[Arab News] Imprisoned Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti has harshly criticized the Palestinian Authority for negotiating with Israel, saying both direct and indirect negotiations are pointless.Barghouti, a member of Fatah's Central Committee, was sentenced by an Israeli court to five life sentences in 2004 following his implication in terrorist attacks against Israelis during the Second Intifada.
"Israel uses negotiations as a cover for continuing its policies of Jewish domination, settlement, incursion and siege," Barghouti told the Arabic daily Asharq Al-Awsat in a message from his prison cell. "There are no de Gaulles or de Klerks in Israel, but only extremist leaders who cling to the mentality of occupation, settlement and racism."
Barghouti was quoted as telling his lawyer Elias Sabbagh that negotiations should only begin after Israel explicitly states its commitment to withdraw to 1967 borders. He added that Israel must acknowledge the Palestinian right to establish a fully sovereign state with Jerusalem as its capital, to release all Palestinian prisoners, and to set a timetable of several months for negotiations.
But in a conversation with The Media Line, attorney Sabbagh denied speaking to Asharq Al-Awsat on the matter.
Ambassador Majdi Al-Khaldi, an adviser to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, said it was not up to Barghouti to make policy.
"The decision to enter into negotiations with Israel is an Arab and Palestinian decision," he told the Media Line. "It's not a personal matter. There are Palestinian institutions that make these decisions, and it's not up to private people."
"Usually such personal statements are intended to show that there is a problem, namely that the Israeli side has presented no position," Al-Khaldi said. "Many people on the Palestinian street are pressuring the leadership not to enter into direct negotiations without a clear premise, including a settlement freeze."
Israeli parliamentarian Haim Oron, head of the left-wing Meretz party who meets regularly with Barghouti in prison, declined to comment on the article but said he agreed that without an explicit Israeli statement endorsing the 1967 borders and Jerusalem as a joint capital "nothing would come of direct negotiations, even if they resumed following American pressure."
"Negotiations in various forms have been under way for the past 15-20 years," Oron said. "They should resume from the point they had stopped."
Many consider Barghouti a moderate alternative to Abbas. His latest statement, however, seems more like an overture to Hamas and the Palestinian resistance.
How screwed up is a place when the guy doing life in prison is considered the "moderate alternative"?
"We must achieve national reconciliation, end the state of division (between Fatah and Hamas) and allow the popular resistance to act freely nationwide," he said.
A frustrated Barghouti harshly criticized the Palestinian leadership for forsaking prisoners in Israeli jails.
"The leadership does not exert the slightest effort for our release, and there is a clear neglect of the prisoner issue," he said. "It is not on the agenda of the Palestinian leadership."
Osama Al-Ghoul, head of the information department in the Palestinian Ministry of Detainees, argued the government was doing its best to achieve the release of Palestinian prisoners.
"We exert our best efforts within the framework of what is possible," he said. "We in the ministry cannot release the prisoners by force, and our primary concern is improving prisoners' conditions in jail pending their release."
Ahmad Assaf, a spokesman for Fatah, said that Barghouti was a senior member of the party and as such his opinions carried weight.
"Like all Fatah members, (Barghouti) would prefer to see change taking place faster on two fronts: the occupation and the internal rift with Hamas," he said.