About a month ago, Dr. Mustafa Barghouti was invited to the Italian Consulate in
Ever since March 2007, upon the establishment of the Palestinian unity government, the Civil Administration has not granted Barghouti – a physician by profession – entry permits to the Gaza Strip. A member of the Legislative Council for the National Initiative list that he established, Barghouti was the information minister in that short-lived unity government.
For the past three months he has not been receiving entry permits for
The Shin Bet security service has told Haaretz in response that "Mustafa Barghouti is forbidden to enter
As in thousands of other cases of individuals denied freedom of movement, the Shin Bet seems to be revealing a small glimpse while concealing the whole picture. It feels confident in firing off its standard reply because the majority in the Jewish society of
In
The travel permits are a way to tell Palestinian public figures exactly whom the Israeli patron wants to honor. Whose politics is tolerated, whose is legitimate and whose is intolerable. With no connection to the electoral weakness of Barghouti’s National Initiative, the messages that are linked with his name are clear, resonant and popular: Hamas and Fatah have to get down off their high horses, rectify the serious mistakes they have made in recent months, and get back on the path of unity to fight the occupation. Popular struggle – along the separation fence, against the Jewish settlements in the occupied territories and against the apartheid roads – is the most effective means, which involves the entire society.
Only last Friday, Barghouti, with hundreds of Palestinian activists and a hundred Israelis, took part in a demonstration against Road 443, which is blocked to Palestinians. Barghouti is frequently interviewed by foreign journalists because of his eloquence, and he is exactly the person who will stick pins in balloons that are inflated with false optimism on the progress of the negotiations because the Palestinian and Israeli negotiating chiefs – Ahmed Qureia and Tzipi Livni – have managed to come up with procedures for convening the committee that will discuss "the core issues."
His messages interfere with the new taming course that
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