Senior Hamas terrorist Nail Barghouti, the longest-serving Palestinian security prisoner behind bars in Israel, recently gave an interview from prison to the Lebanon-based Al-Akhbar newspaper, which named him "man of the year for 2018."
Middle East expert Yoni Ben-Menachem, a research fellow at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, published a report on the interview on Monday on the center's official website.
According to Ben-Menachem, Barghouti told Al-Akhbar via telephone from the prison: "We will never recognize Israel. The occupation only wants to expel us from Palestine. We will not accept any proposal other than the return of our families to all of occupied Palestine."
Al-Akhbar is affiliated with the Lebanese terrorist organization Hezbollah.
A statement by the Israel Prison Service said it was unaware that Barghouti had given the interview and that prisoners were not allowed to meet or speak with reporters. He was subsequently moved to moved to solitary confinement.
It should be noted that Barghouti was released in the Gilad Schalit prisoner exchange in 2011, after being sentenced to life in prison for murdering bus driver Mordechai Yekuel in 1978.
In 2014, however, following the abduction and murder of three Israeli teenagers in Judea and Samaria, he was re-arrested along with dozens of other Hamas terrorists who were alleged to have violated the terms of their release under the Schalit deal.
An Israeli court ruled he must serve the remainder of his life sentence.
Barghouti is a relative of Fatah arch-terrorist Marwan Barghouti, who is also serving consecutive life sentences in Israeli prison.
