The first "Miss Palestine" contestant in the Miss Universe pageant is reportedly connected to the son of an imprisoned Palestinian terror leader — revelations that raise fresh questions about her candidacy, her background, and her use of the global competition as a political platform.
Nadeen Ayoub, who says she is a 27-year-old U.S. and Canadian citizen living in Dubai — born in the United States to Palestinian parents — is competing this week for the Miss Palestine title.
Palestine is not recognized by the United States or Israel as reflecting a sovereign state.
But newly resurfaced social media posts, photographs, and testimonies show Ayoub was previously married to Sharaf Barghouti, son of imprisoned Fatah commander Marwan Barghouti, who is serving five life sentences in Israel for orchestrating attacks in the Second Intifada.
According to analysis by the New York Post, Ayoub wed Sharaf in 2016 and later welcomed a son in 2019 named Marwan, seemingly honoring his paternal grandfather, a convicted terrorist.
Family members confirmed the marriage but reportedly declined to comment on whether the couple remain together.
Many online traces of the relationship — including photos of Ayoub appearing with Barghouti's wife, Fadwa — have since been removed.
Ayoub once openly tagged Sharaf on now-deleted Instagram accounts, referring to him as her "groom-to-be." She also taught fitness classes at IQ Fitness, a Ramallah gym owned by another Barghouti son, Qassam, who was charged with attempted murder and later acquitted.
Social media posts from the gym even identified her as "Nadeen Barghouti."
The revelations compound growing scrutiny of Ayoub's path to the Miss Universe stage. No public record exists of a Miss Palestine pageant or competing finalists, and Ayoub herself operates the Dubai-based organization that crowned her.
Under Miss Universe rules, private entities may buy national franchise rights — effectively allowing Ayoub to confer the title upon herself.
There are also questions about her eligibility. Until 2023, Miss Universe and Miss Earth pageant rules barred contestants who had been married or had children — criteria that would have disqualified Ayoub when she entered Miss Earth in 2022, where she was second runner-up.
Ayoub has drawn further attention for donning a "burkini" as an "empowering" choice this week, despite previously posing in revealing swimsuits for other competitions.
She has openly described her Miss Universe bid as a political opportunity, claiming it is her responsibility to speak about conditions in the Gaza Strip.
"Miss Universe is a huge platform, and there's a big responsibility in speaking out about what's happening in the Gaza," Ayoub told The National, a newspaper in the United Arab Emirates.
"No one should be silent about the injustice that's happening. This is the time when Palestine needs to be represented on all platforms everywhere."
Her national costume, unveiled Tuesday, featured Jerusalem's al-Aqsa Mosque — namesake of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, founded by her father-in-law — but omitted Jewish holy sites.
Former Israeli Knesset member Ruth Wasserman Lande told the Post that Ayoub's participation in the pageant is a "tactic" used to promote Islamic ideals worldwide.
"It's already a political statement" to compete as Miss Palestine, Wasserman Lande said. "This was very much a tactic in the Islamic Revolution, and it's been happening for years — the infiltration of Islamist ideas, which have nothing to do at all with liberalism, into liberal culture."
"Beauty contestants is not an Islamic idea, it's not a Palestinian idea," she added. "On the contrary, and what they're doing is taking messaging, ideas, and so on from the cultural world of young liberal minds and using it."
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