leader’s recent interview with Iran’s semi-official Tasnim News Agency reveals how the October 7 massacre has changed the calculations of Arab politicians in the West Bank.
It also reveals the larger support that Iran and its proxies have among Palestinians – at least on the surface.
Tasnim headlined the interview, “Barghouti: Iran’s missile shows Israel’s legend is a lie.” The goal of the interview was to showcase how the Palestinians now embrace the “resistance” and Iran’s role.
While this is the Iranian agenda, Barghouti appeared to embrace it wholeheartedly.
The interview and its perspective have implications for the future in the West Bank. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is aging, and his era may come to an end in the coming years.
This dovetails with the incoming Trump administration’s four years in office, and it is worth paying attention to.
Barghouti, who was born in 1954 and is a physician and an activist, is the leader of the Palestinian National Initiative (PNI).
In the past, he was seen as a politician committed to nonviolence. He ran for president of the PA against Abbas in 2005 and received 20% of the vote.
Barghouti is very knowledgeable and follows world events closely. He also receives many guests.
In an interview with The Intercept this past February, he said: “We are in good touch with the many leaders in the region, and Arab leaders as well as European leaders, many of them come and visit us. Most recently, I had meetings with the prime minister of Holland, the foreign minister of Holland, the deputy prime minister of Luxembourg, and many others. And we are in touch with most European countries.”
Supporting a single-state
While he once appeared to support two states as a solution to the conflict, he now has embraced one state. This is in line with some Western, pro-Palestinian voices who have also moved from the two-state concept to one state.
“Spain, Ireland and Norway not only recognize Palestine, but also our right to self-determination, whether in two states or one,” Barghouti told El Pais earlier this year. “Some tell me that Israelis will never accept one democratic state. And my response is that they don’t accept the two-state solution either.”
Now, let’s look at what he told Iranian media. When these pro-peace types speak to Western media outlets, they usually talk about nonviolence.
But when they speak to those they think are “one of their own,” then they openly embrace violence. In the interview with Tasnim, he praised the Iranian missile attacks on Israel.
Asked about Israel’s decision to go to war with Hezbollah, he said: “Hezbollah and the beloved and brotherly Lebanese nation decided to support the people of Gaza and the Palestinian national struggle and go to war with Israel... Israel seeks to annex the West Bank and Gaza… it also plans to occupy large parts of Lebanon. The [Zionist] enemy wants to occupy Syria as well… Israel is greedy to annex more areas to its territory and may even intend to annex parts of Jordan or all of Jordan.”
ISRAEL’S GOAL is to “destroy every other power in the region,” Barghouti said. “Israel is also hostile to Iran.”
He cited an article he read in the 1980s from the Washington Institute, which discussed “dual containment of Iran and Iraq.” Israel got the US to weaken Iraq, he said, and now it “wants to defeat the only remaining military force that has stood up against them and is a regional power, and its name is Iran.”
Asked about the killings of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and Hamas leaders, Barghouti responded:“Israelis do not understand the mentality and thinking of Arab, Islamic and Palestinian countries. They do not understand that the greatest wish of this leader [Nasrallah] was to be martyred. Of course, they fought with all their strength throughout their lives, but they were not afraid of martyrdom.”
Response to October 7
In response to a question about the October 7 massacre, he said its results would be evaluated for many years.
“Perhaps the most important achievement of this battle was that it defeated the Zionist project to solve the Palestinian issue by normalizing relations with Arab countries,” he said.
Barghouti said the attack “caused the Palestinian issue to be in the focus of Arab and international countries once again. After Netanyahu’s efforts to marginalize the Palestinian issue, this issue was again in the focus of the most important political events in the world.”
Basically, what he is saying is that it is okay to massacre 1,000 people and kidnap 250 to make the Palestinian cause the center of attention, even if that attention is negative.
This argument is one that is likely common across the political spectrum of Palestinian politics.
They don’t consider the Bibas children being kidnapped or parading the body of Shani Louk through the streets of Gaza as a crime; it is seen as a success.
In their view, the bloodier the attack, the more attention and the more success.
Peace supporters don’t usually argue in favor of more massacres, but this is the stance of a politician who is praised for “nonviolence.” In this case, “nonviolence” means supporting others using violence.
Barghouti also embraces the Houthis “confronting” Israel, “which is the main factor and condition for victory; and the other is imposing sanctions and cutting off relations with Israel.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “will stop fighting only when the costs of this war exceed his gains,” he said. “This is happening now.”
Israel’s economy is suffering from the war, he said, adding: “Israel is facing an economic collapse, heavy loss of life and money that cannot be compensated. Sanctions and cutting off international relations will also be an effective fact.”
MOST IMPORTANT for our understanding of the West Bank, Barghouti looks at what is happening locally.
“The West Bank has completely different characteristics from Gaza,” he said. “For this reason, the resistance in the [West Bank] has acquired other forms of experiences, but the principle of resistance is also there. In my opinion, resistance is not only through armed actions. The truth is that the entire life of Palestinians in the West Bank is resistance. We are witnessing armed resistance, popular resistance, resistance in the education and medical sector, resistance through holding prayers in Al-Aqsa Mosque and challenging the occupying regime.”
Barghouti praised former Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar for how he appeared in death.
“[Sinwar] first proved the falsehood of Israel’s lies – the claim that he hid in the tunnels and sent other people’s children to the battlefront,” he said.
“He himself fought and was martyred while fighting. They said he was hiding behind civilians, but he was martyred during the war, and not a single civilian was with him.”
Once again, this illustrates how other Palestinian factions, even those viewed as peaceful by the international community, see Sinwar as a hero. This has major ramifications for what comes next in the West Bank in any post-Abbas era.
Barghouti said his movement has embraced discussions about a Palestinian unity government and “participated in these meetings first in Moscow and then in Beijing. We thank the efforts of Russia and China. The Chinese made a lot of effort to reach the conclusion of these negotiations. The meetings were positive, and we reached agreements.”
The agreements “stipulate the immediate formation of the national unity government in order to prevent and prevent the separation of Gaza from the West Bank, to defeat Netanyahu’s efforts to create a puppet group to manage Gaza under the supervision of the occupiers,” he said.
“To prevent Netanyahu’s plan to continue occupying the Gaza Strip, the immediate formation of a government of national unity is a very important step.”
Barghouti’s interview is important because it reveals some of the thinking among Palestinian factions in the West Bank.
It is likely that parts of Fatah are more open to a Hamas-led government in the West Bank, especially one in which the Hamas leadership is kept in the background and has a veneer of being technocratic.
It also appears that the PNI, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and other factions would accept a government that is either influenced or led by Hamas.
Barghouti said the Iranian missile attack was important.
The US sent the THAAD air-defense system to Israel, he said, and “this shows that the myth of Israel is a lie. What some colonial [Western] countries thought that Israel was protecting their interests, today has turned into a burden.”
Israel’s current war with Hamas will fail, Barghouti said, “first, because of the resistance of the Palestinian people; second, because of the resistance of the Arab nations; and thirdly, because of Iran’s endurance. Also, because of the growing strength of the solidarity movement with the Palestinian people,”
It is important to note the way Iran has now grown in influence among Palestinians in the perception that it is able to defeat Israel.
Even if this perception is incorrect, it should not be ignored.