Palestine’s Most Legitimate Leaders Are Imprisoned, Assassinated, or Disqualified
By Rima Najjar
It begins with the absence of Marwan Barghouti and traces how figures like Mustafa Barghouti and Ahmad Sa’adat have been sidelined in favor of unelected managers like Mohammad Shtayyeh. Through historical examples and recent events, the essay exposes the logic of “reconstruction without sovereignty” — a framework that rebuilds infrastructure while denying political agency. It concludes with a ledger of erasure and a visual indictment, arguing that true representation cannot emerge under conditions designed to suppress it.
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The Managed Landscape
These days, Palestinians are hard pressed to find political leaders roaming freely in the world anywhere. Since the 1950s, Israel has routinely eliminated Palestinian leadership through targeted killings and long-term imprisonment. By detaining hundreds — sometimes thousands — of activists and leaders across factions, Israel uses extended sentences and administrative detention to exclude organizers from political competition.
The result is that negotiations around ceasefires and reconstruction proceed without several of the most legitimate, mobilizing Palestinian figures. Marwan Barghouti remains imprisoned. Sheikh Ahmad Yassin and Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi lie dead.
Technocrats Over Representatives
So this morning, when I turned on the news, I wasn’t surprised to see and hear a Palestinian political figure I hadn’t seen for years claiming authority to negotiate — or rather, to manage: Mohammad Shtayyeh. A British-educated economist and longtime Fatah loyalist, Shtayyeh was appointed Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority (PA) by President Mahmoud Abbas in April 2019. He replaced Rami Hamdallah, who had led a short-lived unity government. Shtayyeh’s role is not to represent the Palestinian street but to rubberstamp ceasefire and reconstruction plans that reflect imposed conditions more than popular will.
His appointment was not the result of public election but a political maneuver — designed to project an image of reform to international donors like the EU while consolidating Abbas’s control. His mandate has always been constrained by the PA’s limited autonomy under Israeli occupation and its internal political stagnation.
The Mustafa Barghouti Alternative
At this moment in Palestinian history, to elevate Shtayyeh — a PA insider — over independent figures like Dr. Mustafa Barghouti is a telling replay of the imposed leadership logic that has long plagued Palestinian politics. Barghouti, a physician and prominent civil society leader, has served in the Palestinian Legislative Council since 2006. He has been a consistent critic of the PA’s leadership style, emphasizing grassroots democracy and civil society empowerment. It is his face we saw these past two harrowing years on Al Jazeera, arguing passionately for Palestinian liberation.
Reconstruction Without Sovereignty
This arrangement, of course, makes sense — if one accepts the logic of Trump’s “reconstruction without sovereignty” plan. As with the Quartet’s donor frameworks before it, what is needed are Palestinian technocrats and managers. No representative politicians need apply. No resistance credentials. No mass legitimacy. Just fluent English, a clean suit, and a willingness to manage the aftermath of catastrophe without contesting its cause.
As long as Israel holds the power to eliminate or incarcerate the leaders Palestinians most endorse, Palestinians cannot exercise authentic self-determination. Any ceasefire or reconstruction plan that emerges under those conditions will reflect imposed settlement, not a freely chosen political future.
Political Engineering by Incarceration
More than ever, Palestinians need Marwan Barghouti — the West Bank’s most broadly recognized unifying political figure. In characteristic policy, Israel removed him from public life and electoral contention in 2002, sentencing him to five life terms. Alongside him, Ahmad Sa’adat, Secretary-General of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, has been held since 2006. Neither man was freed in the prisoner exchange deal of October 13, 2025. Despite Hamas’s insistence, both names were deliberately excluded from the final list of 250 prisoners released. Barghouti’s name, in fact, was reportedly removed at the last minute by the Israeli Prime Minister’s office, after mediators had already approved his inclusion.
In mid-September 2025, Israeli prison guards reportedly assaulted Barghouti during a transfer between detention facilities. According to testimonies from recently released detainees, he was handcuffed, thrown to the ground, and beaten unconscious. He suffered four broken ribs and remained incapacitated for hours. His son, Arab Barghouti, described the family as “horrified,” citing accounts that guards targeted his father’s head, chest, and legs. The Israel Prison Service denied the allegations, while National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir publicly celebrated the deterioration of Barghouti’s prison conditions, stating he was “proud” of the harsher treatment. Palestinian rights groups have called the assault a systematic attempt to eliminate Barghouti physically, not just politically. His continued imprisonment — and the violence he endures — reflects the extent to which Israel fears his return to public life.
By deciding which prisoners to free, when, and under what conditions, Israel converts individual liberty into a bargaining chip — shaping who can return to leadership roles and who remains sidelined. It is political engineering by incarceration.
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The Most Legitimate Leaders Are Not at the Table — They’re Behind Bars or Beneath Ground.
Fragments of Defiance
But now, social media is agog with the image of Marwan Barghouti. A grainy courtroom photo. A mural in Bethlehem with the words “See you soon.” A clip from 2002, where he raises his cuffed hands defiantly before the cameras. These fragments circulate like prophecy. They are not nostalgia — they are demand. They are the people’s reminder that the most legitimate leaders are not the ones seated at donor tables, but the ones Israel fears enough to bury alive.
