When Marwan Barghouti, leader of Al Fatah, entered the courtroom in Tel Aviv for his first hearing, handcuffed, dressed in the brown prison uniform, and surrounded by soldiers and police, the relatives of israeli victims shouted "murderer, terrorist". When Marwan saw me among the observers and waved to me, calling me by name, two Israelis tried to push me, shouting "terrorist". Barghouti replied, "I'm not a terrorist, I'm a freedom fighter. Intifada until the end of the occupation". Naturally, the relatives of Palestinian victims couldn't be present and nor could those relatives of Israeli victims who have focused the pain of their loss, working for a just peace in Palestine and Israel.

His abduction and transfer to Israeli prisons happened on 15th April 2002 in Ramallah, an autonomous Palestinian area, during operation "Defensive Shield", carried out by the Israeli army. An operation that saw the reoccupation of Palestinian towns, house-to-house searches, destruction, theft, murders, and collective punishment in the name of the fight against terrorism. Held for days without sleep, tied hand and foot to a tiny chair - in plain words, tortured - he was held in solitary confinement in a cell without windows, 1.5 meters wide where he couldn't even walk. From the day of his abduction, Barghouti has been able to see his wife only during his proposed candidacy for the presidency of a still-occupied Palestine. One of his children, , Quassem, was arrested when he was returning from Egypt, where he was studying, to be present at his mother's degree ceremony. He has been in prison since the end of December 2003. His imprisonment is another persecution of Marwan, another attempt to put pressure on him. As far as his other children are concerned, he has only seen the youngest once. This meeting was used by the Israelis, who filmed it, against the norms that defend minors from being shown on television, to show that Marwan was betraying his comrades who are currently on strike and refusing to meet relatives because they don't want to be separated by glass during visits. His wife and children have several times tried to get to Tel Aviv to seem him at least during the trial, but Israeli soldiers at check points have always sent them back, except for once when two of the children managed to get there by side roads and to go to the court. It was a tragedy when the little 10-year old ran forward to take his father's hand and was pushed away with violence by the "good" Israeli soldiers.

The abduction of Barghouti and his transfer to Israel is the result of yet another illegal act carried out by the Israeli government that does not respect the Geneva Convention, which prohibits the transfer of political prisoners to the occupying country. In addition, Marwan is an elected parliamentary representative in the autonomous Palestinian area A, but the military reoccupation has completely destroyed the Oslo accords.

Even so, that 15th April, as I watched TV in Brussels and, with sorrow and anxiety, saw him taken away by Israeli soldiers, I was glad: he had not been killed by a commando or by an Israeli missile, as had already happened to 11 Fatah leaders in the West Bank, among them a dear friend of Marwan, Tabhet Tabhet, a doctor from Tulkarem who had for some time had contacts with Israeli pacifists, including Yehudith Harel, spokesperson for Peace Now. After Tabhet's murder, Yehudith resigned from Peace. Now with a letter of accusation not only against the Israeli government but also against Peace Now which had defended the Barak government. The targets of extra-judicial murder weren't only fundamentalist leaders of Hamas or Jihad or the young men of the Al Aqsa Brigades or the leaders of the Popular Front, they were also the Fatah leaders who had supported the Oslo peace process. Marwan was secretary of Al Fatah in the West Bank and of the organisation Tanzim. Even though he had been deported and had lived in Tunisia after spending many years in prison, he wasn't considered a leader who had returned from abroard, no one saw him as a bureaucrat. He was the leader who had been able to explain the Oslo agreement to the population of the refugee camps and persuade them to accept it. At our various meetings at Ramallah, when he was already living in clandestinity after a warrant for his arrest was issued on 23rd September 2001, he still repeated "there is no other way except negotiation that leads to the realisation of a Palestinian state in coexistence with the Israeli state.... Israel must stop the military occupation, as even the UN resolutions say."

