President Trump’s Board of Peace and plans for Gaza and Israel-Palestine won’t bring peace or garner him his coveted Nobel Peace Prize. But freeing one Palestinian from Israeli prison could possibly achieve these goals. Marwan Barghouti has sat in an Israeli prison since 2004, serving five life sentences plus 40 years. Fadwa Barghouti, his wife, along with her youngest son, Arab, granted me their first recent interview with an American journalist, on my recent trip to the region just after the New Year. 

While the Barghouti family has never engaged with Trump or any members of his administration, the president has mentioned Barghouti’s name several times recently, most likely after mentions of him by French President Emmanuel Macron and the Saudi leadership. 

I met Fadwa and Arab in their modest Ramallah apartment, where I’ve visited them for the past three winters. Fadwa is a lawyer, who gave up her own practice to work full-time for her husband’s release. She is active in Fatah, a strong feminist, and a founder of Fatah’s Union for Women’s Rights. Arab, 35, is the youngest of four children. Previously, we spoke on background because the family feared for Marwan’s safety in prison. Now, that same concern makes them speak out. (I have been writing about him since 2006, most recently in this magazine in 2024.) For a family that lives in fear for Marwan Barghouti’s life since his incarceration, both Fadwa and Arab emit a hope that stands in contrast to the extraordinary anger and hatred that has captured the region and the world since October 7, 2023. 

They are rightly concerned about the cavalier way that the Netanyahu government is treating this prized prisoner with National Security Minister and longtime Kahanist Itamar Ben Gvir running the prisons. Ben Gvir recently posted a video of himself threatening a visibly gaunt Barghouti in prison, followed by a post on X wishing for Marwan’s “execution.” An untraceable phone caller claiming to have been in prison with Barghouti called Fadwa to say her husband’s ear was cut and his teeth knocked out. Their Israeli lawyer visited the prison at the end of December, confirming this was a lie. (His wife has not been allowed to see him for three years; his children or grandchildren even longer.)

Marwan, a Fatah leader presently held in the notorious Megiddo Prison in Israel, was convicted by Israeli court in 2004 for his leadership role in terrorist attacks against Israelis during the second Palestinian intifada. Marwan and his family deny the charges and didn’t recognize the court proceedings. Since October 7, 2023, he’s been moved several times and kept in solitary confinement, as have all Palestinian security prisoners, in conditions that the Association for Civil Rights Israel has argued violate international laws. 

This is a political incarceration. Barghouti, almost without dispute, is the only potential candidate for president of a........

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