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The Palestinian
Prisoners




Movement

CMTS (0)
‘The Palestinian Revolution has three predominant aims: self-determination and freedom.

from occupation, the right of return for refugees, and freedom for prisoners. Pethaps



tunique in the context of national liberation movements, the most concrete and
immediate goal of both the military aims of armed struggle and also the popular aims of
national and international mass movements is the liberation of prisoners. This is not only
because of the ubiquity of imprisonment, as incarceration in occupied Palestine affects
everyone (roughly 20% of Palestinians have been imprisoned by the Zionist occupation
at one point) and the object of incarceration is likewise collective, the criminalization of
any form of political, militant, associative, civic, or community commitment as a form of
collective punishment of resistance and collective control and displacement of an
‘occupied people. The primacy of the liberation of prisoners as a collective goal of the
Palestinian resistance is also emergent from the unity of imprisonment as a place of
political and militant development, training, and socialization — with all resistance
factions represented in an Inside history of resistance and rebellion following and in turn
leading the Outside.

Many Palestinian political prisoners and former prisoners view the national liberation
movement and the prisoners movement as one and the same, and in each iteration of
struggle — from the birth of the revolution in 1965, through various stages of
‘occupation and national resistance, two Intifadas, the failure of Oslo and the capitulation
of the PLO and Fatah, mass popular resistance committees, the Great March of Return,
non-stop war, ceaseless colonial-fascist violence and attempts to fragment the unity of
the resistance, and what may as well become the Final Intifada — demonstrates the
essentially carceral nature of the national liberation movement, both in the sense of the
universality of imprisonment as a weapon of warfare and occupation and also — since
wherever there is occupation there is rebellion — in that even the most brutal forms of
imprisonment can themselves become schools of revolt,

‘What follows is @ history of militant political action Inside and Outside occupation
prisons and more essentially in their interrelation as a major constitution of the
continuing Palestinian revolution excerpted from A History of Confinement in Palestine: Te
Prison Web (2022) by ethnographer Stéphanie Latte Abdallah,
Inside/Outside Citizenships: Carceral Generations and the Frontiers of Politica Action

‘Mahmoud Bakr Hijazi had been described to me asthe first Palestinian prisoner of war, or more
specifically of the Palestinian revolution started by Fatah in 1965, We had arranged to mect at Zyriah café,
the only spot in Ramallah before a myriad of bars, restaurants, and cafés with the same ubiquitous trendy
‘décor opened. Zyrab has remained a place of refge, where time scems suspended, where the Palestinian
_gcographic, politcal and imaginary space remains coherent, where past struggles can be told, Inside, it isa
ltele dak, the walls hung withthe owner, Tayscer Barakat’s paintings, It is decorated with antique objects
and has a Bedouin tent hanging inside. Mahmoud is ofa slender build, his face emaciated, and was aged
seventy-five years old when I met him on October 30, 2011, His family is from Jerusalem, even if he has
slwvays been refused a resceney permit in the city since he returned to the West Bank in 2007 to be close to
his relatives. He lived in Beirut in the 1970s, where he got married and had childrea, then in Yemen, and
Gaza, where he returned in 1994 when the PA was established there.

Inhis husky smoker’ voice, he tells the story of his life. He has already told it many times before, has





constructed his account, knows its bfureations, its powerful moments. As a chil, he saw no difference
beeween Jews, Christians, and Muslims. A Muslim by btth, his mother would dress him up for the Christian
celebrations, which he would attend, even going to church. When Jewish migrants began to arrive a the time
of the Holocaust, his grandmother would repeat “It's haram [Forbidden, sinful what they did to the Jews in
the war.” “We helped them, we got on well, we had a very beautiful fe. Things stayed ike that until 1948,
until the ‘Poles’ came, andthe war began, Deir Yassin happened [the Deir Yassin massacre), and we saw
them arrive in our homes in Jerusalem. Everything changed, love gave way to hate, we no longer saw roses
only thorns. We used to live near a hospital; we would see the wounded, the dead; we heard the bombs. I
wanted to do something for my country. I began to help Abd al-Kader Hussein's group, which was
defending Jerusalem. I earred arms, drinks, sandwiches, cigarettes. I no longer liked the games my father
brought me fhe was twelve), I stopped going to sehool.I began to know all about arms. I became a different
human being,

‘Them I joined the Jordanian army. [loved the sound of weapons. I couldn't go back to the school in the
‘Musrara neighborhood, People had changed; the war had made them bitter, sad. I was posted on the walls of
Jerusalem, Ie was in 1956, atthe time ofthe Suez crisis, Gamal Abdel Nasser mad his appeal to the Arab
‘world, I was atthe Damaseus Gate, listening to the Egyptian radio on a litle transistor. [ went home, took a
‘gun, and fired at Israelis in the street.

| dida’t know what Iwas doing, bu I told myself it would help Egypt. Then I rook part in Fatah's frst
rilitry operation on January 1, 1965, Before that, I wsed to say to Dr Mohamed [Yasser Arafat): “The world
bears nothing; we need to make a noise.” I used to make artisanal bombs in jerticans with alcohol and TNT.
and blow them up. On Janwary 17, 1965, 1 was coming back from Hebron in the Occupied Territory [Israel
in its borders ofthe ime] when they caught me. They wanted to know everything about the first operation
and small attacks here and there, who was behind them, who was in charge [In the very beginning, Fatah,
Founded in 1959, did not elim responsibility for its operations) I knew nothing.

‘They incarcerated me in Ramlch prison, in cell 139 where, they told me, Adolf Eichmann was imprisoned.
| remained there alone for four years and cight months. I was condemned to death by hanging on four
charges! carying arms without a license; illegally entering [stack belonging to a terorst organization;
‘murdering several Isacls. | requested that Ibe considered a prisoner of wat asi harb] and be defended by
an outside lawyer. They had hanged Eichmann, but the government was torn over the death penalty. They
judged me a second time, advising me to plead for elemeney. I didn’t recognize the State of Israel a that
time, 3 I refused, They didn't wane to recognize me as a prisoner of war but, through the intermediary of the
union of Arab lawyers, Fatah was able to send Jacques Vergés, who came to visit me in Ramleh, When I saw
him, I remembered that he was the French lawyer who had defended Djamila Bouhired {the Algerian FLN
resistance fighter] and maried her. Iwas sentenced to life, and almost poisoned in prison, but I was hopeful,






In 1968, some Fatah members kidnapped a soldier on the Lebanese border to exchange him [tabadull. There
‘were fify-four of us Fatah prisoners i Israel atthe time. They agreed to fre everyone exeept me. In the
nd, I was rleased on my own, They exchanged a man for a man on February 28, 1971. I went to Lebanon,
and he renamed to Israel. The ICRC served as the intermediary. I began a new life in Beirst. For the PLO, 1
‘vas a prisoner of war [asi], not a detainee [sjn,.”

From the Jordanian Prisons to the Generation of the Israeli Occupation (1967-1973)

Mahmoud’ story is atthe junction between two historic moments the end of Jordan's control ofthe
West Bank and Fast Jerusalem, and Egypt's control of the Gaza Stip, and the beginning ofthe Israeli
‘occupation when he was already in prison, The Israeli occupation fueled the embryonic Palestinian
resistance, Up until then i was above all the communists who opposed the position of King Hussein of|
Jordan and his refusal, in annexing the West Bank in April 1950, ro recognize the claim to Palestinian
politial ausonomy. The members ofthe Communist Party were frequently incarcerated in AL-Jafe prison on
the east bank of the River Jordan along with the Jordanian opposition, Their exchanges in detention led to
the ereation ofa unified Jordanian Communist Parry on both sides of the Jordan in 1951, In 1957, the
‘opposition and the Communist Part





were subjected to intense repression, and all partes, politcal
‘organizations, and trade unions were banned following a series of rots against the Jordanian authorities after
it removed Suleiman Nabuls's left-wing government from its functions following an attempted coup dat
led by officers close to Egypt. Martial law was declared, over 4,000 people were arrested in forty-eight hours,
political parties were banned, men were thrown into prison, and women fied from their jobs, placed under
house arrest, oF more rarely exile.

Born in the 1920s, Abu Hazem isa communist since the National Liberation League years in Palestine
He belongs to this generation of men who had already experienced British prisons in Palestine—he spent
seven yeats in al-Moseobiych, where Palestinian nationalists and Jewish Ingun and Lehi activists responsible
for terrorist attacks found themselves incarcerated together—then, above all those of Jordan, In 1957, he was
sentenced to forty-four years in prison and spent eight years in Al-Jafr until King Hussein amnestied all
politcal prisoners in 1965,

With the creation of Fatah in 1959, which took over the PLO in the late 1960s, small militant armed cells
sought coset up in the West Bank and Gaza. Acting clandestinely, chese groups were Fedayeen, some from
neighboring countries, others living in the West Bank, Jerusalem, or Gaza. They also belonged to the Arab
Nationalise Movement, then to the left-ing Palestinian partes born out of it—frstly, the PFLP, se up in
1967 and schose influence was on the Fis a the time in the Occupied TTerstories, then the DFLP, it
breakaway party formed in 1969. Both male and female, their members were young, Some improvised armed
actions and attacks. Most of these cells were rapidly shut dawn and their members arrested. Other Fedayeen
‘were captured during Israe’s military incursions into Jordan, notably in 1968 during the bate of Karameh,
‘or in southern Lebanon, The emerging Palestinian onganizations inital filed to establish bases in the West
Bank.

“With the Occupation, everyone wanted to join [tqzwam],” Majd told me, already a member of the
DELP when he was sentenced to lie in 1968, He considered himself «solder, like those belonging to the
armed wings of the politcal parties. During their trials and in detention, they asked to be recognized as





prisoners of war, which was always refused, especially as, during this period, Egypsan, Jordanian, and Syrian
prisoners of war were held in military eamps and prisons Following the 1967 War, thea the Yor Kippur War
in October 1973, The latter were mostly held in separate places and their conditions of detention were
different, just a they were the object of negotiations regarding their repatriation and exchange with theless
‘numerous Isracli pritoncts of war held in the neighboring countses, “When I was sent to prison along with
fourteen other people,” Madjid continued, “only Mahmoud Hijazi was there along with a Palestinian refugee
from Lebanon, and several other people. Rasmich Odch and PFLP women were in prison too, They were
next to us—us in one wing, them in the other. The communists arrived just after.” Majd is ftom Jerusalem;
‘he was thus incarcerated in Ramleh prison while the women were detained in the neighboring prison of Neve
Tins,

Arrests multiplied rapidly in the West Bank and Gaza, In addition to those involved in armed activities or
helping infiltrated Fedaycen, they tangeted the men and women who belonged directly or indirectly t0
politcal or union onganizations all of which were banned—such as, for example, the General Union of
Palestinian Students (GUPS)—and took part in demonstrations, distributed tracts, or helped the politcal
parties. The communists were easily identifiable due to their past inthe Jordanian prisons, From June to late
December 1969, the number of detainees rose from 2,100 to 3,000 as crackdowns followed a wave of
attacks, ‘The men were by far inthe majority. Only fifty-three women were incarcerated in August 1969
‘compared to 2,383 male prisoners.

Sentences for this membership or for militant activites were very harsh (From five to ten years) in order
to stop these partes’ influence from spreading. Contestaton indeed grew during these early yeats of the
‘Occupation, and civil and popular resistance actions spread among the youth in high sehools and Birzit
University Iewas practice to hold those who could not be convicted through lack of evidence in
administrative detention for periods that were often extremely long, years and even decades. Just after the
‘occupation, the percentage of administrative detainees was extremely high: on February 6, 1969, half of che
prisoners were held as such 221 out of 450 security inmates); and chey were 561 administrative detainces out
‘of the 2,383 prisoners in August 1969, General Gavit administrator of the Occupied Territories explained,
then, to Jacques Moreillon, representative of the ICRC, that they were not judged as there was an undesirable
risk that they be acquitted, and that it was furthermore not advisable to divulge evidence that might endanger
informers:

“Certain administrative detainees will be imprisoned for up to 25 years, or for if without a sentence
‘being handed down. The Israli authorities have their reasons for keeping these people in prison without
sending them to court but itis certain that if any evidence ie discovered concerning some of them, they will
bbe sentenced.”

Dring an interview, he concluded “Iris not impossible that we do aveay with al ils.”

(Others were exiled, usually to Jordan. Most ofthe ime in Gaza the prison was overpopulated. In May



1970, 833 people were incarcerated there, fora capacity of 460, and there were at times up to thirty or so
people sharing the same cell. Gazans were thus reyrouped in military eamps inthe Siai, for example, Nahel
‘camp in March 1971 where 169 people—all administrative detsinces—were held in the middle ofthe desert,
200 miles from Gara City, Poliial figures were isolated by putting them under house arrestin remote places,
notably Haidar Abdel Shafi, Faysal Husscini, and Ubrahim Abu Sigs in July 1969,

In December 1972, Jacques Moreilon announced possible recourse to the public denunciation of the
Israel authorities if the situation did not improve, given that fifty-seven Nablus prisoners were “isolated”
together in a single cell, cut off from all outside access, and that fifty cases of serious abuse had been noted in
the past svo years, The ICRC’ dilemma concerning the best strategy to obtain the necessary improvements
svas discussed incessantly, especially with regard conporal abuse and access to all he detainees. Those in
charge were caught between contradictory discourses depending on the interlocutor (government officials,
etc), or even the moment. Some denied the violence, while others showed themselves willing 0
shed light on what, in thei terms, were nothing more than cases of “disobedience.” Others declared that
they wanted to eradicate these practices or claimed to be favorable to extending visits to all. Yet, whatever
the discourse proffered, these recurrent practices continued, At this dhythm, Moreillon wrote, “our presence

the army,



in the prisons isa face that we eannot take part in.” Those serving long sentences were transferred to
Ramlch prison which, in early 1968, was the only high- security establishment until Ashkelon opened in
December, whete a considerable number of Gaza inhabitants were held due to its proximity with the Gaza
Strip, In January 1970, Beet Sheva high-security prison was inaugurated to alleviate Gaza prison’s



‘overcrowding, The Palestinians did not remain for long in the detention centers of the Occupied Territories,
‘which were mainly destined for interrogations and pre-trial detention. Only two prisons for those serving
long sentences existed in the Territories atthe time, situated in Nablus and Gaza, which also held afew
women detainees.

“The ICRC was able to supply books to most of the prisons as ofthe eatly 1970s, and notably
schoolbooks and a few others, but their subjects were tightly controlled and scientific and politcal works
were for the most part banned, Detainees atthe time had access tothe only (pro-government) Israci Arab
ppewspaper, AL-Amba, and very litle authorized access tothe radio. Transistors began to be smuggled in
Lite libraries were constituted. The prisoners organized a schooling system, with classes held by incarcerated
teachers. They were tolerated by the authorities, who, on the other hand, refused outside Arab teachers
sceess to the prisons, Already inthis period, some sat thir high-school exams (thi), even if educational
possibilities remained very patchy depending on the prison and remained a privilege that could be taken away
for disciplinary or politcal reasons

‘Through their close dialogue with the Israeli authorities, the ICRC worked mainly on “non-political
rchabiltation” of prisoners, notably their education, but also thei right to sports family visits, and work. Its
humanitarian mandate to assist vitims in contexts of conflict prevented a taking into account of the politcal
stakes of Palestinian detention, This postion ereated a kind of institutional blindness regasding the political,
perception or dimension of some ofits actions, Work was thus only envisaged in terms of rhabiltation, It
‘occupied prisoners’ time, helped ealm the atmosphere, made it possible to acquire skills while also earning a
little money necessary For the improvement of daily life and to buy basic necestites inthe litle stores—
known as canteens or commissary—that opened in many peniteniaries as of 1970, atthe same time chat che
staples provided by the families were gradually banned, The ICRC thus petitioned the Isic authorities to
provide as many 25 possible with ajob, and for decent remuneration to replace cigarettes. For the Israeli
suthortes, however, work either provided a cheap workforce to support its war effort and benefit the
country’s economy, or, minima, was a means of reducing the cost of detaining Palestinians, which, as their
numbers and detention time grew, represented a financial burden, They thas used Palestinian prisoners to
build Beer-Sheva prison and Jewish Istali common law prisoners to surveil the Palestinians, as had already
been experimented at Ramlch, The Isracli authorities also off loaded certain costs onto the ICRC, making it
pay for che parcels containing extra wares, clothes, and cigarettes when family visits were banned, and for
books—and notably schoolbooks—notebooks, pens, medical eare, and so on.

