The Unbreakable Nael Barghouti

Nael Barghouti, a 68-year-old Palestinian from the occupied West Bank who spent more than four decades in Israeli captivity, said, “I never lost hope, and I never will”. It has been a year since Barghouti won his freedom through a prisoner exchange deal signed between Hamas and Israel in January 2025. As a condition of his release, Barghouti had to agree to go into exile and was deported to Egypt a month later. “I have been optimistic from the very first day I began my struggle,” he said. “In prison, I was optimistic that I would be free one day. And, even if I were to die in prison, I would remain content, because those who come after me will continue the path, because they are convinced that we are in the right.”

According to the most recent and reliable statistics, there are approximately 9,300 Palestinians currently held in Israeli captivity. Nearly half of these have not been charged or brought to trial. Additionally, there are an unknown number of Palestinians held in military camps run by the Israeli army. At least 87 Palestinians have been killed inside Israeli prisons since October 7, 2023, including several documented cases of death by torture, abuse, or intentional neglect. “Without any prior warning, a prisoner is detained with no charge—a 15 year old [boy], or a woman. Malicious arrest—arrest simply to send a lesson to entire generations. They are received with beatings, bone‑breaking, and the spread of infectious diseases,” Barghouti told Drop Site.

In a wide-ranging, in-person interview in Istanbul, Barghouti reflected on his time in Israeli captivity, the torture he endured alongside other Palestinian prisoners, and why he believes the Palestinian cause will ultimately triumph. “We are not seekers of blood or wars, but we will accept nothing other than defending ourselves and our rights,” Barghouti said. “Why is it forbidden for Palestinians to live like any other people—to leave when they wish, return when they wish, go to the sea when they wish? Personally, I have seen the sea only once, in a prison transport vehicle, and when I was released. The sea is thirty kilometers (18 miles) from my village—why? Why are olive trees hundreds of years old uprooted? Why do settlers go to villages to uproot trees, attack people, and kill their animals? Why does the occupation prevent the families of released prisoners from leaving to meet them?”

In the struggle for Palestinian liberation, political prisoners occupy a space of immense national pride and importance. They are widely seen as heroes of the cause, and they participate in the decision-making process for the factions to which they belong. “Palestinian prisoners in the occupation’s prisons are one of the most respected and esteemed groups among the Palestinian people—regardless of which faction the prisoner belongs to,” said Husam Badran, who spent 14 years in Israeli prisons and is currently Hamas’s head of national relations. He told Drop Site, “I believe there is hardly a Palestinian household that does not have a Palestinian prisoner. In some families, the father, mother, and children are sometimes all inside prison at the same time. We are talking about a long experience since [the Arab-Israeli war of] 1967; we are talking about a period of almost sixty years. We define ourselves as fighters for freedom—certainly not terrorists, as the occupation describes us.”

Badran, a former commander of Hamas’s armed wing Al Qassam Brigades in the West Bank, described how Hamas and other factions held democratic elections inside the prisons and remained intimately engaged in the broader decision making of their movements on the outside. “I wouldn’t trade the prison experience for all experiences in the world. It is bitter and difficult, true, but you gain a lot from it—on a human level, a personal level, and in understanding life. You cannot learn this anywhere else except in prison, despite how difficult it is. Your ability to innovate and invent [ways] to communicate surpasses imagination,” he said. “Yes, we studied, we learned, we went to university, we earned master’s degrees, because the Palestinian by nature has an extraordinary ability to confront hardship. The world is not capable of understanding that this is who the Palestinian is. This Palestinian today is part of the decision‑making body in the Palestinian cause. So how do you expect to break him? And how do you expect to impose international forces on him, take away his weapon, and bring [Tony] Blair to rule him? How could he accept that?,” Badran asked.

“The whole story is connected together. If you want to understand the current Palestinian situation by looking only at the last two years, you will not succeed in understanding the Palestinian cause—you will fail,” he added. “You must go back decades and study the Palestinian personalities and leaderships. So how do you expect to deal with this type of leadership—whether in Hamas or others—through submission, surrender, and raising the white flag?”

