Dr Mustafa Barghouti, a member of the Palestinian Parliament, will be in London and Liverpool this week, addressing MPs, peers, trade unionists and Palestine Solidarity Campaign activists.
Dr Barghouti’s visit has been arranged by PSC, to directly inform decision makers about the current situation in occupied Palestine and to press the case for sanctions on Israel.
On Tuesday 9th September, Dr Barghouti will brief PSC activists taking part in the National Lobby of Parliament for Palestine. Activists will then be equipped with the most current information on the situation in the West Bank and Gaza, before going on to meet their MPs and pass on that information.
In the evening of 9th September, Dr Barghouti will be in Liverpool, where he will speak at PSC’s fringe meeting at the TUC conference to an audience of trade unionists. The meeting is headlined, ‘Stand up for Palestine – Sanctions Now!’
Other speakers include Len McCluskey, General Secretary of UNITE the Union, Christine Blower, General Secretary of the National Union of Teachers, Billy Hayes, General Secretary of the Communication Workers Union,Owen Tudor, TUC Head of European Union and International Relations, and Hugh Lanning, Chair of PSC.
Back in London on Wednesday 10th September, Dr Barghouti will address a meeting of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Palestine, which includes MPs and peers.
Dr Barghouti is General Secretary of the Palestine National Initiative, a political party which advocates struggle through peaceful means. He is also a member of the PLO Central Council and was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010.
Normally based in the West Bank, Dr Barghouti was in Gaza during the summer assault. He sent this recorded message from Gaza to the outside world: https://palestinecampaign.org/mustafa-barghouti-message-protestors/
And in this interview with PSC, Dr Barghouti makes the case for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) on Israel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVMlU-I47w4 (2010)
In an interview in 2005, Dr Barghouti said he was ‘reshaped’ by the 1967 war, which led to the occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza.
He said: ‘I felt a huge amount of responsibility. My childhood ended then. We were now under occupation. It was the beginning of a life mission: how do we become free? The feeling of injustice was very strong. Though still a child, I felt the whole world sitting on my shoulders…. Some gave in to defeatism—Nasser had it wrong, it was better to adopt a pro-American stance—but our position was: no, we have to resist, but in a stronger, better way. I’ve never felt I was fighting for the liberation of the Palestinian people on purely nationalistic grounds, one people against another. It was a fight against oppression, against occupation.’