At first, the detainees did not have a unanimous view of prison work; some felt that it was of immediate
advantage. Over time, this view became increasingly negative, especialy a in the prisons located in Israel
(Gight out of fifteen), work was obligatory and deseribed as forced labor. They first of all opposed against all
army-related work: making camouflage netting or army uniforms. Then, they refused any work serving the
Israeli economy (making packaging for fruit, batteries, gluing envelopes, te), oganizing labor strikes, then
observing striet hunger strikes in opposition. In the late 1970s, che parties that mobilized in detention
adopted « common position against all work not directly relating to the Palestinian men and women
prisoners’ daly lives, Their repeated steikes and opposition finally brought an end to Palestinian political,
prisoners" labor.

‘The Occupation generation prisoners were not long politicized and, moreover, were scatcred in multiple
sites they had to build networks from inside the prisons and invent channels to circulate information,
between them, and between the prisons and the outside, With the frst mobilizations and work strikes eame
the righe to visits and showers but it was above all che hunger strikes that laid the foundations and strategies
of stage in detention and its organizational structures, Their demands sought to improve prison
conditions to obtain books, pens, notebooks, mattresses to stop the physical brutality infieed on detainees,
but also more generally eo contest the polities of incarceration and the Occupation, Already in 1968, Ramleh
prison was precursory in deploying unlimited hunger strikes as a mode of resistance. The strikes thea grew,
bringing together several prisons, For the first time ina unified movement, thousands of prisoners
simultaneously went on hunger strike in si prisons on April 28,1970, including the Neve Tireza women


prisoners, Theie slogan called to end the Occupation, long-term administrative detention, and torture. It
ined traction outside, as Jewish and Arab figures manifested their solidarity; women, and studene bodies
protested, and appeals were made to international institutions.

[Along with chat at Beit Lyd (Kfar Yona) in 1969, the first strike to become inseribed in carceral memory,
however, was that of Asqalan (Ashkelon) in Joly 1970, Both were in protests at these two prisons particultly
‘brital conditions of incarceration. Strikes and rots followed in suecession at Asgalan inthe easy 1970s due
to the mantial discipline that reigned and the physical abuse inflicted there, especially init in-house
interrogation center, Prisoners serving ng sentences or subjected to punitive measures were sent there. The
ICRC delegates deseribed a “shocking and sinister” atmosphere. All the detainees they were able to speak to
without witnesses present described recurrent violence, being putin the pound for no reason, while some
‘became “invisible” For lng periods. No books or notepads were permitted, nor any activity; prisoners
regularly had their heads shaved; collective prayers were banned, Inmates were not allowed to sit on the
covers they slept on at night, having to content themselves with the floor and sometimes had to remain silent
in their cells. They had to walk in single file and in silence in the exercise yard, their hands behind their backs.
Guards demanded that they be addressed as sia ttle of respect thatthe detainees refused to continue to
‘use when they began their hunger strike on July 15, 1970, a strike that lasted about a fortnight. One person.
slicd Abd al-Kader Abu a-Fahim—after being foree-fed by tube, a practice used in those days to break the
strikes. This strike left an indelible mark on the colletive memory. Asqalan prison became a sinister, then.
hero, detention legend where the prisoners’ values were forged and the contours of politial resistance t0
the prison system and the Occupation were shaped from inside the prisons. This prison was henceforth
considered a eader in the community of prisoners





Saad, Tarek, Radi, and the Others. The Prison Model and the World of Writing: The Prisoners?
Movement Generation (1974-1987): The Repression and Politicization of Civilian Mobilizations in
‘the Occupied Territories

As the Occupation lstingly took hold, grassroots civilian mobilization increased, massively involving
high schools, chen the universities that were being created atthe time, Regional peoples’ committees formed,
long with party and PILO-affiliated associations and civilian committees (the General Union of Palestinian
Students, the General Union of Palestinian Women, etc). The Palestinian National Front (PNF), which
emerged in the Territories, brought miliantism out of elandestnity and away from the predominance of
armed struggle. As civilian, publi, plus-onganizational, left-leaning body, and the PLO’s support base in
Palestine, the PNF mobilized local politicians, professional unions, associations, student groups, charities,
and large swathes of the population around overe opposition to the Oceupation while at the ame time
sccking to establish a dialogue with the Isc leaders, Close to the line of the Jordanian and Palestinian
‘Communist Parties, it already defended in 1967 the idea of creating a Palestinian State alongside the Iseacli
State in the Occupied Terstories, contrary tothe PLO. It was a period of intense demonstrations strikes,
and socio-political activism. Although banned atthe time, Palestinian flags were flown, photos of the PLO
leaders posted up, and graffiti appeared calling for resistance. These mobilizations and al forms of public
onganizaton and protest were severely repressed. In 1974, the deportation and arrest of those related to the
NE multiplied, Many communist figures were also arrested when the Israeli authorities wrongly accused the
PNE of being the armed wing of the Jordanian Communist Panty. Waves of arrests and the torture of PNE
members followed.





Unlike the previous generation, only afew of those sent to prison were involved in military operations;
the rest belonged to politieal parties and many were simply members of civil society onganizations,
professionals, of university or high-school students who politieally onganized ther ations within the student
‘unions and committes in their secondary or higher education establishments, Moreover, it was a generation,
that came from the West Bank and Gaza; there were indeed almost no Fedayeen infiltrated from the
neighboring countries, or members of the exiled PLO among them.

| distinguish seven historic generations of prisoners, six of whom have come afier the 1967 occupation.
‘These historic generations are “unified groups of individeals who encounter historic conjunctures or periods
at the same moment of their life eyele”. I have constituted these prison generations, on the one hand, based
fon the period of their detention and, on the other, on the importance of their roles and prison experiences in
their own view, as they tell it, and in the eyes of the prison community and beyond. Those having served
Tong sentences, or several sentences, ist as adolescents then later i lif, have indeed taversed the years
Inside. Though, they have acquired a social and/or politcal maturity, a position of leader, distinguishing
themselves at given times, within a specific generation, of which they are either the litle known actors oF, for
some, emblematic

‘The October 1973 Wat, and above all the international recognition of the PLO as the legitimate
representative of the Palestinian people following the Rabat Arab League summit, then the UN's reception
of a delegation and Yasser Arafat's speech before the General Assembly in 1974, boosted the militant
impetus Strikes and protest marches of an unprecedented magnitude took place in all evwns, rallying lange

trials of|



ests, and the summa

numbers of students. They wete met with the violence ofthe army, arrests,



students and youths, most of whom did not belong to any party.
Saad Nim was fifteen tthe time and lived in Jenin, He was almost sisty when I met him
Ramallah in May 2016, and was a Political Sciences lecturer at the University of Birzcit. Previously, he was



chief of saff tothe Minister of Prisoners’ Affairs, Issa Qarage, after heading the International Campaign to
Free Marwan Barghouti and All Palestinian Prisoners. As Arafat gave his speech to the UN, a young
cightecn-year-old woman was crushed by a tank daring a demonstration in Jenin, It was the frst time that
sucha thing happened, Protests intensified and the mayor, accompanied by the entre town, came out 10
follow the Funeral procession, Saad was among them, Clashes with the army ensued.

“At Lam. they earted out a major arrest operation [ameliyeh i tigalieh). Over seventy people were
arrested, I don’t know why, but Iwas on their list. I was terrified; I had no experience of all that. They
blindfolded and handeuffed me as Iwas eld face down on the ground, their feet on my back, then they took
‘me to the Jenin Mugata’a [where the interrogation center was]. There, there were seventy of us ina tiny
oom, piled on top of one another. I was still blindfolded, Then, at about 2am, we were taken one by one
ino interrogation. They asked me if | had thrown stones —I stl no—if [had demonstrated—I std no, that
Thad gone to the funeral wth the mayor. A man wrote in Hebrew, then asked me to sign it.I was seared; I
signed. At 3 a.m, I found myself in cours it ated two minute, Iwas accused of having thrown stones at the
srmy, someone testified against me, and I was sentenced to six months and transferred to Jenin prison,
‘They gave me clothes, I understood nothing and thought Iwas going, to wake up from this nightmare. The
other prisoners helped us. I's hard when you arsive in a society you don’t know, a prison society [mujtama’
sin). When I was released, I saw things differently. It had changed everything in me. Ioined a polteal
onganization [tanzim]. In 1975, at the age of sixteen, I was a member of the DFLP and I was given six
sionths for that. Iwas released atthe end of 1975. In August 1976, was arested again with five frends and
charged for my activites inthe party—nonviolent, unarmed activities, The judge deemed that [was a re-
offender, as I had already served two prison sentences. Iwas sentenced to seven years [was just over
seventeen, Iwas held in Jenin prison, then in Nablus. [took my high school exams [tai in prison. Leame
‘ut atthe age of twenty-three and enrolled for a BA in Political Sociology at An-Najah University in Nablus
Before, I wanted to bean engineer, but after my politeal readings in prison, I abandoned the sciences. The
Prisoners’ Movement was very strong at that time; it was very different to now.”

In those days, the time spent in prison politicized people. For the youngest, the earceral moment
prompted personal bifurcations that led them to join a party; for others who were already partisans, t helped
sharpen their politcal ideology and values, and constituted a crucial stage in their militant paths. The youth
were particularly targeted by the repression. In Nablus, Abu George and many young people shared similar
experiences when they were fourteen, fifteen, oF sisten, Arrested for having written Fatah poitel slogans,


or slogans denouncing the Occupation on the city walls, for having thrown stones at setler buses or public
buildings, for demonstrating, waving a Palestinian flag, meeting publicly, or celebrating a national event, they
served several months in prison. They were put through the traumatic interrogation experience ata very
young age, during which they were beaten and often tortured. They were frequently arested for periods that
‘were more or less long, and regularly were set t, and released from, prison. In the 1980s, Abu George tld
sme, every year before Eid, 19 Land Day (March 30), the anniversary ofthe beginning ofthe Palestinian
Revolution (January 1), oF on other national occasions, they would come to get forty ot so youth whom they
‘would keep in detention fora fortnight to avoid protests: “We knew that, and would prepare our bags and
wait for them.”

In the early 1980s, control over the Occupied 'Trttories intensified. In 1981, a so-called civil
administration was created within the Israeli army to manage the Palestinian population, The policy of mass
arrests and forced exile intensified as mobilizations spread, preiguring the Firs Intifada, From this point on,
not only activists, ut also those suspected of being their acquaintances, frends, and family also began to be
arrested, The so-called Tamir Lave pasted in 1980 allowed convictions with no evidence oF confessions,
‘based simply om third-pary statements, Torture became a common practice during interrogations. The
Palestinian National Front and the National Orientation Committee were banned in 1982. In 1986, al
Palestinian partes were offically declared illegal terrorist o
organizations.

nizations as were many associations and civil



‘The Prisoners? Movement: The Carceral Structure of the National Movement

Aged between twenty-five and thre, other slight
seasoned party members, come of whom held important positions in the partisan hierarchy. Inthe eaey
1970s, the prisoners developed interpersonal relations according to whom they knew or thei place of origin.
“They then grouped together according to their partisan affiliations, When someone high-ranking went to
prison, he would stop forward to take over leadership ofthe group (giyadch fardich); asthe number of
detainces increased, several leaders emerged within each poliseal organization. In about 1975, the parties
adopted internal rules setting up elections and committees to manage cultural, educational, administrative,
security, Financial, external affairs (¢he latter concerning relations with the other partes) Intcenal political and
administrative representation structured politcal life on the Inside and its articulation with partisan ie
‘Outside, Ie framed relations and communication with che prison administration, particularly during conflicts,
As incarceration became a mole by whieh the Israel authorities governed the Occupied Palestinian
‘Territories, this shared experience became central tothe experience of nationhood and citizenship, and
forged a politcal entity from inside the men’s prions: the Palestinian Political Prisoners’ Movement
(Harakeh al-asie al-filastin, linked to the PLO Outside. The politieal parties and the PLO took charge of the
prisoners financially. A department took care of the families of martyrs and prisoners. They had a political
and symbolic role and a significant place in the national movement as fontline combatants, or solders

Inthe 1980s, the internal partisan onganization—that ofthe politcal prisoners in each prison—and the
‘networks of communication between prisons, and between the prison branches ofthe organizations and
parties Outside, followed the established niles and channel, These structures remained largely the same even
if, overtime, they no longer exerted the same influence over life in detention,

Every eight to twelve months, each party elected a delegate (mandub ou mas al-tanzim) to the general
Prison Genetal National Committee (ajneh watanieh ‘ameh), and the majority panty elected a representative
of ll the detainees of every prison fora duration of for one to two years (mmathil alam al muta) The
latter had to be accepted by the General National Committee and was entrusted with interacting with the
prison administration, This elected representative has nearly always been a member of Fatah, apart from
ring the Oslo period, Sub-committes dealing with affairs common to all prisoners emerged to manage
administrative issues, sports and certain cultural and educational questions, conjointly elaborated at each



older incarcerated or incarcerated men were already




10

prison level. For the more administrative affsirs those in charge (shawish sing.) of food, exercise, and so
forth, were also nominated asthe intermediaries between Shabas and the detainees, who were not supposed
to engage with the administration directly. The political prisoners managed atcha time to take charge of the
cooking, stocking, and distributions of meals in most ofthe prison establishments, thereby ensuring their
quality and thanks to the circulation ofthe meal taft—creating essential channels of communication
betwen the wings. More generally speaking, workplaces where daly tasks were eared out under the
supervision of the parties (the kitchens, laundries, provisions rooms, libraries leaning) were spaces of
exchange and circulation of information, As Maher told me:

“Until the 2000s, the kitchens were let to us, as was the laundry, and cleaning the cells. Ie was very
postive, There were about fifty people working on these different chores at Asqglan when I was there. Ie
depended on the prisons, but on the whole, that’s ow it was. In the 2000s, they began to take that out ofthe
political prisoners’ hands and reintroduced a wing of Jewish and [Israeli] Arab common la prisoners in
‘every prison to do this work, The food became bad, so we got hold of electric hobs in the cells to make what
swe wanted."



"The Prisoners’ Movement governed the time spent in prison and coordinated prison straggles while atthe
same time taking partin those waged inthe Territories, Militant and intellectual paths were conjointly forged
Inside and Outside, and often in to-and:-fro between these two spaces, prison militantism constituting a key
stage in the partisan career. Progression through the ranks of partisan organizations was one ofthe main
motifs of arrest



In most analyses highlighting the porosity between inside and outside prison in Franee, Europe, or the
United States, this continuum is seen ina negative light as a “continuous system of constraints and control
fon either side ofthe prison wall”, of socal practices that mutually exacerbate one another ina viious cree.
Here, however, thie porosity is also remarkable for the carceral citizenships that operate within it, and forthe
socialization and politcal and inellectual paths that prison consolidates or to which it gives rise.

Born in 1953, Ahmad Saadat, current Secretary General of the PFLP, climbed the ranks of the PFLP
luring his many stretches in prison, where he has spent mote than twenty-five years in total. Already ative in
the student branch of the PFLP when he was in high school, he jined the party in 1969, aged sixteen, He
hhad his first brush with prison before 1974 when he was sentenced to several months on three separate
‘occasions. When he was sentenced to four years in 1976, he had just passed his teaching diploma, In 1993,
the age of forty, he was elected to the PFLP political bureau thanks to his leadership and eo his educational
activities and organization of prison life. In 1994, he became head of the party in the West Bank after having
again been administratively detained, then declared “wanted” when the authorities attempted to quash the
ELD, which was very active during the First Intifada. In 2001, he was elected Secretary General of the PELP
forthe first ime. In 2006, again incarcerated in Israel, he became a deputy from inside prison. Since, he has
‘been serving a thirey-year sentence

[Also reclected a deputy feom inside prison in 2006, Marwan Bagghouti, member of the Palestinian
"National Council, was incarcerated forthe first ime in 1974 at che age of fifteen, He joined Fatah at that
time. Condemned for belonging to Fatah in 1978, he passed his high-school diploma, learned Hebrex,
founded the youth wing of Fatah in prison, and then became its leader. On release in 1983, he enrolled in a
History and Political Sciences B.A, which he was only able to complete ten years later in 1993 after having
‘been an administrative detainee, then exiled to Jordan just before the First Intifada when he was President of
the Student's Union. Elected to the Fatah Revolutionary Council duting bis time in eile, he became the
Secretary General of Fatah in the West Bank on his recur in 1994, First elected deputy in 1996, he
‘completed his Master's in Intemational Relations in 1998, He was once again arrested in 2002 during the
Second Intifada For his role inthe uprising, and notably for having founded and led Fatah’s military wing al-
"Tanzim) and for his involvement inthe al-Agsa Martyrs’ Brigades, an armed faction of Fatah, In 2004, he
received five life sentences and forty years.










