Dear Donald Trump, here’s how you can win that Nobel peace prize | Mehdi Hasan

4 hours ago 6

You still want that Nobel peace prize, right? You believe you deserve it, don’t you? Even as you send the world’s biggest warship towards Venezuela, promise to just “kill people that are bringing drugs into our country … they’re going to be, like dead”, and threaten further national guard invasions of Democratic-run cities here in the United States.

I suspect you aren’t helping your case for a Nobel right now. But I do have a suggestion for you. One that might guarantee you the hallowed peace prize that you so obviously crave in 2026.

It’s super-simple: get Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, to release 66-year-old Marwan Barghouti from prison in Israel.

You remember Barghouti, right? You told Time magazine earlier this month that you were “literally being confronted with” his case “about 15 minutes before” they called you, that it was the “question of the day”, and that you would be “making a decision” soon.

You also told Time that the Palestinians “don’t have a leader right now, at least a visible leader … because every one of those leaders has been shot and killed”.

For once, we agree! But Mr President, I do hope you realize that Barghouti is that leader. Described by the New York Times in the 1990s as one of the “young, charismatic and energetic” members on the Palestinian Legislative Council, today he commands support across the Palestinian political spectrum, from Fatah to Hamas, which has repeatedly tried (and failed) to get him included in their prisoner swap deals with Israel. He is, far and away, the most popular Palestinian leader alive. Opinion polls – and I know you’re a keen student of polls – have consistently found an imprisoned Barghouti beating all his rivals in hypothetical presidential matchups; in June 2024, he was even defeating then Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in a head-to-head by a landslide. A reminder: Israel assassinated Haniyeh, Hamas’s chief negotiator, in Tehran the following month.

You want a unifying Palestinian leader with the stature and credibility to negotiate a proper peace deal with Israel in all of historic Palestine, and not just a ceasefire in Gaza? Barghouti is your man. In 2002, prior to his imprisonment, he wrote in the Washington Post he “recognized Israel on 78% of historic Palestine”, that he was strongly opposed to “the targeting of civilians inside Israel”, and that he didn’t seek to “destroy Israel” and wanted “peaceful coexistence between the equal and independent countries of Israel and Palestine”.

Isn’t that the kind of Palestinian leader you and the US government could get behind? Isn’t that the kind of Palestinian partner that Israel has long claimed to want?

Of course, the Israeli government will tell you that Barghouti cannot be released because he is a terrorist; because he is serving five cumulative life sentences for the murders of five Israeli civilians during the second Intifada. Don’t listen to them. An international observer sent to his 2004 trial in Israel, by the Governing Council of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, concluded in his official report: “The numerous breaches of international law recalled in this report make it impossible to conclude that Mr. Barghouti was given a fair trial.”

In fact, according to the report, only around one in five of the 100 witnesses called to testify against Barghouti during his trial were actually in a position to testify directly regarding his alleged role in the attacks – and none of them even accused him of being involved in them.

Mr President, he was not given a fair trial – and I know how strongly you personally feel about people not being given fair trials. You have pardoned and freed hundreds of prisoners here in the US since January whom you believe were wrongly convicted and unfairly imprisoned. I don’t happen to agree with you on those pardons and commutations, but why not push for the release of Barghouti, too?

The “Palestinian Mandela”, as he has become known, may be the key to the enduring peace in the Middle East that you say you want to achieve. Don’t believe me? Listen to Ron Lauder, the pro-Israel president of the World Jewish Congress and one of your big donors, who offered to travel to Sharm el-Sheikh earlier this month to try and persuade the Israeli government to include the release of Barghouti in the Gaza ceasefire deal. His attempt, sadly was rebuffed by Netanyahu. “A two-state solution is only possible if you have a good leader and Marwan Barghouti will be the right leader for it,” Lauder told Time.

Listen also to Ami Ayalon, former head of the Shin Bet, Israel’s equivalent of the FBI. Barghouti is “the only leader who can lead Palestinians to a state alongside Israel”, Ayalon told the Guardian in January 2024. “First of all because he believes in the concept of two states, and secondly because he won his legitimacy by sitting in our jails.”

Listen to the Economist magazine, which calls him “the world’s most important prisoner” and the “one Palestinian who could help end the conflict”.

Imagine the headlines you would get, Mr President, if you secured the release of “the world’s most important prisoner”. Imagine the crowds across the Middle East gleefully chanting your name in their tens, maybe hundreds, of thousands, if his release did indeed “help end the conflict”. They might even start naming their sons “Donald” in honor of your achievement. You’d really like that, wouldn’t you?

I want to be very honest and blunt with you, Mr President. For the past decade, I have been one of your most ferocious critics. I remain skeptical of the Gaza ceasefire deal that you oversaw the signing of in Egypt. I also remain disturbed by your constant use of the word “Palestinian” as a pejorative, as a slur. Nevertheless, if you persuade (pressure?) your pal Bibi to free Barghouti from prison, even I will be forced to praise you.

You suggested to Time you would be “making a decision” on this in the near future. Time is not on the 66-year-old Palestinian leader’s side. His family says he was beaten by Israeli prison guards last month as he was being moved from one prison to another. In August, Israel’s far-right national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir released a video showing him berating and threatening Barghouti inside his prison cell.

If, God forbid, Barghouti were to join the more than 70 Palestinians who have died in Israeli detention since 7 October 2023, then the prospects for a solution to the Israel-Palestine issue on your watch will slip away. So too will that Nobel prize.

Pick up the phone, Mr President. Tell Bibi to release Barghouti. Then maybe get ready for that call from Norway.