People
BARGHOUTHI, Mustafa -- Presidential Candidate 2005
Born in Jerusalem to a Palestinian family from Deir Ghassaneh village in the Ramallah district, Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi is director of the Health Development Information and Policy Institute, which was founded by his colleagues and himself in 1989. He is a grassroots human rights campaigner, struggling for Palestinians' social, medical, and educational needs. Along with the late Dr. Edward Said and others, he established the Palestinian National Initiative in 2002, which aimed to build democracy in Palestine and worked towards reform, the cause of Palestiniain liberation, and the right of return.
Dr. Barghouthi has run his campaign on a promise not to sell out the rights of Palestinians and has distinguished himself from his rival Mahmoud Abbas by demanding that the release of Palestinian prisoners in Israel be a precondition for negotiations, rather than a prize of negotiations. Though largely ignored by the Western press, Dr. Barghouthi's presidential campaign gained attention as he has been detained by Israeli soldiers several times, and his entourage endured a beating by Israeli soldiers in early December.
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| Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi gets held up by Israeli soldiers while on the campaign trail. |
On 4 December 2004, Barghouthi was detained at a checkpoint in the Salfit region for two hours. On December 6, he was surrounded by Israeli soldiers in Hebron's Old City and denied access to the Old City at gunpoint. Soldiers claimed he was an ordinary Palestinian and thus had no right to enter. On 9 December, he and five companions were stopped at Sanour checkpoint near Jenin, physically and verbally assaulted by Israeli soldiers, and forced to stay in uncomfortable positions on the ground in the cold for more than one hour. On the night of December 24, twenty volunteers for Dr. Barghouthi's campaign were detained by Israeli occupation forces in Hebron on al-Salaam Street for 2.5 hours in the rain, and their IDs were taken. They were verbally abused and humiliated. On the night of December 25 in Yatta, two volunteers for Dr. Barghouthi's campaign were detained for two hours and physically assaulted by Israeli occupation forces. On 26 December in East Jerusalem, Israeli policemen removed the only billboard that contained Dr. Barghouthi's presidential election materials and detained the campaign advertisement manager for interrogation. On 27 December, Dr. Barghouthi was detained for three hours in Jerusalem. On 30 December 2004, 17-year-old Riziq Ziad Musleh left his home in the Tel al-Sultan Refugee Camp near the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah to post election posters on a wall near his home for Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi's presidential campaign. Without any warning or incident, he was fatally shot in his right side from the direction of the Rafah Yam Israeli settlement. On 5 January, following campaigning in Gaza, Dr. Barghouthi was refused exit from the Gaza Strip by Israel.
Opinion & Analysis
Palestinian Elections - Charting the Palestinian Future, Haithem El-Zabri, AlAqsaIntifada.org (5 January 2005)
Abbas' rival strikes confident note, Khalid Amayreh, Al-Jazeera (25 December 2004)
Israeli movement restrictions threaten Palestinian democratic elections, Maureen Clare Murphy (9 December 2004)
Websites
Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi campaign website - English & Arabic
Health Development Information and Policy Institute
Palestinian National Initiative
Related Links
BY TOPIC: Palestinian Elections
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