interactive encyclopedia of the palestine question – palquest

Biography

Bashir Barghouti

بشير البرغوثي

Birth

1931, Deir Ghassaneh

Death

9 September 2000, Ramallah

Barghouti was born in 1931 in the village of Deir Ghassaneh in the Ramallah subdistrict of Mandatory Palestine to Abdel Karim Barghouti and Kawthar Taher al-Sadiq. He had a brother named Issam. He and his wife, Bahija Barghouti, had two sons, Abdel Karim and Nabil, and a daughter, Lubna.

He received his primary education in the local village school and then moved to al-Bireh for secondary school. He obtained his high school diploma in 1949 from the Quaker Friends School in Ramallah.

Barghouti worked in Kuwait as a school teacher for a short period and then enrolled at the American University in Cairo (AUC), where he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in political sciences and economics in 1956. During his student years, he was active with the Palestinian Students League, which had been founded by Yasir Arafat in 1951 in Cairo. Barghouti and Arafat (who subsequently founded Fatah) worked closely together, and a firm friendship developed between the two that lasted until Barghouti’s passing.

After graduating from AUC, Barghouti returned to Amman and resumed his activities in the ranks of the Jordanian Communist Party (JCP), which he had joined earlier. He chaired the editorial board of its first above-ground newspaper al-Jamahir [The Masses] and played a prominent role in the communist opposition to the plans of imperialist alliances. As a result of these efforts, Jordan did not join the Baghdad Pact, the Jordanian army was Arabized, and two communists—Yaqoub Zayadin and Faiq Warrad—were elected as members of parliament in October 1956.

Barghouti was arrested along with hundreds of other Jordanian and Palestinian communists and nationalist activists following the coup that took place in Jordan in April 1957. He spent eight years in the desert prison of al-Jafr. After his release, he became a member of the JCP’s political bureau and devoted himself full-time to party work. He took part in the various struggles led by the party to fight for civil liberties and to defend the interests of the working classes and subsequently in the party’s struggle against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank.

Barghouti returned to the occupied West Bank in 1974 through a family reunification procedure. There, he headed the West Bank branch of the JCP and took part in leading the national liberation struggle against the Israeli occupation. As a result, he was targeted by the Israeli occupation authorities, who arrested him in July 1974 on false charges of “espionage activities” for Jordan. His trial, which dragged on for several hearings, caused an uproar that attracted local and global attention. Finally, a verdict for his acquittal was announced on 27 February 1975.

After his release from prison, Barghouti became one of the senior leaders of the Palestine National Front in the Occupied Territories, which had been formed in mid-August 1973. He succeeded the communist leader Suleiman al-Najjab, who had been arrested and exiled by the Israeli occupation.

In June 1975, Barghouti became the editor-in-chief of the nationalist daily newspaper al-Fajr [Dawn], which was based in Jerusalem, in place of Mohammad al-Batrawi. In late July, on Barghouti’s initiative, the West Bank branch of the JCP decided to change its name to the Palestinian Communist Organization in the West Bank. This was a preliminary step that paved the way for the establishment of a separate Palestinian communist party independent of the JCP but with which it would maintain close relations.

In his capacity as one of the leaders of the Palestine National Front, Barghouti was very active in the campaign which led to the victory of the Front’s electoral lists that supported the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in the municipal council elections of April 1976. In 1978, he was also a founding member of the National Guidance Committee, which fought to thwart the Israeli occupation’s schemes for Palestinian “self-rule” and for an alternative Palestinian leadership to replace the PLO. In the same year, Barghouti started the weekly journal al-Taliʿa [The Vanguard] in occupied Jerusalem, and remained as its editor-in-chief until 1994. For each issue, he wrote a weekly political column that was widely anticipated and discussed within politically active circles of Palestinian society.

Barghouti also played a prominent role in forging close relations between Palestinian communists in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and those in the diaspora, by bringing them together within the framework of the Palestinian Communist Party (PCP) whose re-establishment was announced on 10 February 1982. In its first party congress, held in 1983, Barghouti was elected as the first General Secretary of its Central Committee.

The Israeli occupation authorities placed Barghouti under house arrest in the early 1980s and prevented him from traveling outside the occupied West Bank until 1988. As general secretary of the PCP, Barghouti was among those who guided the Palestinian intifada, or uprising, that erupted in December 1987. He was among the first to call for creating popular committees and for safeguarding the participation of common Palestinian citizens in determining the running of their daily lives and the democratic expression of their wishes. He strove to overcome the problems that marred relations between the dakhel (Palestinians living within historic Palestine under direct Israeli rule) and the kharej (Palestinians living outside of historic Palestine). He felt that the methods followed by the PLO leadership were not compatible with those practiced by the intifada,and he called for there to be greater commensurability between the grassroots and the leadership, so that the popular struggle would not become ossified and bureaucratized. Like others, he was keenly aware of how important it was for the Palestinian struggle for national liberation to preserve its humanist and democratic character, so that it would be able to have an impact on average Israelis on the street and on global public opinion.

With his intellectual work as well as his political activism, Barghouti contributed to the development of a new political program for the PLO, one that was based on the implementation of resolutions that held international legitimacy, the establishment of an independent Palestinian state in the territories occupied by Israel since June 1967 after the withdrawal of the Israeli occupation forces from these territories, and guarantees for the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homeland in accordance with United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194. This new program was adopted by the Palestine National Council in Algeria in mid-November 1988.

