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He and others point out that Israel's interests are also served by Khader's imprisonment, if only because he proved himself a formidable and hard-line advocate for the rights of Palestinian refugees. Though he is best known for his criticism of Arafat, Khader is by no means a moderate. He views as inviolate the concept that all Palestinian refugees must win the right to return to their native villages inside Israel in any eventual peace settlement.

 
With a diaspora of more than 4 million registered Palestinian refugees spread across camps in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank and Gaza, any such return is widely seen within Israel as a recipe for destruction of the Jewish state. And, as such, a deal-breaker.

 

Khader's credentials as a populist leader were sealed in the first intifada, when he was jailed 23 times. Between incarcerations, he earned a double major in business administration and political science from An-Najah University.

 
In 1988, he became the first Palestinian activist deported from the territories by Israel. In exile, he found his way to Tunis and, for a time, became one of Arafat's most favoured young leaders.
The eventual falling out between the two men might not have been exclusively about Khader's accusations of corruption, according to one highly placed Western diplomatic source in Ramallah.
"Khader wasn't given any particularly high position when Arafat and the Palestinian Authority arrived in the territories on the heels of the (1993) Oslo peace accord," the diplomat said.

"Once it became clear he was out of the loop, that's when the criticisms began. And they never stopped. They just got louder.
"He made so many people angry over the years, it could be a reason why everyone is silent now. He had such a big mouth, maybe there are no friends left to speak on his behalf."
In his home camp of Balata, however, Khader's supporters say the Palestinian silence since his arrest amounts to censorship. Though the PA-controlled Palestinian press continues to cast Barghouti as a heroic prisoner, journalists are forbidden from writing a word about Khader.
"They are squashing Hussam like a bug to shut him up," says Khader's brother, Ghassan.

"All of the Palestinian reporters know he is like poison for them. They have no freedom. Hussam is taboo." Khader's supporters say the chill around his name is consistent with similar threats he received in recent years.

 
They point to a forged August, 2001, leaflet purporting to be from Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, which accused Khader of working as a collaborator with Israeli intelligence.

The day after the bogus handbill appeared throughout Balata, a second handbill, this time with the mark and logo of the real Al-Aqsa, made the rounds through the camp, denouncing the previous leaflet as a fake.

And the summer before his arrest, the Star was witness to an overt attempt at muzzling Khader in the middle of an interview at his Nablus home.  Khader was in the midst of comparing the PA to George Orwell's Animal Farm. Arafat, he said, was Napoleon, "the pig."

 

But Khader was interrupted in mid-rant by an emissary from Arafat and furtive whispers in Arabic ensued. When the messenger left, Khader announced he had just been warned against speaking to foreign journalists. "And I don't care," he laughed, before resuming his story.  But with the looming invasion of Iraq overshadowing his arrest, and the shroud of Israeli military court cloaking its legal aftermath, Khader's supporters know they are fighting an uphill battle just to be heard.

"Hussam got buried by the war," says Ghassan Khader. "We just haven't been able to make enough noise for him.  "The Barghouti family, they are big, with 15 villages to their name. They made the noise for Marwan." In fact, Khader's wife Nadwa was born a Barghouti. But for the past year, her efforts have been preoccupied with caring for their three children — Amani, 12, Amira, 9, and Ahmed, 6.

The eldest of the three seems older than her years. When asked what she thinks of her father's arrest, Amani responded with prideful determination.
"He always speaks his mind," she said. "He always speaks the truth. Not many people have this kind of courage. I am proud of him."