Abdullah Ghaleb Al-Barghouti is one of the most formidable resistance leaders of our time. Born and raised in Kuwait in 1972, he spent just a total of 3 years of his life with the resistance, but those 3 years changed the face of the resistance as we know it.
Before his return to Palestine, he became fluent in Korean and English, worked in Korea, and became an engineering expert, earning black belts in judo and taekwondo on his path to Palestine.
In Kuwait, Abdullah studied hard, but he was bullied by his peers and teachers. He took up judo to defend himself, soon earning his black belt. His teacher even taught him moves that could kill, telling him not to use them in practice. He told him, “I taught you these moves to use against the zionists, because you are Palestinian.”
At this stage, Abdullah barely considered himself Palestinian, having been raised in Kuwait and never seeing his land. With his judo teacher’s comment, and seeing his family’s pride at the martyrdom of his two cousins in Palestine, a switch flipped inside Abdullah, who found renewed loyalty to his homeland and cause.
With the outbreak of the First Gulf War, Abdullah was jailed for a month for resisting American forces. He soon settled in Jordan with his family, where Abdullah opened a mechanic shop.
After accumulating a $5000 debt after opening the shop, he travelled to South Korea a year later to continue his education in order to find a job to pay it off. He spent days without food, water, or rest. He pleaded to work in a factory, working a job that paid 8 times more what he would have made in Jordan. In a few months, he paid off his debt.
In the same room of the factory where he slept, a lone computer sat in the corner. He watched it daily until he was able to obtain the password. With internet access, he taught himself Korean and hacked networks in order to make international phone calls for free. With his limited access, he learned to create bombs and rockets, which he would experiment with in the Korean forest.
In Korea, Abdullah was not able to finish his degree, but he learned much electrical engineering, including the design and manufacture of satellite receivers. He planned to sell vehicles in Jordan upon his return, all while continuing to practice martial arts. At this time, he picked up taekwondo on top of judo.
In 1988, protests broke out in South Korea after US Forces assaulted a Korean girl. Abdullah joined the protests, and was arrested while throwing Molotov cocktails. After 5 years in Korea, he was forced to return to Amman with his Korean wife, where he worked as an electronic engineer.
Not long passed until Abdullah and his wife divorced due to her choice not to bear children. Abdullah became a new man after this moment. One relative living in Spain visited him at the time, witnessing a number of items from his life in Korea in his room; she threw them out without his knowledge, replacing them with Palestinian cultural items, turning it into a Palestinian home.
Soon after, Abdullah returned to Beit Rima in Ramallah, Palestine on a visitation permit due to his lack of Palestinian ID.
Abdullah was shocked by what he saw. His homeland was littered with zionist flags, with collaborators and spies. He muttered in Korean: “I swear that I will be the reason this whole land is liberated.” Fortunately, he got married, and had three children, Safaa, Tala and Osama. But, Abdullah nearly forgot the promise that he made to himself while working on his own life and business.
Then, the second intifada exploded. He knew that his experience from outside would prove to be a true hidden talent.
On one of these days, a road was blocked because two bus drivers were fighting. They blasphemed in Abdullah’s eyes, so Abdullah grabbed one and beat him until he broke his face, then beat the second bus driver. He told the passengers, “Whoever insults God in front of me is on an appointment with death. Whoever doesn’t like it, my name is Abdullah Al-Barghouti, and I live in Deir Ghassan.” An old, astonished man approached him, thanking him and inviting him for dinner. Abdullah wanted to leave before the old man stopped him: “My son, don’t forget about the trust I promised you.” He guided him to a spot in the ground and told him to dig into it. There, he found a suitcase, which he vowed to protect.
It wasn’t any suitcase. It was the suitcase of the Engineer that came before him, the suitcase of martyr Yahya Ayyash, whose operations and explosives shook the core of the entity. Yahya left the suitcase with the man as he was pursued by the IOF before his martyrdom. “Finish the path of Yahya Ayyash, my son.”
Abdullah quietly hacked zionist websites, networks, and surveillance systems after this moment. He planned and waited, always patient.