Stretching over time, they forged ther intellectual paths and long studies both Inside and Out, thie
intervals Outside allowing them to obtain thei university qualifications, When I met Rac Jarac in 2011, he
‘was working atthe Prisoners’ Museum at AI-Quds University in Abu Dis and was teaching a class on the
Prisoners’ Movement inthe Politieal Seiences department. schoolteacher at che time of his fist
imprisonment from 1976 to 1985, he beeame a Fatah figure in detention, where he was in charge of the
Culture Committe, He was feleased in May 1985 in what i known as the Ahmed Jbl prisoner exchange
(fabadul Ahmed Jibs), negotiated by the leader of the PFLP-General Command, in which 1,270 Palestinian
prisoners were released in exchange for thrce kidnapped Israel solders, He then embarked on an
International Relations BA at the University of Breet, Reincarcerated from 1987 to 1988, then from 1989 to
1991 for his involvement inthe Intifada, he completed his BA, then his Master's in 2000, before atthe age of
lover sixty years old undertaking a PhD by correspondence in an Egyptian university:

In Palestine, works on political prisoners carceral socialization have shown the key role of politcal
‘taining in detention, just lke in other contests of political incarceration, Since 1967, Isral prisons have
constituted a “Palestinian universiy” (akadimich flastinieh) for both men and women, «foremost place of
general education, political socialization, and militant training, with time divided between classes and debates
separately dispensed by each party, and joint lasses. This spac, in which a “revolutionary pedagogy”
developed, made culture, reading, and writing a means of mitigating the effeets of incarceration, and of
existing as Palestinians and asa politcal group, Political training was indeed highly structured within the
parties. One former Fatah member who then joined Fatah al-Intifida in detention told me that this taining
comprised of three six-month levels (beyjnners—mubsadiyin; intermediary—saTiin; and the final stage—
‘akmil), a the end of which there were exams, and included classes, conferences, and practical works. At the
end ofthe eighteen months, the students (lib—sing) reached the level of leader (quid) and could thus write
declarations, tracts, politcal texts, and so on,

“Those with diplomas or specific skills and politcal experience shared their knowledge, whether to help
the younger prisoners pass their high- school exams, university degrees, or climb the militant ranks. They
‘aught English and Hebrew, but also—depending on thee poitial orientation — human rights, women's
rights, the history of political idea, democracy, Marxism, the history of peoples under occupation, and later
religious clases. The influence of Marxism was central in this taining inthe 1970s and 1980s. The parties of
the left, the Communists, or those from the Arab Nationalist Movernent played a major role, especially the
DELP, that was very present atthe time in prison and in mobilizations Outside, alongside Fatah, Marsism
offered a broad reflection that corresponded to the need to think an alternative and to impose a counter
‘mode to prson's violence, while also connecting the Palestinians’ revolutionary experience to that of the
Chinese, the Cubans, the Vietnamese, and the Algerians. Some discovered the partisan world, while others
shaped their convictions and moved from one party to another in contact with other people and discourses
“Tarek recalls that his politcal ideas were not very firm when he first arrived in prison in 1980 atthe age of
cightecr

“We hal a specific program of studies, reading, and conferences, We would read politcal works that
coulda't be Found a the prison ibrary. That took up the whole day; we didn’t see the time pass, Those who
had degrees or Master's or who knew languages taught the others, Many entered prison illiterate and left
speaking two languages, and sometimes French, Russian, or German. They sent people to prison to break
them psychologically ly with its own rules, It wasn't a prison but a university. Learning,
for Palestinians, is like breathing for lungs. Iwas inthe party of Ahmed Jibril (PFLP.General Command). In
prison, you read, you understand; I switched to Fatah. Many young people joined a partyin prison. In prison,
you have to be in a group: those who are independent, who are on their own, i's hard. What’s more, our
‘commissary money wasn't enough to buy the basic necessities. Inthe partes, we put everything we received
together and there was a Minister of Finances who managed it ‘There was an equality berween people, Those
who were poor or who didn’t have their family nearby, everyone received the same sum. Ie was a collective
life, a socialist society isha."











aie was ike a fami


Political prisoners indeed obtained the right to receive the sums their families sent for commissary on a
‘common account, which the parties redistributed and managed equitably according to needs and to the
‘organization of meals,

‘As the Prisoners’ Movement gradually onganized and managed the entire prison time, it became
impossible not o join an organization on entering prison, and politicization was immediate. Initially, the
army and prison services strongly opposed politial detainees intcenal oe
‘vith Iseacli common law prisoners, Once a separation was obtained by the men, then the women, they
adopted the classing of detainees by party. They demanded that they choose one, while atthe same time
attcmpting to use this to influence militant activity behind bars and outside by creating dissensions, by
‘opportuney transferring certain prisoners when prison elections were to be held by transferring the most
committed from prison to prison, and so on, Those with no affiliation were placed in the Fatah wing.

"The 1980s are presented as the Golden Age ofthe Prisoners’ Movement. The prison model was built on
the world of writing, knowledge, and intellectual and textual production. The aim was to acquire knowledge
and continue school of university trajectories on the one hand, and thus to tin an educated and militant
_generation capable of in turn teaching the next. On the other hand, the sim was to erate and ctculate a
partisan lerature constituting thie eaceral counter-model in the “Occupation prisons” (sj abil) as
they were most often called. Handbooks written by the dfferene factions divulging interrogation techniques
‘were thus intended to help face ths ordeal, just as an array of other political, literary, and poete exes were
collectively written by prisoners during this period, These works, which more often than not have no
identified author, asserted a carceral “we.” Prison newspapers flourished, The educational process in itself
helped transform consciences,

Despite the administration's censorship, detainees managed to constitute clandestine libraries reflecting
their political colors. In che early 1970s, it was hard to have certain books, and notepads, pens, and Arabic
newspapers brought into prison—and some prisons more so than others firstly via the ICRC, then via
families as of 1977. Moreover, everytime there were tensions with the guards Inside, or when military actions

ination and thus mixed them





‘or mobilizations fared up Outside, they were confiscated and prison rights suspended. Other books were
smuggled in, Inthe 1980s, thanks to struggles and organizing in prison, prisoners grined access to a aster
literary world, which opened up the spaces of interconnection with the outside world.

‘We would get books from Ramleh prison, where the 48 and Jerosalemite Palestinian prisoners were held
We used to go there tothe hospital. We would copy them in very small writing on shoe wrapping paper, on
both sides. We would condense 100 pages into seven or eight, then roll them very tight and weap them in
plastic. They could be contained in seven kabsulat (kabsulch-sing) that we'd swallow [these litle swallowed
containers were—and toa lesser extent sil are—a means of communication between prisons and with the
partes outside). Ramlch was a transfer center Inthe room where people tansited as they transfered from
‘one prison to another, we exchanged the kabsulat, chen we wrote them back out in exercise books to obtain a
book, To avoid them being confiscated during searches, we'd take a hot hard-boiled eg pint the
“authorized” stamp that was on other works om it, then copy i, Later, things changed, Families were allowed
to bring cight books a month, 3,000 books were banned in the West Bank a¢ the time. We used to change the
cover and cettain pages to get chem through,

If this Golden Age is recalled with a nostalgia that has grown withthe passing of time, the Prisoners!
Movement, which was deeply rooted in the Occupied Territories, constituted a model when it united people
from all parties whatever chee political orientation and whether they came from different regions of Palestine
and even Syria after the occupation of the Golan Heights. There was strict discipline, an invention of
politieal, community-based, and alternative modes of education, resistance training, an egalitarian nationalist,
socialist and solidaity-based society: in other words, specific carcerlctizenships and politieal practices that
‘were more democratic and inclusive than those ofthe diaspora PLO leaders based in Jordan, Lebanon, and
Syria, then in Tunis, before their return to Palestine after the Oslo Peace Accords in 1994 and 1995, The
prison counter-model opposed its culture and values, its organization, to the rules and the moral economy of
the prison services and the army, and permeated the political realm and society Outside, In thie sense, and in
that petiod, prison filed to constitute a completely total institution in the Goffmanian sense. While militant
trajectories, the toing-and-feoing between the Inside and Outside, and the simultaneous polieal organization
in Israc prisons and in the Territories suggest a reciprocal fecundation between these two universes, for this
_generation ofthe Prisoners’ Movement and for that ofthe Intifada, the prison model predominated. It
constituted the main mode of citizenship. For the national movement, prison thus became, as Ismail Nasi
analyzes it, arte of passage to Palestinian identity (2004/2005). Its unitary and trans- partisan structure
prefigured that of the Fits Intifada and, along with the PNF, constituted a model for its Unified National
Leadership of the Uprising (UNLU), in which the Prisoners’ Movement participated.

‘Abu George and Quddura Farés. The Intifada Generation and the Politicization of the Hunger
Strike (1988-1994) Protest Beyond Walls, The Massification and Violence of Imprisonment

‘The Prisoners’ Movement, which grew in strength throughout the 1980s, reached its apogee during the
First Intifada (1987-1993) In February 1988, many ofthe Popular Committee and Unified National
Leadership (UNLU) cadres were arrested, Most of the UNLU decisions were thus taken in prison in constant
dialogue with the Outside.

‘This was also the case with the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) and the religious movement, which
truly entered into active resistance during the Intifada, Members of the Muslim Brotherhood had already
served time in Israeli prisons in the 1980s, for example, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, who founded Hamas in 1987,
A revolutionary Islamic branch also developed in detention, drawing on both religious branches and Fatah,
and even left-wing partes, notably those with active armed factions. The First operations carried out by the
ifferent groups claiming allegiance to Islamie Jihad began in che 1980s, and this branch gradually became
ore present in detention. Ae the end of the summer of 1988, the West Bank members of the High Council
‘ofthe Muslim Brothethood and leaders ofthe Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), and the military
leaders in Gaza wore arrested, Asa result, the Hamas leadership reorganized in prison and continued its
action in liaison with Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, who remained free until May 1989 when he was imprisoned
‘gain, along with all the members of the nev leadership and over 250 partisans.

‘The Prisoners’ Movement’s preponderant roe stemmed from the fact that “ll the major leaders wer
prison, unlike today, where ts chaos (Fada) where anybody and everybody ends up in prison, which has
‘weakened the Movement." I met Abu George in Nablus in 2012, He described himself s a high-ranking
Fatah official, a director general in the Palestinian Avthority administration, and a lecturer at alQuds Open
University in Abu Dis, Birzeit University in Ramallah, and an-Najah University in Nablus. He was sturdy,



‘with imposing gestures, performing a cocksure masculinity aecentuated by his national role, He was forty-
something atthe time, He had been periodically preventatively arested since 1985 when he was fourteen,

and a volunteer inthe town's Fatah- affiliated social work youth commitee



“We used to clean the streets, the graves in the cemetery. Fatah was banned t was a secret onganization.
“The Istacis began putting pressure on before the First Intifada, I spent sixtecn Eid celebrations in a row in
prison. Ie wasnt che army who came to get me, but the intelligence services [mukhabarat]. When Iwas at
fiends’ houses, they would sometimes rng the bell to show us that we were being watched, surveilled. I then
«id fve years daring the First Intifada from 1989 to 1993. 'm not ling when I tel you chat I was happier t
‘was a school, a university, a castle, There, I learned Hebrew, English, the history of world revolutions. We
Understood the other factions [fasayl] better, the PELP, the DFLP... The First Intifada was alot better than.
the Second; it was a popular resistance [muqawameh sha’biyeh]. There were no arms. I ended up in
Hadassah hospital [in West Jerusalem] three times following the torture I was subjected o in interrogation,
but I did not confess. Even forthe choice of cells I didn’t tell the administration} I was Fatah, otherwise Pd
have been sent stxight back to court, I spent most of the time in Tulkarem prison. There were only about
forty of us It was a hellhol, very harsh, it’s well-nown. It wasn’t like the main prisons. Three men died


luring torture inthis prison [housing an interrogation center), It was Druze border guards who were
responsible for these deaths. This prison was on two underground floors. Later, they shut it down. We went
‘on hunger strike for twenty-one days in Tulkarem and we got good results radios, newspapers, cigarettes, We
vere able to see our mothers with no physical separation, Whatever happened, they punished me. I was put
in solitary confinement for a year and half. passed my high school exams before being areste I started
studying again in Egypt in 1993—psychology—and I went all the way to PRD level, which I completed in
2005, Ie was in prison that I became interested in psychology. When Arafat returned to Palestine fwhen the
Palestinian Authority was created), I was working in Ramallah for six months and spent the other six months
in Egypt for my studies. The final year, Iwas transferred to Naggb prison [also known as Ansar 3 to the
Palestinians, and as Ketziot to the Israeli authorities). Family visits had been banned from the start, only
lawyers could visit, but that changed after the massive 1992 hunger strike; ll the prisoners went on strike in
all the prisons, but i took a very long time to obtain that”

[Nagab prison in the Negev desert near the Egyptian border, which was an army-run camp where the men
‘were housed in tents, was opened in 1988 to handle the tens of thousands of people who were putin
detention at that time. 50,0 people were held there between 1988 and 1995, when approsimately 110,000
people were imprisoned over the course of the First Intifada. During the uprising, Popular Committees were



st upall over the territory. An entire civilian population —youths, women, and men—stood up to the
‘occupier and responded to the ells to action made by the secular parties’ unified command (UNLU) by
demonstrating, striking massively in all sectors of activity, boycotting taxes and the Isticli economy, eating
akctnative networks and modes of production, organizing homeschooling and alternative universities to
‘compensate for the closures, and s0 00,

"The politics of mass incarceration intensified and was asterted as such. The “allt carers,” or penal
“big goverment,” to borrow Loic Wacquant's terms used in reference to US parisons in the 1980s, was
veritably put in place with the mass arrests of the First Intifada (1987 1993), which began in the very first
vo months in an effort to quell the uprising, On average, 25,000 people were arrested a yea, and in
‘November 1989, the prison population reached its maximum of approximately 13,000 detainees. In 1989,
according to Human Rights Watch, this rte was of the order of 750 prisoners for every 100,000 people, in
other words, the highest in the world, Administrative detentions multiplied; they also affected women and
‘minors, and their duration again became longer, Over 14000 were pronounced between 1987 and 1992.
‘Others were attested for varying periods in an attempt to obtain information, Some ended up in detention
‘camps for days or months without trial or even an administrative detention order. The secret detention
center known as Camp 1391 was set ups people disappeared, held the





cin total itolation, Repression affected
the entre population, even if t particularly targeted young men for motives ranging from handing out tacts
to activities within a Popular Committee, building barricades, writing graft, or thtowsing stones and
Molotov cocktails It became increasingly brutal. The then Defense Minister, Yitzhak Rabia, gave the order
to break Palestinians’ arms and legs. The Landau Commission encouraged the use of torture in
interrogations Inthe same period, the prison regime intensified; family visi were suspended—at Keziot, the
ban asted five years (1988 1992)—and it was no longer possible to take high-school exams.

"The internal politcal and cultural order was not shaken by the simuleancous atrval in prison of an influs
‘of young, oF even very young men, Depending on the facility, some organized among themselves, whereas
‘mang, ke Abu George, had already undergone prison socialization in the preceding period, which
‘contributed to ths Intifada generation’ trsining, Others were taken in by the older partisan leaders who had
remained behind bats or been re-arrested, lke Radi Jaraci, Quddura Fares, or Ahmad Saadat, The culture and
values ofthe politieal prisoners predominated, It was “one single society.” Qaddura Fares, an influential
Fatah official lose to Marwan Barghouti, told me. From prison, he and Issa Qarage initiated the creation of
the Prisoners’ Club (Nadi a-Asit) in 1992. On release, he became its president from 1994 to 1996, then again
from 2006 to the present, He spent fourteen years in detention (1980-1994) before being clected a deputy in
1996.


“Our values were honesty al-sadg]—whereas today, lying has become a way of doing polities a tactic —
and altruism [al-thar]. Our onganization was socialist, Everything that entered prison—mon
families for commissary, from the Red Cross—was entirely collectvized and shared among us. There were
‘no big [kab] or litle people [daghit], people who drove around in BMWs and others who walked, Those in
charge, the leaders, had to take their :urn at cleaning and washing up jut lke everyone else.”

A real careral democracy existed, dotted with regular eletions that were kept secret so that they could be
held without prisoners being transferred oF interventions on the patt ofthe administration, or retaliation
measures against those elected. A trace of regret for an idealized era of political discipline and faultless
cohesion and solidarity was detectable in his words. Abus Geonge’s account expressed this pride in belonging
to this soldary, militant, and nationalist collective body. Like other men or women not broken by the prison.
experience and interrogation, he expressed this nostalgia for a Golden Age of miltantism Outside and of lie
behind bars, despite its terble brutality. Others do not wish to talk publely about it, a tis hard politically
and psychologically to reconcile the ferocity of prison with this sentiment as Samie told me:

“I don’t want to talk only about the past. Nowadays all the parties have become tainted in prison, not just
Fatah, even i tis less so with the PFLP and Hamas, We wanted to build a republic like Platon's and
Palestine is the worst ofthe Arab counties. You shoulda’t write this, but my experience was beautiful: we
learned languages, lots of things, we only lacked time”

‘This paradosical sentiment i, however, common in other even harsher contexts of political incarceration,
sch a that ofthe Syrian prisons in the 1980s, as deseribed by Yassin al-aj Saleh.

