A sustainable Palestinian-Israeli peace process requires leadership with real legitimacy among Palestinians, and Marwan Barghouti remains one of the few figures capable of uniting Palestinian politics behind a negotiated settlement.

US President Donald Trump, who likes dramatic gestures and is eager for a win in the Middle East, should turn his attention back to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the issue that has long shaped regional politics. To make progress where all his predecessors fell short, he should engage the one Palestinian leader with the legitimacy to help him: Marwan Barghouti, who is now in his 24th year of imprisonment in Israel.

For years, the Palestinian national movement has suffered from a crisis of credibility. Too many of its leaders are seen by their own people as weak, compromised, self-interested, or detached from the daily realities of the occupation. The peace initiatives devised by such figures may look orderly on paper, but they rarely win the public’s trust.

Barghouti is different. His fellow Palestinians widely regard him as being uniquely capable of reunifying a fractured national movement and giving diplomacy the political weight it needs. Even from prison, his standing has not diminished. He was just elected to Fatah’s 18-member Central Committee, receiving more votes than anyone else; and his wife, Advocate Fadwa Barghouti, was elected to the Fatah Revolutionary Council with the second-highest number of votes. These are not symbolic results. They confirm that Barghouti........

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