Jailed Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti has called for mass rallies in September in support of a diplomatic bid to gain UN membership for a state of Palestine, news agencies reported Wednesday.

Barghouti, a figure widely respected among many Palestinians, said taking the statehood quest to the United Nations was part of a new strategy that would open the door to “peaceful, popular resistance,” the Associated Press reported.

Barghouti was convicted of murder for his role in attacks on Israelis during the Second Intifada and was sentenced to life in jail by Israel in 2004.

“I call on our people in the homeland and in the diaspora to go out in a peaceful, million-man march during the week of voting in the United Nations in September,” Barghouti said in a statement written from his jail cell in Israel and published in several newspapers.

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