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Hebrew-language Channel 7 revealed on Thursday evening that the Israeli far-right Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, visited the leader of the Fatah movement, prisoner Marwan Barghouti, inside his prison cell in Ganot, and made direct death threats to him, saying: “Whoever kills our children or women, we will erase him.” You will not defeat us.”
The incident provoked angry Palestinian reactions. The Palestinian Prisoners’ Information Office said in a statement that Ben Gvir’s assault on Barghouti inside his cell “reveals the mentality of revenge and incitement that drives the Israeli prison system.”
Palestinian Deputy President Hussein Al-Sheikh described Ben Gvir’s threat as “the height of psychological, moral and physical terrorism practised against prisoners,” adding that what happened was “an unprecedented breakdown in the occupation’s policy towards Palestinian prisoners and a violation of international and humanitarian conventions.”
Barghouti, who has been serving five life sentences in Israeli prisons since 2002, is one of Fatah’s most prominent leaders and a key symbol of the Palestinian prisoners’ movement.
READ: Israel’s Ben Gvir denies hunger in Gaza, says he supports starving Hamas
