Omar Barghouti

Palestinian officials, lacking a democratic mandate and running after the trappings of power, narrow economic interests, and privilege, have through years of a US-Israeli designed and managed “peace process” effectively surrendered the right of return as it is defined by the UN; accepted Israel’s occupation and colonization of key parts of the West Bank, including in East Jerusalem; expunged the 1948 Palestinians, who are Israeli citizens, from the very definition of the Palestinian people, indirectly legitimizing Israeli apartheid; forsaken the moral high ground by accepting a symmetry between the "claims of both sides;" and played along Israel’s public relations campaign of portraying its colonial conflict with the Palestinian people as merely one over some disputed land.

According to Barghouti, they are "unelected and unrepresentative" without any legitimacy from the Palestinian people.

Barghouti has consistently described Israel as an apartheid state, saying: "From now on, it will be acceptable to compare Israel's apartheid system to its South African predecessor. As a consequence, proposing practical measures to punish Israeli institutions for their role in the racist and colonial policies of their state will no longer be considered beyond the pale."

Also: "Characterising Israel's legalised system of discrimination as apartheid – as was done by Tutu, Jimmy Carter and even a former Israeli attorney general – does not equate Israel with South Africa. No two oppressive regimes are identical. Rather, it asserts that Israel's bestowal of rights and privileges according to ethnic and religious criteria fits the UN-adopted definition of apartheid."

He refers to Israeli practices using comparisons to Nazi Germany: "Many of the methods of collective and individual “punishment” meted out to Palestinian civilians at the hands of young, racist, often sadistic and ever impervious Israeli soldiers at the hundreds of checkpoints littering the occupied Palestinian territories are reminiscent of common Nazi practices against the Jews."

He believes that "Israeli society is shifting very far to the right, with ethnic cleansing becoming a mainstream term that's used in academia, in the media, in parliament, in conferences."

Barghouti rejects all forms of racism, including antisemitism.

He has said that Israel's allegation of antisemitism in the BDS movement is hypocritical:

BDS is a non-violent human rights movement that seeks freedom, justice and equality for the Palestinian people, based on international law and universal principles of human rights.

As such, BDS has consistently and categorically rejected all forms of discrimination and racism, including anti-Semitism as well as dozens of racist laws in Israel.

Our non-violent struggle has never been against Jews or Israelis as Jews, but against an unjust regime that enslaves our people with occupation, apartheid and denial of the refugees’ UN-stipulated rights.

We are proud of the disproportionately high number of Jewish activists in the BDS movement, especially in the U.S.

Conflating time-honored, human-rights-based boycotts of Israel’s violations of international law with anti-Jewish racism is not only false, it is a racist attempt to put all Jews into one basket and to implicate them in Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians.

Israel’s charge of racism against the BDS movement is akin to the Ku Klux Klan accusing Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks of racism!

It is so blatantly propagandistic.

Barghouti has also spoken out against anti-Semitism in the Palestinian solidarity movement.

Barghouti is skeptical to the "peace process" which he in writing often puts in quotes.

He does not believe that dialogue with Israel or the Israelis will end the oppression of Palestinians:

"The main reason is because it’s morally flawed and based on the false premise that this so-called conflict is mainly due to mutual hatred and, therefore, you need some kind of therapy or dialogue between those two equivalent, symmetric, warring parties. Put them in a room, force them to talk to one another, then they will fall in love, the hatred will go away and you will have your Romeo and Juliet story. Of course, this is deceitful and morally very corrupt because the conflict is a colonial conflict — it’s not a domestic dispute between a husband and wife — it’s a colonial conflict based on ethnic cleansing, racism, colonialism and apartheid. Without taking away the roots of the conflict you cannot have any coexistence, at least not ethical coexistence."

Barghouti believes that Palestinians who engage with Israelis in intellectual debates and artistic partnerships in the spirit of inter-cultural dialogue, decontextualized from the political economy of enforced population expulsion and territorial occupation, are "guilty of moral blindness and political shortsightedness."

In response, Samir El-Youssef states that "Barghouti's 'true peace based on justice' is that Israel must be punished, brought down to its knees before a Palestinian is allowed to greet an Israeli in the street".

He stated that ending the Israeli occupation in the West Bank will not end the BDS movement actions—since the majority of Palestinians are refugees who live in exile and have a right to return.

Omar Barghouti (عمر البرغوثي, born 1964) is a founding committee member of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) and a co-founder of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

In 1982, he moved to the United States, where he lived for 11 years and earned bachelor's and master's degrees in electrical engineering from Columbia University.

At Columbia, he was president of the Columbia Arab Club.

In 1993, he moved to Israel following his marriage to an Israeli-Arab woman.

He holds Israeli permanent residency status and lives in Acre.

He holds a master's degree in philosophy (ethics) from the Tel Aviv University (TAU), and is pursuing a PhD.

He received the Gandhi Peace Award in 2017.

Barghouti was born in Qatar to a Palestinian family from the Barghouti clan, and at a young age moved to Egypt, where he grew up.

In March 2017 Barghouti was arrested in Israel on suspicion of tax evasion of about $700,000, but as of June 2021 has not been charged with any offence with regard to this arrest.

Barghouti's views align strongly with those of the BDS movement which he co-founded.

Barghouti opposes the two-state solution because he doesn't believe a Palestinian state is viable and would not resolve the "fundamental injustices" that has been brought upon the Palestinians.

He instead supports a one-state solution encompassing all of what is now Israel and the Palestinian territories, in which these will be replaced by a "secular, democratic state... offering unequivocal equality in citizenship and individual and communal rights both to Palestinians (refugees included) and to Israeli Jews".

Palestinian refugees would be allowed to return to this state, which would have a "transparent and nondiscriminatory immigration policy."

Barghouti rejects the idea of a binational state, stating that "the binational model assumes that there are two nations with equal and competing moral claims to the land, and therefore we have to accommodate both national rights."

Instead, Barghouti argues that a single, secular state with equal rights for Jews and Palestinians is the only way to reconcile "the inalienable, UN-sanctioned rights of the indigenous people of Palestine to self-determination, repatriation, and equality" with the "acquired rights of Israeli Jews to coexist — as equals, not colonial masters — in the land of Palestine."

Barghouti is a vocal critic of the Palestinian Authority, which he sees as a tool for Israeli oppression:

"In the West Bank you have a largely obedient Palestinian Authority (PA) that acts mainly as a subcontractor for the Israeli occupation, serving its "security" needs and relieving it of its civic burdens of running education, health, sanitation, ..."

He furthermore accuses Palestinian leaders for being self-serving and for effectively having surrendered the Palestinian right of return: