On Saturday, a deeply emotional father-son reunion took place after 45 years, as Israel released Shadi Barghouti—one of 183 Palestinian prisoners freed in the ongoing prisoner exchange deal between Hamas and Israel.
When Fakhri Barghouti was arrested in 1978, his eldest son, Shadi, was just 11 months old, and his younger son was still in his mother’s womb.
Born in 1954 in the village of Kobar near Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, Fakhri Barghouti witnessed many Israeli atrocities against his people. Devastated by the killing of his brother by Israeli forces, he became involved in nationalist activities and was later arrested for the killing of an Israeli military intelligence officer near the village of Nabi Saleh.
He paid a heavy price for his role in the attack, missing his two sons’ childhoods and losing his parents and two brothers, who passed away while he was in jail.
“The homeland is more important than family,” he was heard saying in an interview after his release in 2011.
Meanwhile, his son, Shadi Barghouti, now 47, was arrested in 2004 and sentenced to 27 years in prison for alleged weapons possession, membership in an illegal organization, and complicity in murder. He endured much of the same pain and suffering his father had experienced for decades.
“We always dreamed that this would happen, that one day the prison director would be forced to open the gates,” Shadi said upon his release on Saturday.
“Long live the resistance!” he shouted as he shook hands with those around him, still wearing his grey prison tracksuit.
Though 71-year-old Fakhri Barghouti shed tears of joy at finally seeing his son, he was also in physical pain.
The night before the reunion, Israeli occupation forces stormed his family home in Kobar, warning him not to celebrate his son’s release. Soldiers assaulted him, breaking his ribs.
“They entered after midnight, smashed everything, took me into a side room, and beat me before leaving,” Barghouti told AFP.
Earlier, Israeli soldiers had distributed fliers in the villages of the released prisoners, warning in Arabic: “We will visit you at every celebration of the release of prisoners, whatever it may be. You have been warned.”
