Itamar Ben Gvir attending a cabinet meeting in Jerusalem in January 2023. Photograph: Atef Safadi/AP
The image is disturbing and symbolic: a hardline Israeli minister enters the cell of a Palestinian prisoner with the explicit aim of intimidating him. Itamar Ben Gvir, Minister of National Security, personally visited Marwan Barghouti—an emblematic figure and unifier within the Palestinian community—and uttered words that many understood as a direct threat. The scene is not just a sensationalist scene: it was broadcast on video and generated condemnation and alarm on both sides of the border.
Threats do not occur in a vacuum. In recent weeks, reports have emerged of mistreatment and assaults against Barghouti in prison; his own family has expressed fear for his life after reports of beatings that allegedly caused fractures and loss of consciousness. This background turns any gesture of public defiance into a gesture of political escalation—not just a campaign photo op—and explains the outrage within Palestinian public opinion and among international observers.
Faced with intimidation, Barghouti’s response embodies a tradition of resistance: “We are fighters for our freedom.” It is a short, powerful phrase that summarizes a decades-long history of political struggles and national symbolism. It is not a call for personal revenge, but the reaffirmation of a legitimacy that cannot be bought with force or erased by harassment. That dignity, even from confinement, is what worries those who wish to silence him.
Current Israeli politics, marked by the normalization of ultranationalist positions in ministerial positions, transforms every symbolic gesture into a tool of pressure. When a senior official enters the cell of a political prisoner and utters words of elimination or humiliation, he is sending a broader message: to the prisoners, to Palestinian political leaders, and to the international community. This message erodes the possibility of negotiation and fuels regional polarization.
UPAL firmly denounces threats and practices that dehumanize political adversaries. Condemning violence does not mean renouncing the political struggle; on the contrary, it demands protecting the right to life, physical integrity, and human dignity of those who, even in prison, represent political movements and the aspirations of their people. Barghouti’s exclusion from recent negotiations and release lists also demonstrates a political calculation that seeks to neutralize leadership and hope.
Finally, we warn that intimidation does not extinguish ideas. Threats may silence voices at times, but they do not erase the causes: the search for self-determination, the demand for justice, and the yearning for freedom persist. Marwan Barghouti, even behind bars, repeats today what generations have maintained: the struggle for freedom is not negotiated with humiliation; it is sustained with dignity and memory. UPAL will stand on the side of that dignity.
Palestinian Union of Latin America – UPAL
October 19, 2025
