Living in Jordan, he founded the central organ of the Jordanian Communist Partyal-Jamahir (The Masses) and joined the General Union of Palestinian Students (GUPS). In 1957 the paper was closed by Jordanian authorities, and Barghouti was incarcerated the Al-Jaffar prison. When freed in 1965, he was refused a journalist license by the Jordanian government, but continued to write under an assumed name. After 1967 he opposed the right of king Hussein of Jordan to speak on behalf of Palestinians.[citation needed]
In 1974 he returned to the West Bank via family reunification, and became a figure of the Jordanian Communist Party there. He founded the newspaper al-Fajr (Dawn), which he edited from 1975 to 1977. In February 1977 there was a political rift between him and Fatah, and Barghouti left his editorship of al-Fajr. In February 1978 he founded the newspaper al-Tali'a (The Vanguard) in Jerusalem.[citation needed]
Barghouti was put in house arrest by the Israelis from August 1980 – 1982. In 1982 the JCP branches in the West Bank were converted into the Palestinian Communist Party. Barghouti became the General Secretary of PCP.[citation needed]