Inhis testimony, and in his braggart manner, Abu Geonge deseribed the sacred heroic national figure that
the politcal prisoner became in that era He exalted masculine bravura, combatant honor, heroism, and egos
‘measured by their eapacity to resist repression. For Said al-Atabeh, who spent thirty-two years in prison from
the age of twenty-five to almost sixty (1977-2008), ths Figure ofthe hero—albeit less performed —also
imposed itself on him: “When you think ofhaving spent chity years in prison, you become a stranger to
even yourself, a hero, I's a miracle to have spent so many yeas in prison and to sil be able to discuss
polities, the economy, and to get married.” Political prisoners are often compared to “knights” (furs).
Knights ofthe Ciey Pursan al-madina) isthe ttle of a short story written by Yunis Rjoub; The Generals of
Patience. Knights Behind Bars (Generali al-saber. Fursan khalf alQudlban) that ofa recent collective work
‘writen by incarcerated personalities, including the former Minister of Prisoners’ Affairs, Issa Qarage, who,
ring his time behind bars, was their general representative. They are also called “eaged ions,” or lion cubs
(@shbal) forthe youth, thereby conjuring all the noble and combative atributes of the lon, to which is
‘opposed the dog, used inthis text to describe the guards, interrogators, and Israel soldiers. In this work, the
imprisoned Hamas leader Abdel Khaleq al-Natshch describes prisoners as the “guardians ofthe nation, oF
the people, and ofall he Ummah.”

from the





‘The Hunger Strike as a Test, Act I

From the very beginning of the Occupation, hunger strikes became the prime repertoire of action during
prison mobilizations, This nonviolent mode of action restores a capacity to dissent in a prison context of
intense coercion and the confinement of bodies, and has often been deployed by political detainees in

rope and elsewhere since the late nineteenth century, It extracts bodies from the relationship of
{domination and r- signifies the violence inflicted upon them by investing it wth a chosen politcal meaning
Some ofthese strikes were more specifically test in the sense ofthe power struggles that Bruno Latour
identifies in épreuves; they were moments of rupture in which the stakes were redefined,

Always connected to the need to improve prison conditions, they initlly, for both the men and women
prisoners, sought to transform the way of characterizing the situation, and prison relations, nd thus to
establish what Ismail Nashif calls a counter-order, Their aim was to have ther status as politieal detainees
recognized, at last in practice, by being separated from the Israeli common law prisoners and gaining the



6
possibility to onganize thee existence. In the early 1980s, political connections and solidasty besween the
Inside and Outside intensified; the hunger strikes gained resonance and backing in the Territories. Late, they
multiplied in the attempt to gain rights and better detention conditions, each stike bringing is array of
improvements:

“The 1977 Asgalan strike got us real mattresses, With the 1980 Natha strike, in which two men died
[Rasim Halaweh and Ali Aaa, following their forced feeding), we progressed from mattresses to beds
(Observed in several prisons the 1984 strike got us radios, authorization to have eivlian clothes sent to us,
and the reduction ofthe number af people in the cells, then that of 1985 was to get televisions. In 1987, the
Jncid strike was launched against the head of the prison services (Commander David Maimon] who
instigated a highly repressive policy for eleven months. We managed to obtain his departure,”

Inthe early 1990s, they became tests of strength not only vis-i-vs the prison services and the army, but
also within the national movement and vis-i-vis the parties and the PLO abroad, In addition to the demands
‘concerning the daily conditions of prison lif, the 1992 strike thus marked the heightened politicization of
these confrontations,

(Qaaldara Fares was among those incarcerated before the start ofthe Intifada, and who took on the role of
leader when it broke out when he was twenty-six years old and was supervising daily life and stragles in
detention. At the age of thirty, he was the leader (mumathil alam) in Jncid prison in Nablus a the time of |
the major 1992 hunger strike as he had seniority, was a good orator, was respected, spoke Hebrew, and
Jbelonged to Fatah, which was in che majority in Jneid as it was inal he establishments. From inside Jncid
where the movement started, he was the main leader of this stike of an unprecedented scale that ll the
prisons took part in and nay all of the almost 11,00 detainees, I lasted sixteen days, from September 27
to October I

‘During a strike, a secret committe is putin charge of strategy (the Strategic Committee—lajnch al-
strat) I determines when the strike begins and ends, how the confrontation takes place, attributes
responsibilities, roles, the often rolling temporality ofthe groups’ going on strike, and its priorities, in
coordination with the Committees in exch prison, The stike’s offical Coordination Committe (designated
internally as the Combat Committee—lsnch al-nidaliych) is responsible for the daily decisions, for
negotiating, for writing, and circulating communiqués destined for the Outside, Support and a publi,
including the press indeed sought in onganizing a hunger strike. Communications and public and unofficial
interactions with the Outside seck to federate a common political strggle beyond the wall. Is objectives are
‘bore by the prisons which are designated the decision- makers in the strike. In 1992, nid was the main
prison in charge, Meticulously prepared in advance, benefiting from decades af experience in staging hunger
strikes and from the strength of the Prisoners’ Movement, the 1992 strike was considered victorious. It
achieved most of the demands to improve detention conditions: better quality food; suffieient basic
necessities and cleaning products; an end tothe poli of systematic solitary confinement instigated sinee the
beginning of the Intifada; the right to wists at Keziot (Nagab) and an increase in their duration elsewhere
(rom thiny to forty-five minutes); the possibilty of following a university course by correspondence—which
‘was nonetheless limited to the Tel Avi Open University, when what had been demanded was the right t0
ceroll in the Palestinian universities. This strike, which went down ia memory, was a landmark for the
Prisoners’ Movement. The conflict was resolved by the Internal Security Minster, Moshe Shabsl, who talked
directly to the Coordination Committee, bypassing the prison authorities, who were overwhelmed by 3
rowing movement, They indeed feated deaths as they did not have sufficient resources to handle the
situation and to guarantee the heath of so many detainees, Moreover, this strike was relayed Outside by
‘increasing demonstrations and protest marches, sit-ins, and solidary hunger stsikes by mothers of prisoners in
Jerusalem, Nablus, Bethlehem, and Gaza, and mediatized by an incandescent Palestinian and Istaeli press. Ie
‘rekindled an Intifada that had been running out of steam,

Ie-was one ofthe events ofthe Intifada that took place at the time when the uprising, but also the peace
talks that had begun at the Madrid Conference in October 1991 were falering, and Vitzhals Rabin, the man,




to whom the brutal repression ofthe Intifada was imputed, was forming a government in July 1992, Also it
‘was important forthe prison leadership, which was also that of inside the Occupied Territories, to make is
voice heard and to exert pressure on the PLO leaders based in Tunis, who were covertly negotiating &
solution to the conflict in Oslo whi the Palestinian delegation sent to Madd from the Occupied Tertitories
‘was marginalized. [twas followed by the June 1994 strike, which more clearly stil, expressed the power
struggle at play within the national movement. In direct contact with the situation on the ground in the
“Territories, experienced in rach political culture, able to speak Hebrew, and knowing the practices of the
army and intelligence services officers, the imprisoned leaders and those who were free in the West Bank and
Gaza considered themselves more capable of negotiating withthe Istali authorities chan the leaders of the
PLO, socialized outside Palestine. The content of the Oslo peace accords was contested by the politieal
Figures ofthe OPT in the Madrid delegation, such as Haidar Abdel Shafi. They notably bad demanded the
‘complete cessation of colonization, which was not mentioned in the Oslo Aecords, They moreover rejected
the accords’ deferred ruling on the central questions of Jerusalem and refugees. The Inside leadership—that
of the prisoners furthermore considered that the prisoners’ socal and political place was not reflected in
the September 13, 1993, declaration of principle signed by the Israeli government and the PLO, which made
rng reference to their situation It was not reflected in the Csiro agreement of 1994 (Oslo I ether, which only
promised the release of 5,000 out ofa total of 7,170 prisoners, and only addressed the question from the
‘non-binding perspective of “confidence-building measures,” which enabled the Istacli authorities to
determine the rhythm and the criteria of release



‘Hassan and Ahmad. Oslo, a Generation in the Shadows (1994-1999) The Marginalization of the
Prisoners

With the Oslo Accords, the prison leaders were no longer the major politcal actors inthe Territories,
"They found themselves subordinated to the PLO leaders abroad for decisions concerning them and for the
releases that were supposed to take place in the wake ofthe peace process, “Ie was extremely painful for
them,” Shawan Jabarin explains. “They were aware that they were no longer the most important politcal
actors. Iewas a ifthe prisoners had become a humanitarian issue, and no longer politieal question.”

‘The Inside/ Outside dialectic had changed. The Prisoners’ Movement as a collective body was weakened
in pare because it had lost its Function, but also because releases created a divide between those who backed
the peace process and those who were agains it and found themselves relegated to the opposition and thus
less likely to be let out. While the local Fatah leaders had promised everyone's imminent release, of the 5,300
released in early 1995, most belonged to Fatah orto formations having approved the Oslo compromise 42
(Ona few hundred belonged tothe left-wing opposition forces (he PFLP and DFLP), about 1,000 of
‘whom remained in prison, or to the Islamic movements (Islamic Jihad and Hamas). Hamas declared 1,800
detainces, 1,000 of whom were incarcerated after signing of the Accords, Unlike Fatah members, those
‘belonging to the opposition factions had to sgn a letter agrecing to renovance all forms of resistance, ot in
the Israel authorities’ view—terrorst activity In addition to their politcal afliliations, the negotiations took
into account detainee’ place of residence and citizenship, The Israel authorities excluded Palestinian citizens
of Ismael from the discussions and were reticent about including Jerusalemites, thereby creating addtional
visions within the community of prisoners, Some refused to sign thie statement, others refused their release
in solidarity. The women opposed one female prisoner's maintenance in detention until they were victorious.
[Nonetheless despite the critiques leveled at these negotiations in early 1997, nota single woman was sill
Jbchind bars, and only 380 men who were already detained before Oslo remained in prison they became
known as the elders (qudama).

"The prisons emptied and the large Nagab (Kisioe) military detention camp was closed in 1995, They had
nonetheless taken in new detainees during the peace process perind: between 1,000 and 2,000 arrests yeas
‘Many were administrative detainees, held simply due to their or their partes’ opposition to the Accords. That



y
was the ease of Shawan Jabarin, the current head of the Palestinian NGO al-Hag, aceused of belonging to
the PFLP and imprisoned at Jncid from 1994 to 1995, of of Najeh Assi atthe time a young militant in the
Islamic group at Birzct University, who was detained several times from 1994 to 1997, then convicted for his
student poliieal activities. Others were involved in individual armed actions, or in the wave of attacks and
suicide attacks knowin as martyrdom operations (ameliych istshadiyeh—sing) in Palestinian society and
poliieal parties undertaken by the Islamic parties from 1994 to 1997 in retaliation for extrmist Jewish
settler Baruch Goldstein's massacre of worshipers praying in Ibrahim Mosque in Hebron on February 25,
1994,

‘More massively incarcerated since the Intifada, the prisons saw an influx of Islamic party members as
tacks were perpetuated one after the other and the failure of the Accords became apparent. Along with the
left-wing opposition, and primarily the PFLP, they constituted the Oslo prison generation, wich grew inthe
shadows ofthe peace process rpidly proving thatthe process did not have what it would take ro succeed. In
this period only, the detainees’ representative (mumathilal‘am) belonged to Hamas in some prisons, where
the patty was in the majority

“During the eighteen years I spent in prison,” Hassan told me, “the mamathilal“am belonged eo Fatah in
90 percent of prisons and in 10 percent, to Hamas.” I met Hassan on July 26, 2012, at Jerusalem Hotel in the
cast of the city opposite che bus sation that serves part of the West Bank, He had been released just three
months earlier atthe age of thirty-eight, ater cighteen years in prison, We had difficulty finding one
another; he was confused on the phone and no doubt wary or surprised at my interest in such a subject,
‘which was apparently incompechensible. I could sense his disorientation and the mark of the years behind
bars, He was huge, broaaly- built, but did not really know how to act around me, abit destabilized by the fact
that Iwas awoman,

“Las sent to prison in 1994 for stabbing a soldier next to a mall in West Jerusalem. He was a soldier, Pm
against the idea of attacking civilians, I wounded him, Idd it on my own. The police caught me on the spot,
handcuffed me, and took me to al Moscobiyeh where I was interrogated, It was really tough. Las shut ina
tiny three by ewo-meter cel. At hat time, they used to puta stinking bag over your face, cuff your hands to
the chair behind your back for hours hit you, ete. They had no respect for human beings. tasted thiry-five
days. They wanted to know who had sent me, which party, ete, but [had nothing to confess [did that in

[headed by Arafat and the exiled
leaders who created i] in response to Baruch Goldstein's operation. But afterwards, in prison, 1 joined the
PELP wing.”

[Ahmad and Hassan’s paths reflect a moment when the advances ofthe peace process were not
perceptible to all in thir day-to-day lives and when the continuation of a never-questioned colonization
{generated violenee and provoked armed actions on the part of very young men, who decided on them at an
inivideal level, It was their time in prison that then led to thie integration into a faction

Amal was thieey-six a the time of our diseussion in an association in Nablus, An Arabic teacher,
‘maried with thre children, his voice, the rhythm of his words, and his face gave off a great gentleness and
sophistication, He began his account inthe year of 1994, the year he turned eighteens

“One day in February, at 5 A.M., Goldstein killed thirty-seven people [he in fact killed twenty-nine people
and wounded twenty-five more in the Hebron mosque. At noon in Rafidia, one of my fiends was killed by
the army. I was very shocked, That made me deeply sad, We were eatrying out peaceful actions and they
were kiling ws. I dida’t understand and I wanted to do something, There was a police station in the oven
center. A month later I went and shot a soldier in the head. He didn’t die bue ended up handicapped. They
‘pened fire on me, then arrested me, I was sentenced eo nine yeats and released in 2003, At frst spent
«ight months in che Ram [prison] hospital, then I was sent to Nablus prison, then seven others. Las
transferred almost every year. I passed my high school diploma in prison, then began my Political Sciences
studies by correspondence for four years, but when I wanted to enfoll in a course specializing in
communications and digital networks, the prison warden refused, He considered this course dangerous, All



April 1994, owo weeks before the entrance ofthe Palestinian Authorit












‘my books were taken away from me and I had to drop everything. I started again after my release, In 2006, 1
svas held in administrative detention for a year because I was active in the Ansar al Sajin association [elose to
Hamas], which bad a branch here chat got shut down at that time, then I worked in other associations. 1
‘continued to be involved in human rights, I helped prisoners families, In Novernber 2010, the PA came to
sget me. Iwas judged in military court and sentenced to a year and a alf they thought I was with Hamas.”

While he claimed not to belong to Hamas, his activities in Ansar al Sajin and the people he introduced me
to, attested to a proximity with this pany, which developed during his first petiod in detention at atime when
Hamas was preslominant and structured Inside,

‘The Oslo Ruptures

For the Prisoners’ Movement, Oslo is represented a8 a major historical rupture, a setback, and a period of
cultural regression related to the politcal turning point that impacted che national movement on the Outside
following the ereation of the Palestinian Authority. Yet the transformations set in motion were only fully felt
by the following genetation—thatof the al-Agsa Intfica—which found itself massively behind bats from
the early 2000s on, often lft to its own devices and with litle support vis--vis the prison services. The Oslo
‘moment had very dstinet repercussions according to the factions, and above all marked the beginning of
process of fragmentation ofthe national movement Inside and Outside, Morcover, releases, which were
announced in waves, dragged on over three years. This timeframe generated strong disapprobation. Between
those whose release was delayed, and the more of less active and violent opposants to the peace process sent
to priton, Istal’spenitentares did not empey: over 4000 people were still in detention a the end of
[November 1995, and there were already over 2,000 in April 1999 on the eve of the alsa Inefada

In 1994-1995, when Shawan Jabarin was in Jnci, 70 percent of the prisonets belonged to Fata

“There was no clear agreement. Only some were released, We got the impression that it depended on the
‘whim ofthe Israels, People ssid Why ate we still here if Abu Ammar [Yasser Arafi] isin Palestine? Ie
changed the atmosphere, efforts dwindled, the prisoners thought of themselves, became individualistic
Before, things were collective. So-and-so wanted to eat alone; another wanted a television for himself to
swatch what he liked, People started to withdraw into themselves and that created a whole host of
problems, ight up until now.”



