From Occupied Palestine

Mustafa Barghouti: Palestinian Defiance
MUSTAFA BARGHOUTI and ERIC HAZAN
New Left Review 32, March-April 2005

The Ramallah doctor and activist, general secretary of the Al Mubadara coalition, on struggles against the Israeli Occupation, from the popular movement of the first Intifada to the tactical errors of the second, via the disaster of Oslo. As Abu Mazen is levered into place, what alternatives can combat both IDF stranglehold and the flyblown Palestinian Authority?

Could you tell us about your origins and early trajectory?

I was born in Jerusalem, in 1954, but I spent my childhood here in Ramallah. My family is from Deir Ghassaneh, a village about fifteen miles away, near Bir Zeit; but after 1948, my father became the municipal engineer for Al Bireh, adjoining Ramallah. The Barghouti family, a large one, has always been very political, very active. Under the Mandate, my grandfather and his brother were jailed by the British. During the 1950s, the whole village was part of the left opposition to Jordanian rule. It was the beginning of the Nasserite movement, of Pan-Arabism; the influence of the Jordanian Communist Party and other left forces was also very strong. I grew up surrounded by internationalist, progressive literature