View from a barber shop where Saddam, Arafat, and Marwan Barghouti look on

View from a Barber Shop: While in the West Bank city of Ramallah Wednesday, I passed a barber shop downstairs from the headquarters of the campaign to free Palestinian Marwan Barghouti, who’s in an Israeli prison.

On the walls were pictures of Saddam Hussein, deceased PLO leader Yasser Arafat, and Mr. Barghouti. Barber Aloush Juweibri said that they were leaders of the Arab and Islamic world. Barghouti was among them, he said, “because he’s a man of the street, one of the simple people, like us.”

“I hope he will reunite the Palestinians,” he said.  But can’t any of the current leaders do that? “Too difficult a question to answer,”  he said before going back to buzzcutting the back of a customer’s head.

For more about Barghouti, who may be released as part of a potential truce deal, read today's story.