Indeed, from that point on, television culture took over an environment previously structured by the
‘writen word, Education and training began to lose their alternative dimension as a militant counter-model,
henceforth being seen in terms of individual trajectories and as a form of social mobility, The political stakes
of enrolling at the Tel Aviv Open University were debated, inscriptions now seen as a form of institutional
normalization tatbich). The prisoners repeatedly requested to be allowed to enroll in Palestinian and
‘overseas universities, in vain, This request was indeed one ofthe reasons behind the 1995, and then the 2008
Ihunger strikes, With no other choice, those who wished to study, and who received Shabas" approval, began
university courses a the Tel Aviv Open University. This possbilisy was reserved for those serving long
sentences and is sill considered a privilege by the prison services, granted ifthe security officers atest.
good behavior. Only certain disciplines are authorized—literay subjects, political studies, sociology,
‘economies, psychology, and management—not the sciences, LT, or any other subject considered to present
«a secutity risk, Specializing in the sciences at high-school diploma level is also forbidden, Studies ae also Fee:
‘paying and in Hebrew, which limits thei acces all che more, even ifthe PA prisoners’ program progressive
‘began to cover the inscription fees



‘Overtime, the non-flfllment of the poitial promise of sovereignty expected from a peace process the
progressive installation of politcal and economie networks of interest and corruption, then the PA's
authoritarian drift has



c had disastrous repercussions on the Prisoners’ Movement and exacerbated the fault
lines between prison and diaspora leaders,
“We are in the mire, eaught in a honeytrap. The ministries, the cas, and all that were a trap, one that

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‘weakened the national movement. There was great deal of woluntary work inthe health domain, For
‘example, an alternative education when the universities were shut [during the First Intifada) ‘The universities
played a central national role. But then everything stared going downhill. The presence of the Authority [PA
fr Sulta] undermined individual responsibilty, why would you go and volunteer when there was a Health
‘Ministry? At universiy, the Fatah students no longer played a national role; they defended Fatah and the
action of the Authority vis-a-vis the other parties. Prisoners heard about diverse negotiations, corsuption
[Fasad, values were weakened, and democracy in prison too. Some started asserting regional and local
solidaities and issues. In certain prisons, elections were no longer held every year. They were no longer
secret; Shabas knew when they took place, who won, etc. Shabas entered people’ lives; some prisoners now
‘meet with it directly even though that was forbidden in the past.”

"The authoritarianism and networks of influence were perceived as an extension of the PLO-in-exie’s
rnon-democratie practices versus the Pritoncts’ Movement and the Palestinians of the Occupied Tertitories
poliial prison culture, “We worked frm the inside democratically.” he added. “We held elections For
student councils, municipalities, inside the prisons. They, in Tunis, negotiated compromises between the
dlfferont fations. They dida’t hold elections.”

‘Many ex-detainees, and particularly those from Fatah, returned to, or obtained a place in the PLO and
hove all inthe Palestinian Authority (PA) administration set up in 1994: in certain ministries, and
particularly in the police and the different branches of the security services, which intially recruited
‘exclusively Fatah members, That was not the ease for ex-detainces from the left-wing or Islamic opposition
panties, however. The former most often found themselves in the NGO sector that developed in this period,
and constituted a competing realm of institutionalzation. The Fatah prisoners did not, however, access
positions of responsibilty on a parr with their former political clout. Most Fatah members from inside the
‘Occupied Territories were for several reasons supplanted by Fatah members in exile, Like in other sectors
“logic of return prevailed on in the police and security services, Jobs in the PA made it posible for PLO.
veterans and leaders to return, Neatly all the officers were from the ranks of the exile forces. In addition to









this logic of return was the importance of interpersonal cations when attributing the most politcal
positions, As for other highly-skilled postions, those having spent long years in detention were ata
clsadvantage because they had completed less higher education ata time when degrees and diplomas were
taken as the measure of one’s competence and determined access to the higher echelons ofthe civil services,
even if thee eareral experience was considered equivalent in certain sectors, where thei knowledge and
expertise were recognized. They thus largely invested the Ministry of Prisoners’ Affairs but were relatively
“underrepresented elsewhere

‘Only handful of Fatah members remained behind bars after 1997. They were doubly marginalized in
detention, both vis-a-vis the other detainees defending an oppositional line, and their partisan apparatus for
‘whom the political epicenter had shifted tothe institutional construction of the PA. In the West Bank and
Gaza, this was ll the more the case as they were gradually squeezed out of the decision-making postions in
thei party and did aot regain them in the PA or the PLO, A decisive figute in the Prisoners’ Movement,
(Quddura Fares, described this sdelining:

‘All those who were released were pushed out of the decsion- making circles, Are there any prisoners in
the Executive Committee [of the PLO}, the National Counel [the PLO parliament) the Central Council?
No, there are not [there ae few]. I's been like that from the stat There are two schools: the Tunis school
and the Palestine school, Why id Arafat accept Oslo? Because people convinced him that there was a group
in Palestine who challenged his leadership, It was a huge error for him to come back before the Accords on
the final status had been signed, Thete is a problem regarding the role of prisoners. They were given a slaty
[rateb —a monthly allowance), work, and a whole host of things, but they dich’ think to give them a role in
politieal decisions. In Hamas, they had more clout Inthe PFLP too; as you can see, Saadat [the General
Secretary ofthe party] is in prison.”

Since Oslo, all politieal detainees and ex-detainees in Isael, whatever thei politcal affiliation, have enjoyed




‘material support from the PA, with the eration of a Department in charge of Prisoners’ Affairs within the
Social Afuirs Ministry in 1994, then of a Ministry of Prisoners’ Affairs in 1998, Overtime, the Ministry's
field of action and its financial aid to prisoners during incarceration and on release grew. For the PA and
Fatah, there is a central national and polieal dimension to this socio-economic role vis-i-vis detainees given,
detention’s hold over society. Since the 2007 Hamas/Fatah split, however, Hamas and Islamic Jad
detainees (outside the PLO) are no longer eligible for this ad after their release. Within Fata, this role is
perceived by some as constituting «social and humanitarian approach to the prisoner question that cludes
the political, an all the more so as, since the Second Intifada, che PA has rarely managed to negotiate their
release. Ths political marginalization of detainces has thos been more acute for Fatah members in the sense
that it has come from their own eamp, and in which chey have become caught up vis-i-vie the other factions
in their party's contradictions and impasses regarding the peace process, It has been exacerbated too by the
“whittling of thie prison branch during the Oslo years, contrary to those of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, whieh
‘organized and asserted s partisan cohesion beyond the walls, and ofthe PFLP prison branch which has
remained steady.



‘The al-Aqsa Intifada (2000-2007). A New Prison Management: Working on Consciences and
Subjectivities: The End of Borders

‘To smash the unarmed civilian uprising of the Fits Intifada, Ytzhak Rabin's polities and slogans called
forthe brutal use of physical violence; thats, mass arrests and torture. With the al-Agsa Intifada (2000
2006), the aim, rather, was to destroy Palestinian consciences, The inhabitants of the West Bank and Gaza
‘were litte involved inthis Second Intifada, which rapidly turned into an armed resistance on the part of all
factions and in particular the religious parties (Hamas and above all Islamic Jad), but also Fatah, wich
Arafat let develop withthe creation of the al- Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades in 2000, It was accompanied by an
unprecedented wave of suicide attacks (martyrdom operations) carried out by the al-Agsa Martyrs’ Brigades
and the military wings of Hamas (Lzz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades) and the Islamic fad (AL-Quas Brigades)
In Apsil 2002, during Operation Defensive Shield, the Istaci authorities militarily reinvaded tovens and
villages in the West Bank to attack the armed groups and the Palestinian security forces, They sieged the PA
institutions and Yasser Arafat, who took refuge in the Mugata’a, the presidental headquarters in Ramallab. Ie
addition tothe highly mediatized Wall, whose construction was launched in 2002 while the one already
condoning off the Gava Strip was reinforced, and which was basically fol giving che iusion of a border
between the West Bank and Isral, dhe West Bank was cut up into about a hundred enclaves, essentially
around Palestinian towns and villages on both sides of the Wal. As it progressively withdrew from the heart
‘of the Palestinian localities, the army deployed a neswork of checkpoints and obstacles destined to keep a
stranglchold on these enclaves and to control Palestinian movement. The Israeli Defense Force's policy of
‘encirclement (keter—Hebrew) constituted what it called “territorial ell” and isolated the Palestinian towns
and villages from each other. Tis was added to Osl’s territorial division into Areas A, B, and C. The Gaza
Strip constituted one of these cells, with the strictly surveilled and restricted entey and exit of goods and
‘people, which became even tighter with the blockade introdaced in 2007 when Hamas took over. With the
al- Aqsa Intifada, che Isracli leaders adopted the idea tha the solution to the conflit was military, not
politcal. The hegemony of a military solution translated into new particulasly violent military strategies and,
in the post Second Intifada period, into the fall redeployment of territorial, military, and instivational
‘mechanisms, Redavin after the Fist Intifada, the 1967 bordesines were dismantled, Aer 2002, along with
closures, the IDF's regular incursions and targeted assassinations, mass arests permitted the management of
the Palestinian enclaves from afar. For che Israeli government, the aim was no longer a negotiated solution
‘but to manage the conflict while pursuing the colonization of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, Control
was projected onto the territory ofthe other, well beyond the so-called separation Wall

(One ofthese mechanisms was the deployment ofa veri prison web inthe Palestinian Tetris and
particularly in the West Bank. Mass incarceration took off again, It was nonetheless accompanied by the
systematic elimination of the uprising’ politcal and miliary leaders through targeted assassinations, In Gaza,
bombardments and assassinations were favored over incarceration. With the unilateral disengagement from
‘Gaza in 2005 (the complete withdrawal of setlers and the arms), the Israeli authorities had ess possbiliey of
arresting the inhabitants of Gaza, accentuating the difference of treatment with the West Bank. Since, Gazan
detainees have never represented more than 15% of all politcal prisoners. Many have served their sentences
and others were released in the Shalit exchange atthe end of 2011, Around 10) among the Gavan detainees
‘were incarcerated before 2005. Their number stood at 200 on July 14, 2022, thats less than 5Y% of the total
number of prisoners,

Seriously undermined by the Oslo period, prison leadership Found itself Facing the massive influx of new
generation, some with no partisan background, and with distinct mentalities and politcal culture; they
struguled to integrate them while, at the same time, few elders were sill behind bars and the major al-Aqsa
Intifada leaders were not sent to prison but mostly killed. Moreover, contrary to the Firs, this uprising had
ro unified command, Only intermediate leaders and those wanted for their at times chaotic patticipation in
the Intifica found themselves in prison, With the opening of new prisons, the longest standing detainees
‘were dispersed to stop them training new prisoners, while others did not sufficiently take the measure of the
role they should have played vis-i-vs the young artvals, This breakdown in generational transmission and
lack of guidance accelerated the weakening ofthe Prisoners’ Movement.

With the Intifada, che Isrcli-Paestinian coordination established by Oslo imploded. The principles of
new penology penetrated the Istch prison system, in which the roe ofthe intelligence services (the Shin Bet
and the Prison Intelligence Division) became ever more pervasive overtime, This new penology is indeed
based on risk management, preventative detention, and mass surveillance. It sims to neutralize, rather than to
transform or rehabilitate peuple considered dangerous. Iti, inthis sense, post-diseiplinary

From 2,085 people in April 1999, the number of those detained by the army or Shabas reached over 9,000
‘in 2006-2007. Between October 2000 and November 2000, 69,000 Palestinians were imprisoned,

In 2002, Nagab prison (Kisiot) was re-opened to manage the lood of arrests, and the Ofer military camp
was created in Betunia, near Ramallah. In southern Istael, the new Ramon prison—an extension of Nafha
prison— opened its doors in 2006, Other recent faites housed the security detainees (Hadarim,
inaugurated in 1999, ot Jalbu"s—Gilbos—in 2004), while older prisons were modernized in this period when.
the entre penitentiary poliey toward the Palestinians was being resteuctared,

With the Oslo Accords, ll dhe army-run Israeli prisons in the West Bank and Gaza were relocated with
the othets inside Israels pre-1967 borders, Only the new Ofer prison remained in Arca C of the West Bank
‘This transfer above all concerned the men’s prisons, women having already been incarcerated inside Israel
for longer. Furthermore, these establishments were integrated into Israels civilian prion system (Shabas)
under the supervision of the Ministry of Internal Security, Begun in 2002-2003, this integration ofthe
‘Occupied Territories’ security prisons and prisoners into Shabas’ fold was completed in 2009,

"The integration into Israe’s prison system formalized the ethno-national Palestinian and Arab)
dimension of the security prisoner eategory, The detention tights and duties i implied were defined by
‘Shabas regulations, albeit without them formal
dlistingushing them from the common law prisoners with whom they often now cohabited in the same
facilites. In 2007, security detainees represented 45% of all prisoners, The decision to clasify a detainee in
the “security prisoner” category is the responsibilty of the prison warden and the prison’ intesnal
intelligence service afer consultation of their legal file and in coordination with the Shin Bet. Ie entails
drastically limited rights, which are regulasy curtailed depending on the Isracli/Palestinian poiial situation:
visits have remained limited tothe immediate family since 1996 (parents, children, spouses, siblings), and
their number is limited to a vist a fortnight Since 2004, they imperatvely take place behind a glass windows,
speaking through the intercom, Detainees have no telephone access, exeept inthe event ofa family death
‘when one fiftcen-minute calls allowed (this has since changed following the May 2019 hunger strike). They









y becoming & legal provision, It was a question of


are allowed no authorized exits their daily movements are more closely monitored, they are the object of
regular reports thae the prison’ intelligence service makes to the police and the Shin Bet, and they are
subjected to a whole host of individual and collective punitive measures. With a view to managerial
efficiency, this categorization is above all intended to facilitate the running of prison facilities by regrouping a
‘ype of prisoner (adult and minor) whois considered unlikely to change and to be echabiltated, and who has



almost no access to social services of sentence adjustments of parole

"The management of secutty prisoners by Shabas has contributed to ratifying the annexation of the West
Bank, to erasing the borders with Israel, and to the control of the Gaza Strip. Ie denies detainees the rights
inherent to civilians in a context of occupation, infringing the provisions of the 4th Geneva Convention,
according to which occupied populations must remain on their own territory, while atthe same time not
sranting them that relating to prisoners of war as defined in the 3rd Convention, thereby rendering
Palestinian detainees’ julia status indeterminate

In Istac, placing the military prisons under Shabas control was publicly justified by ts professional
‘competence and its ability to better manage this number of prisoners in the aim of modemizing and building
new prisons; in the humanitarian motive of improving detention conditions; and by the need to end the
‘exception thatthe military prison system constituted. However, other logies were at pla: atthe time run by
Avi Dichter, who beeame the Minister of Internal Security in 2006, the intelligence services played a key roe.
‘They offically became members of che Shabas Executive Board allowing them to fully participate in
decisions. They inspired a new prison management of political prisoners instigated in 2003/2004 onvards.
‘This unprecedented political rationale of prison management had an economic side to iin the quest for a





greater cost-fficieney capable of sustaining an all-out prison system while at the same time reducing its cost
{na neoliberal perspective. The humanitasian discourse that went with this new catcetal polities contributed
to reformulating the modalities of the Oceupation, masking the violence of its control mechanisms and
-humanizing them—or at least appeating to. This approach, known as “humanitarianism” or “strategie
‘humanitarianism,” developed strongly inthe army and the Shin Betas ofthe early 2000s, based on programs
such as “Another Life", The integration ofa humanitarian discourse and certain practices and thus,
accordingly, ofan opposition eo the Occupation —that represented by many of the NGOs and Israeli
activists who demand the minimum respect of Palestinian rights—facltated the reformulation of control
‘The goal was to make the al-carceral less costly in political terms by normalizing it, ust lke other central
mechanisms of the Occupation, such as checkpoints, The “checkpoint ‘civilizaion"™ atthe so-called border
—that is, along the Wall—where checkpoints have been transformed into “crossing points” resembling
aisport terminals, and their privatization and use ofa service voeabulary in their funetioning, have indeed,
participated in this,

In the words ofthe military experts, the aim, then, was to invisibilize the Occupation in the eyes of Israeli
society and the international community. These mechanisms of control have been made “softer,” less
‘ostensibly violent, and thus more acceptable politically. Making them commonplace has made them more
casly entrenched.

