By Quds News Network
Occupied Palestine (Quds News Network)- Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir raided the cell of the most prominent Palestinian detainee, Marwan Barghouti, and threatened him.
A widely shared footage on social media shows Ben-Gvir telling Barghouti, who has been in prison since 2002, including years in solitary confinement, “You won’t win. Whoever messes with the nation of Israel, whoever murders our children and women – we will wipe them out. You should know this, [this happened] throughout history.”
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Relatives of 66-year-old Barghouti who viewed the footage told Al Jazeera Arabic there is a “shocking” change in his features, apparently from “exhaustion and hunger”, and expressed fear that he will be killed in custody.
Back in October, the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society accused Israeli prison staff of “brutally assaulting” and injuring Barghouti while he was being held in solitary confinement.
His wife, Fawda, has said Barghouti and other Palestinian prisoners are subjected to many hardships behind Israeli bars.
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“They are still, Marwan, chasing you and pursuing you even in the solitary cell you’ve been living in for two years, and the struggle of the occupation and its figures with you continues. The shackles are on your hands, but I know your spirit and determination, and I know you will remain free, free, free,” she wrote in a post on Facebook.
“I know that the only thing that can shake you is what you hear about your people’s pain, and the only thing that crushes and wounds you is the failure to protect our sons and daughters. You are of the people; wherever you are among the people, you are one of them and part of them.”
Palestinian National Council (PNC) Chairman Ruhi Fattouh condemned what he called physical and psychological attacks on jailed leader Marwan Barghouti.
Fattouh said he holds Israel fully responsible for the life of Barghouti, who he said had been subjected to inhumane conditions while in solitary confinement, causing his apparent state of “weakness and emaciation”.
“These violations come within the bloody comprehensive war targeting our Palestinian people and its leadership, led by the prisoner Marwan Barghouti, and the aggression of ethnic cleansing launched by the right-wing terrorist government on the Palestinian territories,” he said, calling on the Red Cross and other rights groups to intervene immediately to ensure the safety of Barghouti and other Palestinian prisoners.
The Palestinian Foreign Ministry also released a statement to say it considers the Ben-Gvir visit “an unprecedented provocation and organised state terrorism, falling within the framework of the crimes of genocide, displacement, and annexation faced by the prisoners and our people”.
Senior Hamas official Izzat al-Risheq said, “There is no longer any meaning to brutality except in the form of one of the leaders of this inhumane entity.”
“A Zionist minister gathers his army, his guards, and the blood of his state and stands before a captive leader, shackled and isolated in solitary confinement, barely able to stand, and addresses him, saying: ‘You will not triumph over us!’” al-Risheq said.
“If Ben-Gvir had been victorious in Gaza, he would not have said what he said. But this is the arrogance of a criminal who failed to achieve his goal, whose prestige was defeated, and whose reputation was tarnished by the shame of the ages,” he said.
The group said in a separate statement that the threat was “a cowardly display that reveals the occupation’s fascism and hostility to all human values”.
It added Barghouti’s resolve will only be strengthened as a result of the move, which will “strengthen the unity of the prisoner movement in the face of the policies of systematic repression and abuse practised by the occupation’s prison administration”.
“This criminal behaviour is an extension of the war crimes committed in the Sde Teiman prison, which witnessed horrific violations against prisoners, including doctors, nurses, and journalists,” it said.
16 August 2025
Source: countercurrents.org