Short answer: No. Omar Barghouti is a Palestinian activist, born in Qatar in 1964, who co-founded the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement in 2005 and helped launch the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) in 2004. He calls Israel an apartheid state, opposes a two-state solution in favor of a single state, and has spent two decades organizing international boycotts against Israel. He lives in Israel on permanent residency obtained through his marriage to an Arab Israeli citizen, which Israeli officials moved to revoke in 2019, after separately denying him a travel document in 2016. His residence in Israel does not indicate support for the country. As of August 2026, this remains his position.
What Omar Barghouti has actually said and done
April 2004: Barghouti was a founding committee member of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), launched by Palestinian academics in Ramallah, according to Wikipedia's entry on PACBI, a founding role also documented on the BDS movement's own site.
July 2005: Barghouti co-founded the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which calls for economic, cultural and academic boycotts of Israel until it meets a set of Palestinian demands, per Wikipedia's biography of Barghouti. Those demands include a formulation that JNS reports Barghouti himself has said would lead to the end of Israel as a Jewish state, as covered in JNS's reporting on the BDS founder's stated goal.
May 2016: Israeli authorities effectively imposed a travel ban on Barghouti by repeatedly refusing to renew his Israeli travel document, restricting his ability to leave and re-enter the country, according to Middle East Eye.
March 2017: Barghouti was arrested by Israeli authorities on suspicion of tax evasion involving roughly $700,000. As of reporting in 2021, no charges had been filed, per Wikipedia.
2018: Barghouti said he was prevented by Israeli travel restrictions from accompanying his mother to Jordan for cancer surgery, as he described in The Electronic Intifada.
October 6, 2019: Israeli Interior Minister Aryeh Deri directed the Population and Immigration Authority to prepare a legal opinion for stripping Barghouti of his Israeli permanent residency status, saying "This is a man who does everything to harm the country," reported the Times of Israel. The move relied on a 2018 legal amendment allowing residency revocation for a serious breach of trust.
2017: Barghouti received the Gandhi Peace Award, presented at Yale University; Yale itself publicly distanced its name from the award ceremony given his BDS advocacy, according to Wikipedia.
March 2026: Barghouti remained active in BDS advocacy, speaking at the People's Congress for The Hague Group about what he framed as Palestine's role as a testing ground for global movements against Israeli policy, per Progressive International.
The residency question, explained
Barghouti is not simply a critic of specific Israeli policies. He is the architect of the modern movement to isolate Israel economically, academically and culturally. His personal presence in Israel, where he lives in Acre on permanent residency gained through marriage to an Arab Israeli citizen, and where he earned graduate degrees, including a philosophy master's and doctoral studies, at Tel Aviv University, does not reflect support for the state. Israeli officials have treated that residency as an anomaly rather than any sign of loyalty: the Interior Ministry tried in 2016 to restrict his travel and in 2019 moved to revoke his residency outright over his BDS work, and he has separately faced a tax evasion investigation that produced no charges as of the most recent reporting available. Barghouti's own stated position is that Israel operates a system of "legalised discrimination" that meets the international legal definition of apartheid, and he advocates for a single state in place of Israel and the Palestinian territories, arguing the two-state framework is unworkable and unjust. He remains an active BDS spokesperson through at least early 2026.
The bottom line
Omar Barghouti does not support Israel. He is the co-founder of the BDS movement and calls Israel an apartheid state that should be replaced with a single state. Israeli officials have twice moved to strip him of residency or block his travel precisely because of that activism. There is no ambiguity in the record: he built the primary global movement organized against Israel, and his residency and education in the country are the product of his marriage and a long legal fight, not an endorsement of the state.
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Last updated August 2026. We update these profiles as the record changes.