As Musolino and Barbieri have written in their introduction to this publication, which I hope can make known not only the figure of Marwan but also the conditions of total illegality in which the Israeli authority operates, Marwan was always at Arafat's side but did not hesitate to criticise his leadership. Together with the young people of Fatah (now there aren't many - all are more than 40 years old), among them Qaddura Fares, Ahmed Gneim and others, he carried on a campaign to bring a more democratic structure to Al Fatah. Free from accusations of corruption. Together with others not only from Fatah, like Azmi Swhaibi of Fida - Marwan was a promoter within the Palestinian Legislative Council, to which he was elected in 1996, of the commission to verify and denounce corrupt activity by government officers in the Palestinian Authority.

He was the acclaimed leader of this second Intifada, which he doesn't call "Al Aqsa", but "The Intifada of independence and peace". What convinced him to assert the right, sanctioned for peoples living under military occupation, to defend themselves with arms - not to kill Israeli civilians which he has always condemned - was in part wthe perceived success of the armed resistance by Hezbollah in achieving the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Lebanon, and in part the Israeli reaction on 30th September, the day after the provocative visit of Sharon to the Dome of the Mount. Many Palestinians were killed, many more beaten and injured. There were scenes on the TV ofMarwan pushed about and beaten that said to me "I feel ashamed in front of my son. I don't know how to defend him and I don't know how to defend myself from the humiliation that is inflicted on every Palestinian by the military occupation". But the real cause was undoubtedly linked to the continual expansion of settlements that take away land and water from the Palestinians, the denial of freedom of movement, the lack of respect for the Oslo agreement from the Israeli authorities, the thousands of Palestinians who remain inprisoned as hostages.

At the trial, Marwan continually asserted the right of the Palestinian people to resist and accused Israel for the illegality and immorality of the military occupation, asserting that peace is necessary to Palestinians and Israelis. In his speeches, since he refused to be defended, Marwan Barghouti brought a powerful message of peace, two peoples and two states, perhaps within four years and perhaps even a single state for all its citizens. The miliary occupation cannot continue. He speaks of his father and of the humiliations suffered by Palestinians, of the women forced to give birth at check points, of the right to liberty and to dignity of every human being. He defends the Intifada and declared himself against the death of innocent civilians. He says that this court that is judging him, has already decided his guilt. He speaks of the hopes of the Oslo peace process and of their dispersal in the face of the Israeli actions, the construction of settlements, the political prisoners, the daily suffering of the generations and generations of Palestinians who have known the violence of the occupation and have never enjoyed freedom. He speaks of the other Israel, that of the soldiers who refuseto take part in the killing of civilians, of the young people and of the women who demonstrate with the Palestinians. He always finds the strength to joke and to be ironic, to smile and play with his jailers and with the judges with whom he speaks in Hebrew, learned in their jails when he was still a young student at the University of Birzeit. It is his profound humanity that is manifest. The same can be said for his Israeli lawyer, grandson of the orthodox rabbi Leibowitz, violently attacked by a group of fanatics at one of thehearings because they consider him a traitor and a blasphemer. He had dared to compare Marwan to Moses. Taking on Marwan's defence has been very difficult for him. He told me that his wife wanted to separate from him because she considered Marwan a terrorist. So, they decided to ask the rabbi for advice. The rabbi proposed that before making any decision, the wife should speak to and get to know Marwan. The meeting took place and Marwan gained the trust of Leibowitz's wife.

During the different phases of the trial and during the run-up to the Palestinian elections, there have been various occasions when there has been talk of the possibility of freeing Marwan, of an agreement between the Israeli government and Hezbollah for the exchange of the bodies of Israeli soldiers killed in Lebanon and political prisoners held in Israel. But it was clear that Sharon didn't have any intention of freeing Barghouti. This became certain when on 6th June, the anniversary of the 1967 military occupation, Marwan was condemned to 5 life sentences plus 40 years in prison.