“Reconstruction without sovereignty” means rebuilding infrastructure while leaving the political architecture of domination intact. It means pouring cement over ruins without addressing the forces that produced them. It means managing aftermaths, not ending assaults.
The Road Map’s Afterlife
In concrete terms, it looks like this:
- Donor funds arrive to rebuild homes, schools, and hospitals — often through international NGOs or PA ministries.
- Israeli military control remains over borders, airspace, and movement.
- No guarantees are made against future bombardment.
- No accountability mechanisms are established for the destruction.
- No sovereignty is granted to the people whose lives are being rebuilt.
The model that elevates Shtayyeh and sidelines Barghouti — both Barghoutis — is designed to stabilize optics, not liberate people. This logic is the direct descendant of the Road Map for Peace, launched in 2003 by the Quartet (the US, EU, UN, and Russia). The Road Map promised a phased approach:
- End violence and reform Palestinian institutions.
- Establish a provisional Palestinian state.
- Negotiate final status issues.
But the Road Map failed because its sequence inverted justice. It demanded Palestinian compliance before ending occupation, treating sovereignty and true representation as a conditional reward for good behavior, not an inherent right. It allowed Israel to define “security” in ways that criminalized resistance, disqualified mass movements, and justified continued land theft.
The Veto of 2006
The clearest indictment came in 2006, when Palestinians participated in legislative elections under international observation. Hamas won a majority— not through coercion, but through the ballot box. It was a democratic outcome, delivered by a population long denied democratic power. And yet, instead of honoring the result, Israel, the US, and the EU moved to isolate the elected government. Aid was suspended. Borders were sealed. Officials were boycotted. The PA was split. The West Bank was managed. Gaza was besieged.
No elections have been permitted since. For nearly two decades, Palestinians have been denied the right to renew their leadership through the ballot. The democratic mandate of 2006 was frozen, then buried under siege, donor conditionality, and factional fragmentation. In 2021, elections were scheduled again — parliamentary in May, presidential in July — but were abruptly postponed. The official reason: Israel refused to allow voting in East Jerusalem. PA President Mahmoud Abbas declared, “There will be no elections without Jerusalem,” and suspended the entire process. This was not a technical delay. It was a political veto. By blocking ballot access in Jerusalem, Israel ensured that Palestinians could not vote in their own capital, and the PA used that blockade to justify indefinite postponement.
The result is a political landscape where legitimacy is not earned — it is assigned. Where representation is not chosen — it is managed. Where sovereignty is not exercised — it is withheld.
This is the architecture of “reconstruction without sovereignty.” It rebuilds what was destroyed, but only under the supervision of unelected technocrats. It funds ministries, not movements. It rewards compliance, not legitimacy. It is why the most mobilizing figures — Barghouti, Sa’adat, and the elected Hamas leadership — remain imprisoned, excluded, or besieged.
Under the Road Map, Israel expanded settlements, built the separation wall, and deepened its control over Area C. The PA, meanwhile, was tasked with policing its own population — training security forces to suppress dissent, not defend dignity. The result was a subcontracted occupation, dressed in the language of peace.
“Reconstruction without sovereignty” is the Road Map’s afterlife. It is the policy skeleton beneath every donor conference, every UN appeal, every technocratic appointment. It is why Gaza is rebuilt after every war, only to be bombed again. It is why the West Bank is paved with EU-funded roads that lead to Israeli checkpoints.
A Ledger of Erasure
It is why the most legitimate Palestinian leaders are either dead, imprisoned, or disqualified. Israel has spent decades engineering this vacuum. The record is not abstract — it is a ledger of names and dates:
- Israel killed Khalil al-Wazir (Abu Jihad), a Fatah co-founder and senior military strategist, removing one of the movement’s principal organizers from Palestinian political life.
- It assassinated Sheikh Ahmad Yassin and Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi, founders and spiritual leaders of Hamas, decapitating the organization’s visible political and moral voice in Gaza and reshaping its leadership composition.
- It eliminated Ghassan Kanafani and Fathi Shaqaqi, intellectuals and founders whose survival might have expanded non-military, political pathways inside Palestinian national life.
- It continues to imprison Marwan Barghouti, arguably the most popular political figure in the West Bank, whose detention removes a unifying electoral and mobilizing force from the field.
- It holds Ahmad Sa’adat, Secretary-General of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, in prolonged detention, barring him from public life and political participation.
Sovereignty Requires the Right to Refuse
These are not isolated incidents. They are the infrastructure of exclusion. They ensure that negotiations proceed without the figures Palestinians most endorse. They guarantee that reconstruction plans reflect imposed settlement, not freely chosen futures.
Sovereignty requires leadership that can say no. Leadership that can demand. Leadership that cannot be managed. And so, the leaders who could have said no — who did say no — were removed. What remains is a managed landscape, where technocrats administer ruins and donors fund silence.
*Rima Najjar is a Palestinian whose father’s side of the family comes from the forcibly depopulated village of Lifta on the western outskirts of Jerusalem and whose mother’s side of the family is from Ijzim, south of Haifa. She is an activist, researcher, and retired professor of English literature, Al-Quds University, occupied West Bank. Visit the author’s blog.
She is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
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