One day, he heard on the news of an IOF assassination of a resistance leader with a remotely-detonated telephone explosive. Abdullah vowed to create the same device. He took out Yahya’s suitcase, which he had never opened. Inside, he found two explosives. He dismantled them, reverse engineered them, and built the same explosive anew after three failed trials. To test it, he placed it on the ears of the neighborhood donkey named “Sharon’s Donkey.” He called the donkey, heard his bray on the line, and set off the powerful explosive.
It worked very well. Abdullah was proud of what he achieved without any help and continued to manufacture explosives alone.
Abdullah watched the security cameras he hacked, noticing his cousin Bilal masked with a kuffiyeh, writing resistance slogans on walls with a group of youth. He was certain that his cousin was the way into the resistance.
In Palestine, no one knew of his engineering expertise. On a day in May, Abdullah told his cousin Bilal that he wanted to show him something. He took him to a quiet area near Beit Rima and detonated one of his very small explosives. Bilal was shocked by the explosion it created. “You can do that and didn’t tell us?!,” Bilal shouted. Bilal ran to Nablus to tell commander Ayman Halawa of the Al-Qassam Brigades of his cousin’s abilities, returning to Abdullah to ask him to join the Al-Qassam Brigades immediately.
From then on, Abdullah produced everything from devices to detonators in his private laboratory in his town. From here, the Engineer orchestrated operations that killed 67 zionist settlers and wounded over 500, including the “Sbarro” operation. Abdullah even trained resistance fighters in taekwondo and judo in courses.
One day, while searching for an apartment with a fake ID, he was noticed by zionist agent who owned a real estate office. The agent didn’t recognize him by name, but by his facial features and a camera in the office. At the next apartment showing, a trap was set up to abduct Abdullah.
On this morning 21 years ago, March 5th 2003, he planned to take his daughter Tala to the doctor for treatment before his apartment appointment. Since all his friends were wanted by the occupation and his wife was sick, he had to go by himself to treat her. The doctor was late, so he was forced to take Tala with him to the appointment.
As soon as he arrived at the parking lot with his daughter Tala in his arms, two police dogs attacked him, so he threw his daughter into the car and locked it, trying to fend them off. One of them started biting his leg and the other his winter jacket. He was able to get rid of the dogs, but when he looked up, a group of occupation soldiers surrounded him, pointing their machine guns at him, threw him to the ground, handcuffed him, and took him to a car nearby.
His interrogation alone lasted 5 entire months with intense torture. In November, his sentence was announced: 67 life sentences plus 5,200 years, the longest sentence in history.
He wrote of his torture:
“Handcuffed and shackled, suspended…from the ceiling of the cell at the elbow,
Dawn of bullets without a rising sun… without hope, and eyes that weep.
Occupation imposes, and inverts logic… a question and interrogation, then an inquiry.
My body aches and their whips are like fire… bones break and bones are crushed.
My sea is stormy and my thoughts drown… my heart aches, and I feel suffocated.
I was captured and tortured, yet the pawn did not fall… my soul ascended in agony to the Creator.
No, my soul did not ascend to the heavens… I did not become a martyr, and still, I stare at the interrogator.”
In 2015, he was interviewed with a smuggled phone. He urged Hamas not to rush on a prisoner exchange deal then. “We are patient,” he said, “and will continue to be so even if we’d be released in a thousand years. The prisoners are ready to be patient. Steadfast. Steadfast.” He was punished with solitary confinement, which he protested with a hunger strike.
From prison, he resists with the pen, having written 12 books, including a novel, the Prince of Shadows, about his life. It begins with a letter to his daughter Tala, who witnessed the moment of his arrest. He asks, “Who are you? and why are you?”
In just three years, Abdullah changed the face of the resistance. He strengthened it with his outside knowledge and enhanced it with his teachings, which continue to bear fruit today. Abdullah created not only bombs, but minds—training, developing, and evolving.
Perhaps it will be 1,000 years until Abdullah sees freedom. Or, perhaps, the legacy of Abdullah Ghaleb Al-Barghouti, marked by his profound impact on the resistance, will ignite the flame of liberation, bringing his freedom sooner than the world anticipates. All the while, Abdullah remains in his cell, waiting, steadfast, and principled.