2004, The Hunger Strike as a Test, Act Il. The Fractalization of Control and Fragmenting of the
Collective

‘Walid Daka isa prison intellectual, He was born in 1961, He has been living behind bats for over chy years,
in what he described on a card that his wife, Sana, gave to me in April 2010 as a “parallel ime""—that of
before the fll ofthe communist loc, the first Gulf War, Arab satellite channels, ell phones, and the
internet He was sentenced to life in prison for his participation in the kidnapping and murder of soldier
Moshe Tamam, He was imprisoned in 1986 atthe age of twenty-four, He is an Israeli citizen and, because of
this, has not been released in any ofthe politcal exchanges and releases Ip 2012, his sentence was
‘commuted to thirty-seven years in detention. Since, his lawyer Mikhail Sfard has requested that it be reduced


‘bya third, which is rately granted to security detainees. He has done the rounds ofall the prison facilities. He
‘has above all spent time in Hadarim, Gilboa, and Natha, where Israel Palestinians are most often regrouped,
along with those from Jerusilem and Golan Syrians, two tertoties officially annexed by the State of Israc in
1980 and 1981, respectively. He publishes texts in collective works and inthe press, notably in Fas al-Magal,
the newspaper of the Tajamu’, a party he is close to. He obtained his Masters in Political Sciences at the Tel
Aviv Open University while in prison, He teaches in detention alot and supervises hie co-detainces’
university studies. He has inspired exhibitions and the play A Parallel Time, which provoked an outery in
Israel because it presents Walid Daka and his cll companions’ human experience when they are wsally
portrayed as monstrous terrorists. When I met Sana again in October 2014, he was working on two books —
fone in Hebrew and the other in Arabie—for the publishing house of the Arab Center for Research and
Policy Studies un by Azmi Bishars,

In Consonsnss Molied o the Re-lenifcaton of Tort, a 2009 text inspired by Naomi Klein's shock
doctrine, he analyzes the violent shock that Operation Defensive Shield (2002) and is aftermath represented,
then the failure ofthe 2004 hunger strike as means used by the Israel authorities to “shape consciousness,”
in the words ofthe Military Chief of Staff Moshe Yaalon. Walid Daka describes the measures deployed to
‘break the politieal prisoners’ organization and collective values, which were avantgarde in the militant and
nationalist struggle in an attempt to destroy the foundations and politcal resistance of Palestinian society. He
‘considers priton to be a laboratory for policies instigated in the Territories. Above all, he highlights the
parallels between Inside and Outside in the mechanisms used to separate Palestinians from one another, to
fragment, isolate, and individualiz. The aim have been indeed no longer to break Palestinian bones, but
rather to change mindsets by working on the production of subjectviies both Inside and Outside. A
fractalization of the modes of control and government ofthe Palestinians can be noted; that is, they are
reproduced according to similar modalities indifferent places and on different sales.

"The determining event that changed the course of prison management was the brutal ordeal ofthe
August 2004 hunger strike, Ie was triggered intentionally, according to Walid Daks—by the arbitrary,
‘humiliating, and coercive measures taken by the new Shabas Director, Yaakow Gano, in 2003: notably
incessant sniffer dog searchers of prisoners and thet cells, and the installation of glass windows and
intercoms in the visiting rooms to prevent any physical contact with thie families, Previously, the mesh grills.
atleast allowed prisoners to put their hands through to touch their loved ones, The detainces were driven
into launching an open-ended strike even though most of them, who were new to prison, lacked experience.
"This strike took place atthe time thatthe army was repressing che Intifada and as Yasser Arafat and the
‘Territories were besieged. Ie could aot really receive backing from Outside. It lasted between eighteen and
twenty-sic days, depending on the people and places. It remains in prison memory the darkest of stikes. Yet
‘twas the first ime that all the partes agreed on its necessity and that Hamas decided to take partin a hunger
strike, It was observed by over 70% of the prisoners Like Walid Daka, Seitan AI-UIi has deseribed highly
‘organized repression on the part of Shabas and an unprecedented determination not to cede, backed by the
Likoud Minister of Internal Security, Tzabi Hance, with the intention not only of breaking the strike, but
also the leadership. Salt—an ingredient needed to retain body fluids—wastacen away. The strikers were
force fed, lghes were left on day and night, searches were incessant. In order to break the channels of|
transmission of information and to break their morale the strikers were transferred, the leaders isolated, and
visits from families and lawyers suspended. Cut off from the outside worl, they were subjected 10
loudspeaker broadcast of false information and rumors about the leaders “merily eating chocolates,” oF
about Hamas’ intention eo take politcal advantage ofthe movement, and to guards who taunted them by
‘organizing barbecues in the yard

Te was a patent failure and had long-term repercussions I revealed the Prisonets' Movement
‘organizational weakness, as che strike ended chaotically, individually, without coordination and collective
decision-making, While this rout was recognized as being caused by the authorities’ head-on confrontational
strategy, it discredited a leadership on the wane since Oslo and proved to ll the weakening of collective




prison values, It marked consciences and demoralized. Many cttcized the Strike Committee's strategy. It
firstly decided to focus on the localized demands of each penitentiary, although the prisons in the north, and
particularly Hadasim, were more united than those of the south, where the three prisons designated to lead
the movement-namely Eshel (Beer- Sheva), Nafha and Asqalan—were located. Secondly, t did not strictly
follow the inital directives, even though the administration had cut the strikers’ main channels of
‘communication. The leaders decided to stop the movement too soon; they thought that the men, 80% of
svhom were newly incarcerated youth, would not continue for long, Finally, they failed to stop partisan
‘competition forthe leadership of the movement from undermining collective solidaity and, in fine failed to
create the conditions to exist the pressure excrted by Shabas.

[Nome of the requests were met and the strike even represented a regression withthe definitive loss of





‘major gains. The security detainees lost charge of preparing and organizing the kitchens and maintenance
‘work, which was given to common law prisoners in ll che prison facilities, where a minima a common la
prisoners’ wing was reestablished (with the exception of Ofer, duc to it loation in the West Bank). Hitherto
possible via the inmates delivering food, the circulation of information was severely disrupted, as were
effective control, and collective organization.

"The new prison management was thus more easily instigated. The collective isolation measures and
‘watertight separation between the prisons different wings that had started to be putin place—and to which
this strike was opposed —wvere strengthened, The prisons were henceforth hermetically divided into wings
(qussem) of about 120 prisoners, and sometimes even into cells, Circulation and communication between
these wings were prevented, exercise and isting times separated, and the role of the representatives of these

ct units enhanced, Shabas strove to separate them according to status and geographic and social
identities, and to individualize dally life behind bars. The regrouping of prisoners Inside reflected the spatial
fragmentation and isolation in the Occupied Territories. In addition tothe compartmentalization and general





restriction of movement came the more frequent use of punitive measure isolating groups (collective
isolation) and persons Golitary confinement) for long periods. Most ofthe pattisan leaders were thus isolated
from the others and grouped together in Section 3 of Hadarim prison, This section can hold up to 120
detainees in forty cells that house thrce inmates. In 2014, seventy Fatah members were held there, including
Marwan Barghouti who has been thete since 2005 and the veteran prisoner Karim Younis; venty-fve
Hamas affiliates; twenty Islamic Jihad activists and seven PFLP and DFLP members

In addition to the time-old play on partisan divisions, distinctions were introduced according to the
detainees place of residence, and to types of citizenship based on the territorial fragmentation of the
‘Occupied Territories: Palestinian citizens of Israel, Jerusalemite Palestinians, Syrians from the Golan, West
Bank Palestinians, or again Gaza Palestinians. For years, detainees from the Gaza Strip were habitually
{imprisoned in faites in southern Israel: Kesiot (al-Nagab), Ramon, Nafah, Esbel (formerly Beer Sheva
prison), Ohalei Keidar, and Shikma (Asqalan) The 48-Palestnian, citizens of Israel, Jerusalemites, and
Golan prisoners were treated inthe same wa
‘been the ease since 1976, Above al





1nd separated from the others again when that had no longer





they were subdivided agnn into sparate wings or cells according o even



smaller scales of geographic origin, status, and belongings, chercby reinforcing the pre-national soidartes
and interests against which the national movement built itself, Town residents were separated from the
refugees ofthe eamps they were home to (Jenin camp, Balata camp in Nablus, ete), and those from one
town from those from another, chereby fanning local particularisms and at times rival
cities Ramallah, Nablus, Jenin, Hebron, et) that were increasingly
system of contro. At times, villages and even families were separated, In the men's prisons, they were
‘physically separated from the other detainees. Far fewer in number, che women have managed to resist this
‘compartmentaliation,

In addition to its three common law wings, there are now four security wings at Gilboa prison: one
regrouping the Palestinian citizens of Israel, Jerusalemites, nd Golan residents; one those from Gaza a thied,
those from Hebron and Nablus and «fourth whete West Bank Palestinians are held. At the detainees"



between places and
isolated from one another by the Isracli




inikntve, partisan differences have long overlapped with the division ofthe wings. But with the scission
‘between the PA in the West Bank and Hamas who took over in Gaza after the 2006 legislative elections, the
prison and intelligence services adroitly fanned, then insttuionalized the divisions by regrouping in separate
‘wings the secular parties belonging to the PLO, on the one hand—Fatah, the PFLP, the DFLP, and the
‘Communists —and the religious parties, on the other—Hamas and Islamic Jihad,

With the exception ofa few rapidly contained incidents, this fracture was instigated without triggering
violence between prisoners who did not wish tobe separated in this way. The partisan leaders imprisoned
together at Hadarim on the contrary feacted fist by refusing their food and threatening an open conflict with
the administration ifthe separation between the religious parties and PLO were applied to them. Then, in
2006, they dre up the Prisoners’ Document, which ealled for national unity and foregrounded ther specific
identity as prisoners in order to rally together in opposition to these scssions, The superposition of these two.
types of division accentuated the fragmentation; in Nafha prison, there is as a result now a Gaza PLO wing, a
West Bank PLO wing, a Gaza Hamas (and Islamic Jad) wing, and a West Banks Hamas wing. The women
were transferred fora while into two different prisons: Hasharon for the religious parties, and Damon,
further north, re-opened during the Intifada in 2001, for the res.

Brigadier General Yuval Bitton, at present the Head of the Shabas Intelligence Division, was the
‘mastermind behind this policy of collective pulverization In 2018, when the Minister of Internal Security
expressed the eventuality of no longer grouping together detainees by political faction, Yuval Bitton
reiterated this intention during « conference at the Heraliya International Institute for Counter-Terorism

“between each ofthese groups siting in jail there isa burning loathing and hatred, The internal
Palestinian conflict serves our interests and we penctrate precisely these seams and eracks .. Our job isto
deepen these ruptures, not to allow them to connect because when there ea common enemy, ths isthe
factor that unifies the Palestinian people.”

“This new spatial oganization has been prolonged by dispositions aimed at breaking collective modes of |
representation and remodeling interactions with the administration. Here, as in other contests of political
incarceration, prison “attempts to individualize the detainees’ engagement,” there, where on the contrary
“within the collective, the erasure of the singular is fundamental”. Shabas failed to impose this new regulation
‘everywhere and at al eves, but it di affect internal politieal organization, In exch prison, the prison staf?
refused to interact with the General National Committee made up ofthe pattisan onganizations' elected
representatives, o with the Administrative Committees nominated by them, or with the detainees"
representatives, the only ones habiltated to lisse with it. They only interacted with the new spokesmen of
the different regions regrouped in sections, whom the prison services chose from the few names pt forward
by the prisoners. The administration imposed that they met che guards individually, only relayed their
section's requests, and quasi-exclusively personal requests, chercby instigating differentiated living conditions,

‘The maintaining of collective punishments for individual violations, on the other hand, led detainces to
‘mutually contol one another. Walid Daka also describes the banning of all forms of collective celebration of
arrivals, departures, deaths of fiends or relatives, speeches mentioning the situation in Palestine during
Friday sermons, and any national images in cells. Moreover, a policy of constant transfers was instigated ¢o
prevent democratic practices within the Prisoners’ Movement, to undermine carceralctizenships, and to
influence the results of internal elections by opportunely displacing peopl. This also maintained them in a
state of permanent instability inorder to undermine morale and determination, to disorientate, and to
psychologically isolate particularly those considered too active









Isolating Prisoners, Individualizing Daily Life, Breaking Prison Culture: Toward a Neoliberal
Subjectivation

By playing on perpetual change, which perturbs and makes it harder to adapt, and on individual emulation,
>by employing managerial techniques typical of the neoliberal doxa and exacerbating division, the Shabas
intelligence division managed to permeate the workings of earceralcitizenships, coopting many prison
representatives, isolating, and pulverizing entire facets of prison culture. This intelligence division inside the
prison system indeed prides itself on constituting

and contact with the seeuity prisoners." The processes seeking to smash the Palestinian national body
developed mechanisms to individualze life in prison and to isolate detainees, aot only from one another, but
also viei-vis the Outside,



“unique model,” whose mission is “managing dialogve

Premised on the PA's presence, the new Shabss regulations undermined communal rules and living In
the early 1980s, the parties and the Prisoners’ Movement had collectivized the sums sent by families for
‘commissary. Pastsan representatives received the money and distributed it according to needs, while food
‘vas communally pepated in the kitchens, The PA, who took over the distribution of commissary funds in
2003, initally adopted this system by paying sums to justa few attributed prisoners, Shabss then demanded
thae the PA pay these monthly sums to everyone individually. Since 2007, distinct procedures have been
added depending on status: Palestinian citizens of Isral, residents of Jerusalem, the Golan, and nationals
from other Arab states are no longer allowed eo reccve this money directly Iris sen instead to their Families,
‘who give it to them, sometimes late, sometimes in part only, which has widened the gap in prison living
conditions. Above all, however, it has transformed financial management and the communal preparation of
‘meals, especially a, after losing control ofthe kitchens, detainees, who often refuse the food made by the
Israeli common law prisoners whom they do not trust, installed electric hobs in thet cells to cook food
ought in commissary. Most ofthe ime, however, people compensate for this inequality by sharing at cell
level





Since the fallure ofthe 2004 stike, physical distance inthe visting rooms is now the rule; visits take place
[behind a window, communicating via intercom, Only children under the age of six (now under cight) were
allowed to approsch detainees, to embrace or kiss their fathers or mothers, Moreover, the individual or
collective suspension of family ists has long been the most frequently used punitive measure. They are
suspended in the event of a confit in prison involving one or several detainees (a hunger strike, for
‘example, or inthe event of a change inthe political and miltary situation Outside. During the First Intifada,
visits were forbidden in all the prisons. During the Second Intifada, they were suspended again for everyone
from 2000 to 2005,

‘The bans on visits were henceforth applied to distinct groups according to local, regional, and partisan
criteria, again duplicating the fragmentation set in motion Outside according to a fractal loge. For Nablus
families, a town where involvement in the armed struggle was widespread and repression long and violent,
visits were only re-authorized again in 2007, Families from Gaza have been collectively deprived of visiting
rights since Hamas took over and conjoitly in response to the kidnapping of soldier Gilad Shalid in 2006,
For Gaza families, the Israci government fora time considered the idea—rejected by all the prisoners, even
though some wives had unsuccessfully requested this—of making visits vinual by videocall. Gilad Shal’s
release in 201 di not automatically lead tothe reintroduetion of visits, however. They were progressively
reestablished as of july 2012 following the major April-May 2012 hunger strike albeit limited to only
‘parents, spouses, and children under ten, and to only one visit every two months, not every Fortnight like
families’ “normal” visting rights in the West Bank,

"The visting regime progressively became governed by a system of privileges that has essenally broken
up, and chus pulverized, the collective. After Hamas members’ kidnapping and murder of three young
settlers inthe West Bank in June 2014, visits were suspended for everyone for a month and a half. They were
instigated again frst only for Fatah members, then, following a complaint filed by Israel and Palestinian
[NGOs (HaMoked, Addameet), were restored for sympathizers ofthe other factions, bt less often: once
‘every 80 months, like for Gaza inhabitants. They were banned again in 2018 for Hamas detainees on
account of the Fact thatthe two Israeli nationals held in Gaza had no visitng rights, and as their exchange
negotiations had come grinding to hae. Following a court application, the prison services modified the
regulation to be able to legally apply this kind of differentiation. Visits have since been officially allowed









2
‘every two months for security prisoners Shabas reserving itself the right to grant them more often to certain
people or groups,

According to Walid Daka, control by material comfort has developed asa means of shaping detainees?
consciousness in an effort to mold a new generation of Palestinians. Managerial and neoliberal techniques of
isolation, detainees’ material improvements, and comfort have indeed been used to forge more



individualistic, more passive, or even more powerless subjectivitiesvis-i-vis the new modalities of contro;
there where politcal prisoners had previously aways constituted and represented single collective body
rooted in a nationalist militant prison culture

With the modernization and construction of news carceral faites, detention conditions rapidly changed
in the prisons where over a dozen prisoners used to be crammed into cells and slept on mattresses on the
floor. This was notably the ease at Ofer, Ksiot, the new Hadarim wing (Section 3), and the recent Rimonin
building for minors, who had previously been detained in deplorable conditions above the Hasharon
‘women’s prison, The buildings of the US-style Hadavim wing are light, divided into quite spacious rooms
fully equipped with TVs, DVD. players fans and hot and cold water fountains, Some wings have a kitchen
and even a washing machine, They ate designed so chat che detainees ean live there in independent wings and
take charge of daily life as they sce fit This control by material comfort was fist made avilable to all the
factions’ political leaders regrouped and collectively isolated in Section 3 of Hadarim, notably Marwan
Barghouti of Fatah, Abdul Khaleg al-Natshch of Hamas, Bassam al Saad of Islami fad, Abdul Rahim
Mallouh of the PFLP, and Mustafa Badarnch of the DFLP—all signatories of the Prisonets' Document,
which they collectively wrote there.

