Sins of the father
The arrest of Qassam Barghouti draws the son into Israel's standoff with his intrepid father, reports Nyier Abdou
When Qassam Barghouti, the 18-year-old son of jailed Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti, left Cairo for a visit with his family in his hometown of Ramallah, he did not expect the welcome he would receive. Qassam, a first-year student at the American University in Cairo (AUC), expected to spend his first mid-term holiday with his family, but has instead spent the last three weeks imprisoned by Israeli security forces.
Qassam was detained and questioned on Christmas Eve at the Allenby Bridge crossing when he tried to enter the West Bank from Jordan. He was later moved to Ofer prison, outside Ramallah, and faces a military trial on terrorism charges.
The unexpected arrest has been denounced by family and friends as guilt by association. Many feel that Qassam has become a pawn in the ongoing trial against his father, who is charged with masterminding a string of attacks in Israel that resulted in the deaths of 26 people. As head of Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction in the West Bank, Marwan Barghouti has often been tipped as a natural successor to Arafat. Since his seizure in Ramallah in April 2002 during Israel's operation "Defensive Shield", the case against Barghouti has been highly charged, ultimately boosting the charismatic leader's popularity as a symbol of the Intifada.
"We know that when the Israelis kidnapped Marwan, they said, 'We will take your son, we'll bomb his car'," Qassam's mother, Fadwa, told Al-Ahram Weekly. Asked if the family had harboured concerns about Qassam re-entering the West Bank, Fadwa noted that he had travelled frequently between Ramallah and places like Jordan, Egypt and Britain without problems. "It was a surprise for us," she admits, "but we know the Israelis want to put pressure on Marwan, and this is one way of doing that."
The charges against Qassam relate to an incident that allegedly took place on 31 March last year, and are based on the testimony of another prisoner who said Qassam was among youths who threw stones at military vehicles in Ramallah. Qassam is accused of possessing grenades and giving them to someone else who threw them at the tanks. The testimony implicating Qassam was given on 4 December by 18- year-old Kamal Qinaan, who was arrested in November in connection to the same incident, the family's lawyer, Jawad Boulos, told the Weekly. But Boulos has raised questions about the case that he says call the testimony into question.
Boulos notes that the witness gave two statements to Israel's Shin Bet. The first statement, given on 30 November, made no mention of Qassam. Only in the lengthy second statement, on 4 December, did Qassam appear "in three lines". Boulos has also requested to see whether a military report on the incident was made. "One would think that if a vehicle had six grenades thrown at it, the officer would write a report," says Boulos.
Qassam has denied all the charges and his mother, who is also a lawyer, says that the case is a farce. "This is completely untrue," says Fadwa. "They make anyone a witness." Both Boulos and Fadwa have stressed the fact that the witness is from Nablus, not Ramallah. "What they have is one witness who is from another area. Qassam doesn't know anything about this person." Presented with pictures of the witness when he appeared in court on Sunday, Qassam replied, "I don't know him, I've never seen him before in my life," Fadwa recounts.
Qassam, by all accounts, kept a low profile on the student political scene and was studying to improve his English before beginning his coursework. "In general, not many people at AUC seemed to be aware that Marwan Barghouti's son was attending AUC," says Gini Stevens, who taught Qassam during the semester. "He did not even mention to me or to his classmates anything about his father during the first few weeks of class. When I finally asked him privately after class, having recognised his name, he answered that he just wanted to live the normal life of an 18- year-old."
Stevens told the Weekly that the AUC community "was shocked by the news of [Qassam's] arrest, since it appeared that he was arrested only for being someone's son." Asked if the boy she knew seemed likely to be involved in an attack on the military, Stevens replied that since Qassam was not yet at AUC in March 2003, she had "no idea about his activities then, except to say that this would not seem to be in his charater."
Qassam's friend Ahmed Abdullah told the Weekly that throughout the first semester, Qassam "didn't talk about Palestine or its political conditions. He talked about his country, as any ordinary foreign student talks about his country."
While the student body at AUC is known to be quite politicised about regional politics, Qassam was not a member of any political organisations and, says Abdullah, "never made any problems with political activities". Save a presentation he gave on Palestine that focussed on the country, its history and occupation, Qassam did not make any effort to engage the political debate about Israel and Palestine. Stevens says the presentation "took a matter-of-fact position -- definitely not a firebrand or violent position".
Abdullah says that when he had asked Qassam if it would be a problem to go back to Palestine, he seemed confident. "He said that he had no problems with the Israeli government and that he was only going to visit his family," said Abdullah.
Because she is a lawyer and Ofer prison sits on the outskirts of Ramallah, Fadwa says she has been able to visit Qassam -- "the opposite of the case with Marwan", she notes. "I haven't been able to see him as a lawyer or as his wife. If I want to go to him, I need permission to enter the area, and I have not been given the permission."
Of Qassam, Fadwa insists "his morale is good". "He knows that this arrest has nothing to do with him. He knows this and understands the situation. He told me not to worry -- that he wanted me to be strong and to understand that this situation is something we share as a family. I was pleased to see that my son, at 18, can understand things this way."
Fadwa contends that Israeli security was waiting for the first of Marwan's children to turn 18 before bringing charges against him so that they can treat him as an adult. Asked if she thinks there is reason for concern about her other children -- Ruba, 17, Sharaf, 15, and Arab, 13 -- she says that naturally, they are afraid. "They say, 'When we are 18, they'll take us, like Qassam'. The other children are looking at the future, when they go to university, and they're scared. Suddenly there will be another 'witness' who says he saw them do something. These are very hard conditions for them. Their father and their brother are in prison -- they're miserable."
Qassam was due to appear in court today, when it would be determined if he will be released or tried. Asked if she thought there was a good chance Qassam would be released, Fadwa replied, "Yes, there's a good chance. If there is real law, he will be released on Thursday. If the Israelis want to make this political, like Marwan, then it will be a political trial."