Under Barghouti’s leadership, the PCP began a process of self-critique, which culminated in a new draft political platform and new bylaws in January 1990, both of which were adopted at the second party conference in late October 1991. At this conference, it was also decided that the party’s name would henceforth be Hizb al-Shaʿb al-Filastini, or the Palestinian People’s Party (PPP), and Barghouti was elected general secretary of its central committee.

After the signing of the Oslo Accords and the establishment of the Palestinian National Authority (PA) in 1994, Barghouti served as Minister of Industry in the second PA government formed by President Yasir Arafat in May 1996. Later on, he was appointed Minister of State, a post he held until his death.

Barghouti died in Ramallah on 9 September 2000 from complications related to a stroke that he had suffered three years earlier. Barghouti’s funeral was attended by thousands of ordinary Palestinians, members of his party, and representatives from political forces in the Palestinian national liberation movement, including PA President Arafat, who walked in his funeral procession. He was laid to rest in the cemetery of his native village of Deir Ghassaneh. The PPP’s Central Committee mourned "comrade Bashir Abdel Karim Barghouti, the nationalist and communist leader and major political figure, first General Secretary of the Palestinian People's Party and founder of the Palestinian Communist Party in February 1982. This great freedom fighter dedicated his life to serving the cause of the people and the homeland and has left us far too soon after being bedridden for three years.”

Bashir Barghouti was a Palestinian national and communist leader, as well as a distinguished journalist whose political columns were widely read and discussed. He was also responsible for a number of intellectual initiatives. He stressed the importance of the role of intellectuals in political life and was greatly respect and valued within the ranks of the Palestinian national movement.

In a public ceremony on 18 October 2012, the Ramallah municipality renamed one of the city’s public squares after Bashir Barghouti. During the ceremony, the Deputy Mayor of Ramallah, Mahmoud Abdullah, said in his brief address: “From this day onwards, the city of Ramallah will proudly be adorned with yet another name of one of Palestine’s luminaries. In doing so, the city today honors a great freedom fighter and politician who left a clear imprint on the long history of the Palestinian people’s struggle.” A secondary school in Deir Ghassaneh was also named after him. Later on, the PPP's media center produced a biographical documentary about Barghouti, which included interviews with his party comrades and his wife. This film was screened at al-Kasaba Cinema in Ramallah on 18 February 2013. On 5 February 2014, PA President Mahmoud Abbas posthumously awarded Barghouti the Grand Cordon (Star of Honor) Medal, highest class.

Selected Writings

"بعض قضايا الصراع الاجتماعي في الأردن" [وقّعه باسم يساري أردني]. حيفا: دار الاتحاد التعاونية، 1972.

[Social Conflict in Jordan and Its Issues (written under the pseudonym “A Jordanian Leftist”)]

"الطبقة العاملة والتحالفات السياسية". القدس: منشورات صلاح الدين، 1977.

[The Working Class and Political Alliances]

"استراتيجية التنمية الصناعية في فلسطين" (مع محمد المسروجي). نابلس: مركز البحوث والدراسات الفلسطينية، 1996.

[Strategies for Industrial Development in Palestine (co-written with Mohammad al-Masrouji)]

"مساهمة في النقاش حول الحزب السياسي الفلسطيني". [رام الله]، 1996.

[A Contribution to the Debate around Political Parties in Palestine]

"مقالات في المفاوضات الفلسطينية-الإسرائيلية". رام الله: مركز فؤاد نصار، 2003.

[Essays on the Palestinian-Israeli Negotiations]

Sources

Abdul Hadi, Mahdi, ed. Palestinian Personalities: A Biographic Dictionary. 2nd ed., revised and updated. Jerusalem: Passia Publication, 2006.

“Basheer Barghouti.” http://www.all4palestine.com/ModelDetails.aspx?gid=16&mid=541&lang=en

"آراء سياسيين ومثقفين من الضفة والقطاع: دروس الانتفاضة وآفاقها" (مقابلات أجرتها ربى الحصري مع زكريا الأغا، رياض المالكي، زهيرة كمال، بشير البرغوثي، سمير حليلة ). "مجلة الدراسات الفلسطينية"، العدد 5 (شتاء 1991)، ص 197-207.

أبو رمضان، محسن. "بشير البرغوثي.. ذكرى دائمة التجدد". "ملتقى فلسطين"، 11 أيلول/سبتمبر 2020.

https://www.palestineforum.net/بشير-البرغوثي-ذكرى-دائمة-التجدد

حسن، شاكر فريد. "المناضل الفلسطيني الراحل بشير البرغوثي ووسام الشرف والاستحقاق"

https://manar.com/page-14990-ar.html

شقير، محمود. " بشير البرغوثي...السياسي حين يكون مفكراً". في: "مرايا الغياب: يوميات الحزن والسياسة". بيروت: المؤسسة العربية للدراسات والنشر، 2007.

كلوب، عرابي محمد. "مشاعل على الطريق: قادة ورموز منظمة التحرير الفلسطينية" (الجزء الأول). غزة: مركز عبد الله الحوراني، 2015.

مركز رؤية للتنمية السياسية، "بشير البرغوثي"، 15 حزيران/ يونيو 2020.

https://vision-pd.org/بشير-البرغوثي/

مركز المعلومات الوطني الفلسطيني-وفا، "بشير البرغوثي"

https://info.wafa.ps/persons.aspx?id=302

منظمة التحرير الفلسطينية-دائرة شؤون المغتربين. " الذكرى الخامسة عشرة لرحيل القائد الوطني الكبير بشير البرغوثي"، 10 أيلول/ سبتمبر 2015.

https://www.pead.ps/article/2545/الذكرى-الخامسة-عشرة-لرحيل-القائد-الوطني-الكبير-بشير-البرغوثي-