"The authorities sought to sway the prison leadership in this way oto encoutage the emergence of
another leadership aligned with the desires of the intelligence services, and in urn eapable of influencing
Palestinian society. The leaders were not however the only ones concerned, even if these amenities are far
from being wniformly applied to all or in all establishments, The inequality of treatment towasd certain
‘people or groups, deliberately singled out by che prison services, is indeed another factor generating suspicion
and dissension, It has helped elaborate a system of privileges that was previously virally inexistant, and that
is characteristic of total institutions, which, as Erving Goffman has shown, affects personalities by focusing
attention on access to these advantages, while atthe same time mentally and physically subjugating them to
the prison staf (1979) Prison mobility, being moved closer to where thei families live and access to
studying atthe Tel Aviv Open University ate all leverage points inthis system, For Shabss, university courses
are nota right, but a privilege strict conditioned by behavior. Authorization can be withdeswn at any time,
‘even in the middle ofa course, meaning thatthe year andthe costly study Fees are lost. Access, For that
‘matter, requies significant financial means, not initially covered by the PA, which over ime developed its
‘own educational aid system for detainees. From being marginal and politically contested, higher education
‘became highly demanded in this petiod and enrolments multiplied,

Finally, prison modemization was based on a new carceral technology that tend to invisibilize control
and the deprivation of liberty by putting the detainces before faceless spaces and prison apparatuses, and less
and less before guards. Here, the detainees now shut their own doors before the duty guard activates the
centralized system to lock the hundred or so cell doors, Others live in an “independent” space without secing
gears, do their own laundry, and go “freely” about their daily occupations, Furthermore, these new
technologies offer the added advantage of reducing detention costs in the logie of neokineral economies.

With Shabas takeover of all prisons during Commissioner Ganot’s mandate (2003-2007), the number of
detainees doubled, rising from 12,000 to 24,000, while personnel rose from 3,800 to 7,000. The aim was 0
avoid an even more substantial increase in prison staff, to limit salary eosts by allowing the employment of
less trained, less qualified, and thus less well-paid people among the younger and more precarious fringes of
the population, notably mobilizing a thousand young women and men doing their miliary service. This
‘opened the door toa rapid and visible feminization ofthe guards which changed the face and the perception
‘of confinement.
"The new prison management thus strove to shape politial prisoners subjectvitis by shifting from the
uniguelyrepression-based control that characterized the previous periods to dispositions that also draw on
‘more productive facets of power by eliciting forms of adhesion: in other words, a shif from subjecivation
through violence tothe attempt to Forge more neoliberal subjectvitis. I draw here on Michel Foucault's very
carly analysis of neoiberalism as a world vision, as a global project that is not only economic but above all
politcal, a“biopoliteal modernization” that profoundly transforms society and the relations that individuals
Ihave with themselves, no longer through disciplinary processes but based on an “optimization of difference,”
‘of strtification and competition, and of emulation—a project that is elaborated thanks to the adhesion and



participation ofall This political earceral management is, in certain respects, inscribed in a “postdiscplinary
for governmental prison” model, as analyzed by Gilles Chantraine, who draws on the work of Zygmunt
Bauman on Pelican Bay State Prison: 2 pure instrument of neutralization which, in its ultimate form, would
sce “rights he more respected, risks hyper-evaluated, secu
influence of leaders reigned in, detainees emulated, their autonomy controlled, thee privileges meted out,
thie hopes fragmented, and ther solidarity shut down,”

Former prisoners have all described a period that saw the abandoning of values, of solidarity, of the
shared principles and ethics of the struggle Inside and Ovtsde, and thus ofthe Prisoners’ Mavement—a
{quasi-complete loss of ies culture, the root eause of which che attribute to Oslo, For Walid Daks, who from
hhis position behind bars focuses his analysis on the role of Shabas, the al-Agsa Intifada marked the beginning
(of this transformation, isin reality the succession ofthese two periods that resulted inthis situation, He
describes the psychological malaise crested by a material comfort chat has progressively invsbilized the

sed communications reinforced, the



domination and violence of incarceration, and the difficulties in repositioning oneself vs-i- vis a new faceless
ccarceral management:

“Despite a certain material comfort, one ofthe prisoners spontaneously and simply described the state of
the prisoners values: “In the past, we were al together, now we are ll against each other.” This sentence
sums up the entire Palestinian politcal scene, but the contrast between relatively good living conditions and
the fecling of a deterioration in morale comes primaily From the prisoners inability to identify the
‘oppression they are facing, Because it does not appear to them directly ina brutal form, they
determine the means to oppose it”

"This malic is also induced by che inability to renounce it due tothe acute difference between the heroic





figure ofthe prisoner and a politcal prison culture unchanged in national and societal representations and
prison literature, and daly life in prison, where, according to Walid Daka, this culture almost no longer exists.
A contradiction thats atthe root of the powerlessness that detainces feel when secking the means to resist,
this disintegration, Daka saw this in the lack of mobilization during the 2009 Gaza War, and in some
prisoner’ tendency to focus on themselves or on activities far removed from national preoccupations. Sport
and the long hours spent watching TV shows have eaten into the time wsed for political tsining, cultural
activities, and reading, which previously constituted the central axis of prison socialization. According to him,
the mostread books have become astrology, personal development books, and novels, and he interprets the
‘multiplication of university courses strictly i the perspective of individual or professional mobility.

‘Tamer, Firas, and Sami. The al-Agsa Generation and the Next: In-betweenness and the World of
[Networks Beyond Walls: Political Ruptures and Fragmentation

Ap#il 2010, Ihave an appointment with Fadia, whom I met shortly before in a lawyer's offie. Divorced,
she is not adapting well to her release from prison, unable to meet her son’s needs, trapped in her family
although she is now nearly forty years old, A nurs, she was incarcerated in 1999 because the ambulance she
‘vas in was transporting arms, She claims she had nothing to do with i, but was sentenced to three years. We
have arranged to meet at Zyriab Café; she wanted to introduce me to one of het fiends, Tamer, 24 years old,
single, has picked up his Political Science stadies at Bitzcit University again following his release four months
2

cater aftr four and a half years in prison, His poise and build are impressive For someone so young, He is
swearing a gray polyester suit, a dark shirt without atc, black shoes ike the Fatah leaders of the previous
generation. He calls me “Doctors” and addresses me with an old-fashioned deference due to my academic
status and the fact that I am his elder, He describes himself as politician, He was a member of Fatah and is
still so in his heart, but is no longer active in a party that

“ike Hamas for thae matter, has become a “company”. Abu Mazen [President Mahmoud Abbas] and
Salam Fayyad [atthe time Prime Minister] have “Kile” ll the paris, have tured them into businesses, and
are only interested in the economy even though there ie still an occupation going on, The moment they [the
Israelis] decide to shu everything down, to stop everything, everything stops, Hamas is the same, a they
Ihave become an Authority [Sulta] in Gaza, and that beings the end, Pm against this office government
[makati The Sulta [Palestinian Authority] and Fatah are wo separate things, The Sula stops ws from
resisting, and there ae also lot of Fatah members in Palestinian prisons [ran by the PA in the West Bank
After my release, they eame to my house to search all over to take my arms. Today, no one does anything for
the eause anymore, but, youll sec, in afew year’ time there will bea change, 'm not only talking about a
third Intifada, bu youTl see. When Arafat was besieged in the Mugata’a, I was among the group of young
people who came to defend him and I spent che whole siege with him. For me, he was a leader, a great man
(Gabit). Everyone loved him, whatever the party, Fatah, Hamas, Islamic Jad, and all those who met him. We
zhad very litle food in the Mugata’a beeause of the siege. I brought him an apple tha he ate, then a woman,
‘brought him some soup. He refused it saying he'd already had an apple, she insisted saying he was out leader
[cl bue he didn’ wane,

Task why he was sent to prison

“I was changed for having received money from abroad to support the Intifada and the al-Aqsa Marys"
Brigades. was putin isolation for quite slong time with about rwenty other people. Iwas at Nafha in che
[Neger with Barghouti. In prison, there's no big man [kabir] or litle man [daghir], everyone is the same. At
the end of each day, iis an eightoen-yearold gil who shuts all of our doors, There was one who [often
talked to who was studying Eeonomics; I used to help her. I often spoke with the guards. Some were doing
their military service, others were Shabas employees; they too were shut up all day long, But when they
centered our cells for the searches [taftish, not a word. They were professional. In prison, there's a bad side
and of course you only have one desire—to get out—but there’ also a good side: we were all together, we
supported one another, we never left anyone alone, sad, We would talk to him, say,

(unadid, you are strong, you have done things for your coun

He lived the Hamas/Fatah scission on the Inside. He says that it was not that percepsibl, that there were
rio “physical” battles that the prisoners remained together in some faites, and that in others, the Isracis
separated them for security reasons, After having unofficially followed clases at the Tel Aviv Open
University dhrough the intermediary of another prisoner who translated for him because he did not receive
authorization for security reasons (itakhon—Hebrew) and because his Hebrew was aot good enough to be
able t follow alone, he went back to his studies on his release,

“Prisoners only pay half the course fees, ut for some, like me, it was totally fee beeause I had
responsibilities on behalf ofthe students before at university. After, I should have got ajob as a ditector
general (mudi ‘am in one of the PA ministries because I had studied, but I refused; I don’t want to work in
an office, I would like to become a university lecturer to teach my students the right things, I was shocked
‘when I came out the young women, the way they dress the money, the ears. That [he points to 2 group of
young women leaving the café, not wearing hijab in jeans and sgh tops), tha’s Ramallah I won't say any
‘more because we won't agree, but we are an occupied people and we are Muslim. During the Intifada, we
stopped bars or shops from openly selling alcohol. I am shocked that so few youths know the history oftheir
‘country, and where they come from when they live ina camp. Ie wasn’t like that in Syria, where my family is
[after aking refuge in Syria, they, ike Tamer, now live in che Jalazone camp near to Ramallah. All they think
bout is the latest cell phone, a new shirt to buy, both the young men and women. And we, we Fought, we











soa area combatant





We sang too nationals, resistance songs,




‘went to prison for that, because it’s forthe people that we did what we did, There are big marches on
Prisoners’ Day [April 17], but I get the impression tha there's only one day a year when people think about
them,

With the alga Intifada, Fatah members were sent back to prison en masse after having for a while
‘become less numerous in many faites than Hamas. They took back control of leadership and everywhere,
the prisoners’ general representative became Fatah-afiliated again

‘The separation between religious and secular partes Inside occurred in the wake ofthe Hamas/Fatah
rupture following the 2006 legislative eletions. Inthe summer of 2007, this ed to the existence of two
‘competing authorities: one in the West Bank presided over by Mahmoud Abbas, and the other in Gaza
presided by Ismail Hanich of Hamas. This major politcal rift translated in detention into a spatial separation
decided on by the prison services, It also often led to the election of two general representatives in each
prison instead of one—one for the PLO secular parties, and the other forthe religious parties—when, in
places where it was possible, they fora time no longer visited nor spoke to one another. In April 2007, of the
9,250 detainees under its responsibility, Shabas listed 4,457 Fatah members (48%), 421 PFLP members
(4.5%) and 113 DFLP members (1,3%), on the one hand; and 2,389 Hamas members (26%) and 1312
Islamic Jihad members (14, 2%), on the other, 516 remained unaflited (5,64).

‘This separation did not, however, follow the political fault Hines between those in favor of Oslo and the
parties opposed to the Aecords (he PFLP, the DFLP, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad). This further weakened the
internal organization. Farid of Hamas told me that at Meguido, chen, the PFLP had wanted to join the wings
‘where the religious parties were housed, a move that the prison warden refused, The factions that had
refused the Accords were on the whole in favor of all forms of combat, including armed strggle. But with
the al-Aqsa Intifada, this tactieal choice divided even within Fatah—a disagreement to which was added the
Fatah leaders vying for influence as they sought to assert themselves after Yasser Arafat's death in 200

Fatah members entering detention found few elders and a weakly organized partisan life Inside, contrary
to Hamas, Isic Jihad, or PFLP miltanes. As opponents, Islamic Jihad and Hamas and to a lesser degree
the PFLP had maintained their presence since the Fes Intifada, Well-versed in a constantly scmi-clandestine
partisan organization, they had conserved disciplined prison branches, whereas Fata fled to reestablish its
‘own, prey to rivalry and dissension, losing its ability to take unitary decisions, New Fatah prisoners indeed
‘belonged to different and sometimes rival groups the Fatah leaders involved inthe al-Agsa and ‘Tanzim (the
‘pary’s military organization) mobilizations, and inthe al-Agsa Martyrs’ Brigades, such as Marwan Barghouti
‘others belonging to the party’s security services who had joined the Uprising; younger local leaders engaged
in the movement and seckinga place in the party; and finally, barely politicized armed youth having joined
the Intifada, Fatah's decentralized structure was Further reinforced after the arrest of Marwan Barghout
Some refused to give up thei arms and to abandon resistance once the PA, ran by Mahmoud Abbas, had





reestablished complete security cooperation with the Isc authorities, and actively participated in crushing
the armed strugele in ts ranks and in the West Bank by reforming the security services under the auspices of
the United States (the Dayton Plan) after 2007, Armed bands developed, ata junction between resistance
actions, delinguene;
‘belongings, or even strictly personal interests, affiliated for some to Palestinian intelligence service cadres oF
to rival, then dissident figures within Fatah, like Mohamed Dablan, especially the refugee camps, such as
the Balata camp in Nablus. Fatah was thus “undermined by its divisions (reurnees locals; the young/ol

.nd mafia tacking. At times they were “simple expressions of localisms, clan





partisans opponents to the armed struggle) and by some of ts cadres” competing appetites for power”. Some
‘were incarcerated in Israel, while others began to find themscives inthe PA prisons, along with Hamas,
Islamic Jihad, then let-ving opponents. The limited political socialization of some of these new detainees,
first linked to the world of arms, contributed to the disintegration ofthe prison branch of Fatah, which was
riddled by political divergences, bt also personal rivalry, clienelst interests, and diverse trafficking.

