U2 frontman and activist Bono has publicly backed a campaign calling for the release of Marwan Barghouti from an Israeli jail.
Barghouti has been serving multiple life sentences since 2002 for orchestrating murderous terrorist attacks against Israelis.
He is widely believed to have planned the Second Intifada, which claimed thousands of Israeli lives from 2000 to 2005. Barghouti has continued inciting terrorism from his jail cell.
Despite his convictions, he is viewed by many Palestinian Arabs as a unifying figure and potential future leader.
In a personal essay published in The Atlantic, Bono described Barghouti as “a leader of vision, one with credibility among his own people, and among his adversaries."
Bono further wrote that there were “grave concerns about the legitimacy of his trial - the Inter-Parliamentary Union found that it breached international laws - and a growing outcry about the horrific conditions of his captivity: reports of beatings, starvation, and long stretches in solitary confinement go back many years."
“He might be the only man who could credibly claim to represent a broad coalition of Palestinians, who could speak for them at a negotiating table and within their own jagged borders," Bono claimed in his essay.
Barghouti, who is a senior member of Fatah, was reportedly among the terrorist prisoners Hamas sought to have released as part of the US-brokered Gaza ceasefire deal which went into effect in October, but was removed from the list at Israel’s insistence.
Bono, who paid tribute to the victims of the Hamas invasion of Israel on October 7, 2023, two days after the massacre, has been more critical of Israel in recent months.
In May 2025, during the Ivor Novello Awards, he called for Hamas to release hostages and "stop the war" but also called on Israel to be "released from Benjamin Netanyahu and far-right fundamentalists."
In August 2025, U2 released individual and joint statements on their website condemning the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and describing Israel's actions as "disproportionate," "brutal," and involving "uncharted territory".
In his statement, Bono emphasized separating the Israeli government and people from what he described as Netanyahu's "far-right" leadership, accused Israel of using starvation as a weapon in the war (while also acknowledging that Hamas does the same), condemned what he called the "moral failure" of actions causing mass civilian suffering, while also reiterating support for Israel's existence and a two-state solution.