This week President Donald Trump pushed ahead with his Gaza Plan and announced the first round of appointments to his so-called Board of Peace. They include his son-in-law Jared Kushner, venture capitalists, ex-Prime Minister of the UK Tony Blair, and an assortment of non-Palestinian heads of state and political leaders, as well as business figures—some with close ties to Israel. “States want to sign agreements on behalf of the Palestinian people, but the Palestinian people did not authorize them and never will. Money will not tempt us, and airplanes will not frighten us. This resistance will continue until the Palestinian people return to their lands, and until American politicians regain their reason, along with everyone who supports this entity,” Barghouti said. He added, “Anyone who truly wants America to remain a state that upholds justice in the world must stand with the Palestinian people—not [submit] to the influence of a Zionist lobby that is damaging America more than it is damaging the rest of the world.”

“Our spirits and our will were not broken”

When he was freed last year, Barghouti was the longest-serving Palestinian prisoner held by Israel. He spent more than 45 years behind bars—nearly 34 of them consecutively. In 2009, the Guiness Book of World Records certified him as “the longest serving political prisoner ever.” The previous record was also held by a Palestinian, Said Alatabah, who served more than 31 years before being released in 2008.

As a ten year old boy, Barghouti witnessed Israeli forces invade his family’s West Bank village of Kobar, near Ramallah, during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war as Israel began its decades-long occupation. Barghouti began his anti-occupation actions by joining other youth in throwing stones and writing graffiti on walls. He came from a family with deep roots in Palestinian resistance. “My uncle was imprisoned during the British occupation and the beginning of the Zionist entity. My father was imprisoned twice during the occupation, as were my mother, brother, sister, wife, and many other family members,” Barghouti said. “We come from a family that rejects the occupation. We lived in a simple village, but it was one that hosted refugees from [the Nakba in] 1948. We knew that these refugees had land, homes, and property, and that overnight they became poor people waiting for the United Nations to grant them some aid,” he added. “What we witnessed of the crimes of the occupation and its soldiers, and the humiliations, instilled in us a refusal to accept this occupation. From a very young age, since 1967, I saw my father being humiliated by soldiers while I was still a child—him being beaten in front of me by patrols.”

In 1977, Barghouti was arrested for the first time and spent three months in jail. In April 1978, just as he was preparing to complete his high school final exams, Barghouti was again arrested, along with his brother Omar and cousin Fakhri, but this time he was accused of being involved with the killing of a former Israeli paratrooper working as a bus driver. They also detained his father. “I was tortured in front of my father, and my father was tortured in front of me. They threatened to arrest my mother, and later they did arrest her,” Barghouti recalled.

In the end, he was hit with a life sentence plus 18 years. “We entered prison unjustly, were sentenced unjustly, and were assaulted unjustly,” he said. “We will not submit, and we will not be ashamed that we resisted—we will not disown our actions. Those who must disown their crimes are the leaders of the Zionist occupation.”

When Barghouti entered prison, he originally affiliated himself with Fatah, the party of the late Palestine Liberation Organization chairman Yasser Arafat. In the 1990s, when Arafat signed the Oslo Accords and recognized Israel, Barghouti joined Hamas.

“The Palestinian people have been fighting for more than a hundred years. This is not tied to Hamas, Fatah, or any other organization. Every phase will have its own names and labels until the goals of the Palestinian people are achieved: return and self‑determination. This is a point that no Palestinian will ever abandon,” he said. “We entered prison and resisted the occupation, and we are not ashamed of that. It is the right of the Palestinian people—and of any people under occupation—to resist. The American people resisted British injustice. How did Ireland gain its freedom? Through the use of all forms of resistance.”

Inside the prison, Barghouti earned a reputation as a leader, organizer, and political thinker. He was a voracious reader of history books and studied foreign languages. As the years went by, he became known as the “Dean of the Palestinian Prisoners” and Abu Al-Noor, “Father of Light.” He often organized protests and strategized how to resist the prison authorities.

“We Palestinian prisoners entered prison at a time when the torture was the same as the torture that exists today. We carried out multiple [hunger] strikes with the support of our people. Sometimes the occupation wanted calm from us so that the Palestinian people would not rise up, so through our strikes, we achieved certain gains: the pen, the paper, the notebook, the book, and bedding—the blanket,” he said. “Everything inside the prisons was achieved through our [hunger] strikes. Our organization was disciplined because we are political prisoners: we do not accept living the life of a criminal prisoner.”