By Alexander Cornwell
TEL AVIV (Reuters) -Israel’s far-right national security minister visited prominent Palestinian Marwan Barghouti in jail and told him “you will not win”, a video showed on Friday, a day after another hardline cabinet member vowed to “bury” the idea of a Palestinian state.
Security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir shared the video on his X account, also telling Barghouti – a potential unifying figure among Palestinians who has been jailed for more than two decades – that anyone who threatens Israel would be eliminated.
The prison visit took place earlier this week but became public after ultra-nationalist Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said on Thursday work would start on a settlement that would cut off East Jerusalem, which Palestinians want as a capital for a future state, from the rest of the West Bank. Smotrich’s office said the move would “bury” the idea of a Palestinian state.
In the video clip on X which showed Barghouti looking thin and weak, Ben Gvir said: “You will not win. Anyone who messes with the people of Israel, anyone who murders our children, anyone who murders our women – we will wipe him out.”
“You have to know this, throughout history,” he said.
The Israeli prime minister’s office and a spokesman for Ben-Gvir did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Palestinian Authority described the comments as a “direct threat” to the 66-year-old. Barghouti is a senior member of the Fatah movement that runs the authority, which exercises limited civic rule in parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
“The Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemns in the strongest terms the storming of the solitary confinement sections of Rimon Prison by extremist Minister Ben-Gvir and his direct threat to brother and leader Marwan Barghouti,” it said in a statement.
Barghouti was sentenced in 2004 to five life sentences and 40 years in jail after a court convicted him of orchestrating ambushes and suicide attacks on Israelis during the second Palestinian Intifada, or uprising. Barghouti, a leading Palestinian activist, has always denied the charges against him.
His wife addressed him in a post on Facebook. “They are still, Marwan, chasing you and pursuing you, even in the solitary cell you’ve been living in for two years,” she said of the visit, which Israeli media said took place this week.
Supporters of Barghouti say he is a top contender to succeed 89-year-old Mahmoud Abbas as Palestinian president one day, portraying him as a Nelson Mandela-like figure who could galvanise and reunite their divided political landscape.
A poll by the Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research published on May 6 showed he would secure 50% of the vote on a likely turnout of 64% in a three-way presidential race against Abbas and prominent Hamas official Khaled Meshaal.
Elections for the Palestinian Authority presidency have not been held since 2005.
Most world powers support the idea of a two-state solution to the decades-old Israel-Palestinian conflict, with an independent Palestinian state encompassing the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem existing alongside Israel.
That prospect is receding under the most far-right government in Israel’s history and a West Bank leadership discredited among Palestinians for failing to halt the spread of Jewish settlements that are ruled illegal by the United Nations.
(Additional reporting by Ahmed Elimam in Dubai and Ali Sawafta in Ramallah; writing by Michael Georgy; editing by Philippa Fletcher)
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