After an absence of 21 years in the occupation prisons, Marwan Barghouti is the most present and brilliant

When my memory goes back nearly forty years, I remember that energetic young man, Marwan Al-Barghouti, as he was released from the Israeli occupation prisons a few days ago, and immediately, like the rest of the released prisoners, he joined Bir Zeit University, and from here my story with Marwan began.

At the time, I was a student at An-Najah National University in Nablus, and like many students, I was a frequent visitor to prisons and their damp cells, because universities were par excellence incubators of national action against the occupation, so it is not surprising that students, especially activists, get to know each other. Zeit I got to know Brother Marwan, Samir Sbeihat, and Nayef Sweitat. This trio used to associate with each other, with a large number of young people leading the university, but these three were the most prominent among their colleagues.

At that time, the price of belonging to the movement and the struggle in its ranks was costly, and it was not just a picnic, either arrest or martyrdom, or persecution and then expulsion from Palestine, and Marwan Al-Barghouti paid these prices with his life, flesh and blood, so he was arrested, expelled and deported.

Perhaps the most important thing that distinguished Marwan from all of us is his superior dynamism, and his ability to adapt to any reality he lives in, as if he was born in it. And he was never calm during his leadership of students at the university, or during his deportation outside Palestine, where he received me in Jordan after my deportation and my relationship with him was greatly strengthened, hardly a single day passed without us meeting either in his warm home, or in the circles of the Palestine Liberation Organization in Jordan Marwan was a burning flame that would not be extinguished, working in all directions, meeting those coming from the occupied territories, providing them with everything they needed, listening to them, and conveying their concerns to the leadership, as he was a member of the Revolutionary Council of the Fatah movement, and he was the most loyal to his colleagues of experience and struggle, not forgetting any of them. He was always optimistic, and the smile did not leave him, but he was serious about his work and his many and exciting meetings that only he could do.

And when we returned to Palestine, where he preceded me by nearly two years, I found his name shining in the sky of the homeland, as Secretary of the Supreme Movement Committee of the Fatah movement, visiting the regions of the movement and inspecting the sites and reassuring the progress of work with the strength of the feat leader. Despite his absolute belief in peace, the occupation's denial of the agreements signed with him, and his failure to implement them, made Marwan ably lead the Al-Aqsa Intifada. Which made him a target for the occupation forces, as the assassination attempts failed, so he was arrested again in order to build there, in the darkness of the prisons, an academy to graduate batches of prisoners with bachelor's, master's and doctorate degrees.

Marwan Al-Barghouti has not been absent from the Palestinian political scene for a single moment, despite the passage of twenty-one years since his arrest.

How much we need you among us, beloved brother, loyal friend, and inspiring leader, to evaluate the experience and start again.