In these years of imprisonment, Marwen, despite being held in solitary confinement, has managed to send political messages by way of his lawyers and to remain in contact with events. It is with his authority that Hamas and Jihad were convinced to participate in a truce, it is with with his assent that Qaddura Fares participated in the Geneva agreement promoted by Yossi Beilin e Yasser Abed Rabbo. It was his sense of responsiblity that permitted Mohamed Abbas to be elected president receiving the votes of Marwan's supporters. Hischoice cost him a lot, but he is convinced of what his friends said to him: "We don't need a president in prison, we already had Arafat prisoner for more than 3 years". In exchange for his withdrawal he put pressure on for the renewal of the congress of Al Fatah. But not all Palestinians support him. Palestinian society is extremely articulate in its political expressions and many notables and businessmen don't like him. Also many intellectuals and forces of democratic opposition see Al Fatah as a populist and conservative movement which tends to occupy all the spaces of power. Even though they appreciate Marwan's capabilities and his honesty, they maintain that he is in large part responsible for the military direction that the second Intifada has taken and for the lack of a political strategy.

From prison, Marwan has called for the question on the political prisoners to be confronted, but this continues to be negected though it is central in establishing the commitment of the Israeli authorities to peace and negotiations.

More than 8,000 Palestinians are in Israeli jails, including 372 adolescents. A considerable number of prisoners are in administrative detention, without trial, for years. Incidents of torture, humiliation, and blackmail are continually being denounced by Bet'Selem, the Israeli Human Rights organization. All this met with silence from the international community which continues to absolve the Israeli government of all its crimes against humanity. Of the 8,000 political prisoners, very few are those that have carried out attacks or "whose hands are stained with blood". Mostly, they are Palestinians who believe in international law and who maintain the right to live in their own homes, to be able to move freely in their own land, to not see their olive trees uprooted to make way for a wall of segregation, apartheid and colonial annexation. They are Palestinians who want to be able to irrigate their lands and use the water from their wells which instead is transferred to the new settlements inhabited by Jewish fanatics who arrive from Brooklin and insist that that land is theirs by divine right, who do not see the suffereing and injustice provoked by their fanaticism.

If the international community really considers peace betweenPalestinians and Israelis to be a priority, it must put pressure on Israel to free Palestinian political prisoners. Of the 400 freed after the Sharm El Sheik agreement, the majority had only spent some days or months in prison or they had been arrested because they tried to enter Israel illegally - not to carry out attacks but to work so that they could eat.

Marwan must be freed as well. His trial was illegal. Saying, as the Israeli authorities have, that Marwan's hands are stained with blood and that he must rot in jail, is part of the culture of vengeance. What should the Palestinians say about prime minister Sharon, who even in his own country has been recognised as responsible for the massacres of Sabra and Chatila? What should they say about his hands "stained with the blood" of Egyptian soldiers or of the Palestinians in Gaza in the 70s? What should they say about his orders to bomb and kill civilians? What should they say about Ehud Barak, who also has "bloodstained hands" not only for ordering but also for carrying out the murder of three Palestinian leaders in Beirut and who was chief of the commando group which killed Abu Jihad in front of his wife and small son in Tunisia?

Freeing Marwan might seem a dream in the light of Sharon's intransigence, and now with the planned unilateral withdrawal from Gaza and the difficulty that the "father" of the settlers must confront in the fanaticism of which he himself is the origin, the international community is even more reluctant to apply pressure. Not only do they not call for freedom for the prisoners, but they make feeble protests about the expansion of the settlements in the West Bank.

We, however, must assume the responsibility for the liberation of Marwan and of the other Palestinian political prisoners. It is, first of all, an act of justice and a contribution to peace. Freeing the prisoners means removing the justification with which thousands of Palestinians support extremist or criminal actions and it gives credibility to President Abu Mazen and the possibility of negotiations between parties who each recognise the right of the other to exist with dignity and freedom. Perhaps on the 17th July, there will be national elections in Palestine. It would be very important for Marwan Barghouti and other prisoners to be candidates and to be elected.

I hope that this publication can be an instrument for a campaign in Italy for the liberation of Marwan Barghouti and of all the Palestinian political prisoners, a campaign that should be carried out by all those who hold in their hearts the hope of a just peace in Palestine and Israel.

Translation from Italian to English made by Jane Reynolds