A video widely circulated on Friday shows Israel’s far-right national security minister berating a Palestinian leader inside a prison, saying anyone who acts against the country will be “wiped out”.
Marwan Barghouti is serving five life sentences after being convicted of involvement in attacks at the height of the Palestinian uprising, or intifada, in the early 2000s. Polls consistently show he is the most popular Palestinian leader. He has rarely been seen since his arrest more than two decades ago.
It was unclear when the video was taken, but it shows national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, known for staging provocative encounters with Palestinians, telling Barghouti that he will “not win”.
Jailed Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti seen in rare footage as Israel’s Ben Gvir storms cell to threaten him https://t.co/lGMm9dZ4hj
— The National (@TheNationalNews) August 15, 2025
“Anyone who murders children, who murders women, we will wipe them out,” Ben-Gvir said.
Ben-Gvir’s spokesperson confirmed the visit and the video’s authenticity, but denied that the minister was threatening Barghouti.
Barghouti, now in his mid-sixties, was a senior leader in President Mahmoud Abbas’ secular Fatah movement during the intifada. Many Palestinians see him as a natural successor to the ageing and unpopular leader of the Palestinian Authority, which administers parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Israel considers him a terrorist and has shown no sign it would release him. Hamas has demanded his release in exchange for hostages taken in the attack in October 2023 that triggered the war in the Gaza Strip.
In a Facebook post, Barghouti’s wife, Fadwa, said she couldn’t recognise her husband, who appeared frail in the video. Still, she said after watching the video, he remained connected to the Palestinian people.
“Perhaps a part of me does not want to acknowledge everything that your face and body shows, and what you and the prisoners have been through,” she wrote.
Israeli officials say they have reduced the conditions under which Palestinians are held to the bare minimum allowed under Israeli and international law. Many detainees released as part of a ceasefire in Gaza earlier this year appeared gaunt and ill, and some were taken for immediate medical treatment.
Meanwhile, the UN human rights office said an Israeli plan to build thousands of new homes between an Israeli settlement in the West Bank and East Jerusalem was illegal under international law, and would put nearby Palestinians at risk of forced eviction, which it described as a war crime.
Israeli far-right minister Bezalel Smotrich has vowed to press on with a long-delayed settlement project, saying the move would “bury” the idea of a Palestinian state.
A UN rights office spokesperson said the plan would break the West Bank into isolated enclaves and that it was “a war crime for an occupying power to transfer its own civilian population into the territory it occupies”.
About 700,000 Israeli settlers live among 2.7 million Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Israel annexed East Jerusalem in 1980, a move not recognised by most countries, but it has not formally extended sovereignty over the West Bank.
Most world powers say settlement expansion erodes the viability of a two-state solution by breaking up territory the Palestinians seek as part of a future independent state.
The two-state plan envisages a Palestinian state in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza, existing side by side with Israel, which captured all three territories in the 1967 Middle East war.
Israel cites historical and biblical ties to the area and says the settlements provide strategic depth and security and that the West Bank is “disputed” not “occupied”.