Firas worked on the Prisoners’ Document for Hamas, He ie Palestinian citizen of Isral belonging to the
Islamic Movement in 48 Palestine (Israel close to Hamas, and one ofthe leaders of this partyin detention.
He evoked the problem of leadership, particularly within Fatah
“Toda
[he was referring to the multiplication of individual or small group hunger strikes, mosty to protes again

‘he qui [leader] is no longer a «id. In the Prisoncts’ Movement, everyone leads their own strike



administrative detention orders), When you take a decision, it ne longer applies to everyone. The only one
‘who can take a party decision and that i applied is Hamas, There are disputes, bt they don’s explode the
party. Why? Ie’ the result of Oslo, the al-Agsa Intifada and the new generation. Marwan Barghoutlis a
national leader [quid watani] Outside, but Inside? I don’t think so, beeause there are divisions between the
northern Fatah and the southern one, between its military branch and the rest, ete. Oslo weakened them. The
PELP, wich was the most solid has major financial problems because it receives money from the PLO. The



PLO opens and closes the Boodgates to put pressure on this party and the resuleis that they have difficulty
in taking common political decisions, [ved in the same cell as Ahmad Saad, and [realy respect thie party
\Weall grew up with the PFLP and here fin the Palestinian community in Israel] with Albna al-balad85 [ovo
ideologically close parties founded in the late 1960s/early 19704]. The PFLP played a major historieal role
in our politcal eulture. We were young [Fits was forty-five a the time of our discussion}, we were all in



ANbpa al-Balad, we were immersed in it, and it’s the same for the PFLP.”
"The eivaley and lack of unified command between those involved in the Uprising (¢he various groups of
the Fatah camp and Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and PFLP partisans), coupled with the Istci repressive apparatus,
‘which constituted territorial units cue of from one another, accentuated the formation of extremely localized
political and mili

‘on detention,
After 2007, the generation that joined that of al-Agsa Inside was all the more disparate a it was even less

iances. Regional leaders competed with the partisan representatives, which had effects





affiited to partisan system contested on every level by the youth and the new forms of civil societ
‘mobilization that constantly grew. As of 2009, it was thus the activists and youth from villages involved in
the peaceful popular resistance who were most often attested, In the village of Nabi Saleh, wich has a
‘population of approximately 600 inhabitants, over 100 people were sentenced between 2009 and 2012, not
counting the foreign and Israeli activist who took par in the weekly aetions. This movement, which re-
localized the resistance and which asserted its nonviolence, was born in 2003 with the ercation of village
‘committe and the launching of their frst demonstrations, It spread throughout the West Bank in the
villages affected by the Wall and the setlements, such as Bilin, Nilin, Beit Umar, Kuft Qaddum, Nabi Saleh,
or the Jordan Valley. Through weekly demonstrations and innovative ations (performances, the ex-ihilo
creation ofthe Bab al-Shams village neat to Jerusalem in January 2013 and that of Ein Hileh in the Jordan
‘Valley ip 2014), which sought to win the battle of images and rally international opinion, these village
committees defended local rights to resources, to cultivating the land, to circulation, and so on—in other
swords, the “same rights" thatthe Isticlis enjoy in ade facto common space, Few claimed a pastisan
belonging.

assem Tamimi from the village of Nabi Salch—one of its lading figures at present along with his
laughter Ahed—was a Fatah member of the militant Firs Intifada generation, He was born in 1967, He has
‘bec administratively detained « dozen times. In 2011, he was sentenced to thirteen months in prison and a
seventeen-month suspended sentence for his role a a leader of the popular resistance. In keeping with the
methods employed by the military courts to erash these mobilizations, he was incriminated by two fourteen
year-olds whom he supposedly urged to throw stones, A civil sevant atthe Ministry of the Interior, his
Fatah affiliation has become distended over time, as he is citicl of the eonflcts and the tendeney to put
party interests before national questions,

“Las Fatah, but now Pm frst and foremost Palestinian, When I agree with a direction taken
1m Fatah; when I share Hamas’ position, 'm Hamas. Today, the problem is thatthe party has become more





Jmportant than the cause it defends, When
referring hereto incidents that took place in March 2011 daring the youth protests of the short-lived

ah men come out to beat people in demonstrations [he is

Palestinian Spring take to the stets even Tam Slt employee.”
He is ertieal of politcal choices that have all aed: both the Oslo Accords, whieh he was never in favor
‘of, and the armed strugele, which he rejects at present, He embodies another vision of resistance, one
inseribed in the prolongation of the civil society mobilizations ofthe Fist Indfada, as opposed to the armed
Al-Aqsa Intifada, Hei in alignment with the BDS movement's vision, Like a grossing proportion of the
‘population —albeit still the minority, around 30%—be has gone from the aim of national Hberation and a
two-state solution tothe demand for citizen rights in a single State. Others refuse to pronounce on the
alternative between one or two States, which they consider out of their rang, to foeus on local soveregnties;
some envisage an Israel-Palestine confederation, adopting a post State, or even post-national perspective,
"This represents a profound strategic rupture in militant stances in Palestine and challenges Faeah’s poiial
line and even that of the other partes and does so beyond partsun logies and discipline

Since 2013-2014, demonstrations and riots have continued to spread in the West Bank and in Jerusalem.
In June 2014, the murder of sisteen-year-old adolescent, Mohammad Abu Khdeir, burned alive by young,
setters, deeply searred minds. Ie was followed by the war that the Israeli army launched on Gaza in the
summer of 2014, right in the middle of Ramadan, Another attack on efvilians perpetrated by extremist
settlers known asthe Hilltop Youth on July 31, 2013, in the wllage of Douma, near to Nablus, consteuted
another deep collective shock. A firebomb was thrown into the house ofthe Dasealbsheh family in the
‘midale of the night as they slept, Both parents and ther eighteen-month-old aby died from their burns,
Protests were accompanied by series of ram attacks Camelich al-hadeth— sing) against Israelis in Fall 2014,
then, in Fall 2015, knife attacks amelie ta'n—sing.), and, wery rarely, gun attacks perpetrated inthe city of
Jerusalem by often young Palestinians with no specific politiealafiiation. A majority indeed acted alone;
‘others dissimulated their membership in order to avoid mass arrests in thir parties. Some factions a
‘posteriori claimed responsibilty for aetions that they had nos planned in order to hide their loss of influence
and theie powerlessness to occupy a place of resstance—and this even going agsnst the partisan line anc
‘ethos, The PFLP thus ended up honoring as martyrs two young men who caried out knife and ax attack in
the synagogue of one of Mohammad Abu Khdeit’s murderers. They did not belong to the PELP, this pasty
rejects all operations against civilians, but theie uncle, a PFLP militant, managed inspite of the waves it made
‘internally to gain them this posthumous recognition

Mas arrests began again in 2014, According to Israeli police igures, 13,505 West Bank Palestinians and
3,891 from Ease Jerusalem were arrested in 2014, After having fallen to 4,81 at che end of December 2011,
the number of security detainees rose to 6,391 in late 2015. Many young detainees from this time ofthe Small
Uprising (habbeh) thus found themselves with no pantisun identification on ther arsval in prison, They were
avtomatially tegrated into the setions of the majority party, considered the “mother oxganization” (owm
al-fasayl), thats, Fath, Aecording to Shabas’ classification, atthe end of 2015, 574 remained unaffiliated
(ie., 9%), Non-partsans listed by the prison services thus doubled between 2007 and 2015—a minimalist
proportion, as circumstantial, post detention, or lapsed affiliations are not visible, This tendeney has been
‘confirmed, While the proportion of Fatah and Hamas members had hardly changed in relation to 2007 —
respectively, a half and a quarter of the 5,500 politial pisoners—at the end of 2018, that ofthe other
factions had fallen (from 20 to 15%), and 10% were unafliliaed, The remaining 1% declared that they
belonged tothe Islamic State orto other Jadlist groups to have emenged on the international stage.

In addition to the dificulky of integrating a youth that claimed to answer to no authority other than
fighting the Occupation in diverse, unstructured ways was that ofthe presence inthe prisons of a minority
haming allegiance to al- Queda, then Daesh (ISIS) for most ofthe Palestinian citizens of Israel, whom Shabas
dl not authorize as having theit own organization, Hamas refused to integrate them into its prison branch,
given ts confic with Salaf-ihadist opposition in Gaza, They therefore joined Fatah, Islamie Jihad, or
remained apart, Fins told me:

“When I was in prison, Daesh wasn yet present it was al-Qaeda, We didn’ want thems I wovldn’t
willingly approach «snake, They ate takfir,)3 Sala jihadists who want to divide Islam. For me, they are
aposeates [qufar], their thinking is diabolic[shaytani they aren’ only a danger for Christians, but forall
























bbuman beings. We are very clear in our position; we are against killing, and chey kill, ke Assad kills, We
spoke with them, Some dida’t change their positon, so we removed them from our wing; some mowed in
‘our direction, Who took them? The Islamic Jhad and Fatah, They are present with the other organizations,
but not with us, Even as an association [Fras rans the Yusef a-Sadiq association helping prisoners, se up in
2013 in prison and linked to the Southern branch ofthe Islamic Movement in Isral, but which secks more
‘widely to represent Israli Palestinian politieal prisoners], we have no contacts with them or thet families,
even with those who are ina Fatah wing because they have not become Fatah.”



Porosity and the World of Networks

‘The earcerl period that began in 2000 is deseribed a5 atime of idlenes, frustration, distortions,
confusion, and asa cultural setback. The figure of the political detainee remained unchanged despite the
profound changes to life behind bars, for this figure continued to play symbolie and political function: it
remained a consensual image that could be mobilized in ealls for unity, a safeguard containing disintegration
‘The history of poitial incarceration and the sscralized Figure ofthe prisoner indeed unites and recounts this
‘common experience. Its all the more convoked when politcal fragmentation becomes patent. Collective
values were nonetheless less pulverized in prison, The neoliberal subjectivities encouraged Inside were even
more so Outside, Ex-prisoners recount a more preserved time behind bars than the situation they faced on
release. Despite the new managements efforts to encourage individualism, difference, and privilege, in its
violence thatthe deprivation of freedom represents and the shating of daily life by people from distinct social
_eroups, imprisonment forged a common experience. From Jawad’s account of the AL-Amati camp in
‘Ramallah, we ean clearly see thatthe feeling of social equality experienced in detention contrasted sharply
with the decisive increase in inequality and social segregation Ouatside at that time, Prison integrated people
into a diversified socal body, while living standards and ways of lfe Outside became stratified and
compartmentalized. Since the Salam Fayyad government (2009-2013), neoliberal reforms have multiplied in
the West Bank, even if they have filed to stem the clientes and corruption that have continued to grow
‘while authoritarianism has at the same time intensified. Unlike the previous Prime Minister, Fayyad was not
« Fatah polieian, A former World Bank employee, he applied neoliberal methods in an effort to revive the
Palestinian economy, to end corruption, and to introdice other modes of government, while at the same
time building the Palestinian State “from the bottom up.”

[Jawad is chiny-two years old and studying French a¢ the Ramallah Freach-German Cultural Centre in the
hope of marrying a French woman and building himself «future outside Palestine, He went to Brance for
‘vo months during a twinning program between the eamp and the town of Stans in the Paris suburbs, He
tells me he has not managed to get married yet for lack of money to pay all the costs involved in a wedding
here fora man. We meet at the eamp. His sitting room contains a few beaten-up sofas, a coffee table, and 2
television, On the TV set ita photo of is big brother, a member of Hamas, who has been in prison for
‘sventy-one years after being jailed just before Oslo for stabbing soldiers in Jerusalem, He had four more
years lee to serve, but was released shortly afer our mecting during the Shalit exchange in October 2011
‘Both hie parents are dead, He is tense, containing an anger that sometimes spills over in flood of virulent
‘words, Jawad was held in administrative detention in Nagab prison from 2003 to 2004, This prison i reputed
to be tough. When I ask him about his experience that year, he answers that, after a while, prison is like a
ome:







‘I vas fine, beter than Outside at times. You eat, slep, play, are in contact with los of people, study

= Not Outside?

= Inside, we ae all the same, No one ean claim to be superior to you.

‘Outside, depending on the neighborhood, the party, whether you ate rich of poor, educated or not,
people won't mix with you. There's an equality in prison and, at any rate, yout have no choice. Outside, there
isn't, There are rich neighborhoods, like the a:Masione distriet, which means the distsictof big thieves,
‘Outside, you have problems all the time and you can’t do much. I wanted to study psychology, but I ean’,
and I can’t manage to get married cither. There's lot of unemployment, They don't want to employ people
from the camps and if they do, we are very poosy paid. I worked atthe Movenpick fa luxury hotel] in oom
service for two months. [earned 450 dallas a month, I quit, twas too badly paid and too exhausting IF you
aren't in Fatah, you don't stand a chance here. The Thied Intifada is going to happen soon, in swo or three
_months atthe most because people are sick and dred and that’s all we ate hoping fo.”

"The encouragement of consumerism and home ownership through a banking poliey of housshold debt
has forged more individualistic, competitive, materialistic neoliberal money-driven subjectivtics that are a
source of bitterness for those coming out of prison, Sami expressed this malaise before a society in which he
no longer recognized himself on release, at over forty yeas old. Like in Tamer’s account, the meaning of
time spent in prison collapses on contact with the existences and values of those who remained Outside. A
‘member of the PEL, Sami was imprisoned for nine years (212-2011) for having played an important part.
in the Second Intifada, At the time of our frst discussion in his lower shop in Ramallab, he had been out for
a year and was trying to find his place and fel a litle isolated, He appeated to have stepped back from bis
political asvities, but seemed pretty happy. A year later, I dropped by and found him despondent and bitter.
"The shop is nos very





ig, and the lowers uite simple, hurriedly pushed in black plastic vases, His family
prepared his return by opening this shop for him, which above all survives because it sells floral decorations
for weddings and other celebrations. He sighed, in a voice laced with resentment:

“Life has changed 180 degrees, mentalities, daily lif, the constructions everywhere, the millionaires. I's
hard. No, I'm not happy; I di’ fight For this. So I prefer being with flowers than with people. This World
Bank politics won’ get us far. People buy cars, houses They only think of paying back their loans to the
Dank, they are seared of losing ther jobs. They only look out for their aff, not those of the counery. It
‘vas better before the 200; life was about social if, it wasn’t about a new ear or a new house.”

If the 2000s have seen a decline in the partes’ and the Prisoners’ Movements influence over prison life to
the benefit of more individual and more recreational preoccupations, they have also been a petiod of
porosity and increased interactions between the Inside and Outside. Clandestine practices have opened the
prison up to the Outside and, in that respect, they have helped make i ess of a “total” institution than for
the previous generations.

‘The Olso generation was that of images, of the growing place of television, which impinged on the
Golden Age of politcal detention’s world of writing. The al-Agsa generation saw the more technological
sworld of phones, then digital and socal medi, penetrate prison, Cell phones started to be staged into the
‘men’s prisons while up until May 2019, all phone aecess was forbidden to prisoners whether to eal their
families other lawyers. They were particularly numerous during the first decade of the 2000s, especialy in



the former military tent camps, such as al-Nagab or Meguido, where smuggling is easier. There were at that
time about sixty in Meguido and several per cll in many faites. These ell phones were exterely
‘expensive and purchased collectively in general by factions especially the more onganized ones such as the
Islamic parties, o by small groups of detainees. It was thus Hamas and Islamic Jihad who began to smugu
them in as they had more means to pay off the guards, then Fatah, They were shared and owned firstly by
those serving long sentences, Those who were there fora short period bought minutes on another groups
phones. The prices Iwas told varied according to the model andthe place, but remained astronomical —
twenty times higher than what they cose Outside. A basie phone costs abot 15,000 shekels (4 600 dollars),
and a smartphone with a camera and internet access about 60,000 shekels (18 500 dollars). They are the
‘object ofa profitable business for the guards; some provide them, other seize them during searches,
sometimes in concert with, and depending on, the situation.

Phones have thus become a means of daily communication with the Outside and above all with families
—avho in the past would often lose contact with their relatives duc to the frequent bans on visite—, but also
‘with lawyers and the associations. As the phone lines are tapped, or susceptible o being so, they are rarely

used for politcal exchanges, Fess thus told me that in addition to Yussef al Sadiq association's regular »
‘missions, they intervene when alerted by mobile phone calls signaling medical problems, or to meet a
person's specific needs, or during periods of “oppression” by the special units, confrontations with the
guards, or poor treatment. These calls add to the oldet means of communication between the prisons and
Derween the Inside and Outside: including the entrance and release of detainees; lawyer and family visits;
‘Bosta,” the name for journeys to court or between facilites in prison vans that stop at several places, and
notably at Ramleh central prison, where detainees eross paths and ean exchange; prison transfers, which ave
become incessant with the new management; but also, and for political information only, the sometimes
coded kapsulit (litle eapsulesthae are swallowed), o books into which documents ae slipped.

Iwas able to observe the frequency ofthese cellphone exchanges when I was with che brothers oF
mothers of prisoners who received, or were waiting for these call; when an ex-detaince showed me the
photos of his prison friends taken with a phone camera while serving time; when, in a café where [as
talking to an ex-pritoner, the person sitting nest to us who had overheaed ou conversation told me he was
chatting t that very moment with one of his friends in al Naga and offered to give me his number, Since
the early 2000s, the Israeli Haaretz journalist Amira Hass was thus able to correspond with Mahmoud Safadi
‘beyond the walls by etter, then phone, a correspondence that gave rise to a theater play. A group of
detainees used a smartphone to post the photo ofa particularly succulent meal a al-Nagab on Facebook in
2009, in which, faces beaming, they tucked into a chicken striking defiant poses and playing up the opulence
and their ability to escape the prison situation. Ie circulation on social media, then inthe Israeli press, caused
storm and resulted in a wave of searches, the confiscation of phones, and a clampdown on trafficking chat
‘considerably limited the number of phones in prison inthe yeats that followed, Since, thei possession has
become less uniform: there are only one or two per wing, oF even none at all n some fueilties ike Hadarim,
wherein any eas, the network signal i jammed making it impossible to eal. The installation of jamming
devices to disable communications in other establishments was indeed one of the causes of the 2019 hunger
strike,

FFor chs generation, the greater porosity between the Inside and Outside has placed detainees in a
Derween two worlds that has turned prison into a non-place, one of suspension. The detainees are thus
racither Inside nor Outside, unlike in the past when they were simultaneously present and politically active
lbchind bars and in the Territories from the late 1970s up until Oslo, I is a strugele to reconstruct prison in
terms of formative seclusion, its dimension as a radial experience ofthe collective and the political. For Saad
‘Nim, tthe time cabinet director to the Minister of Prisoners’ Affi Isa Qarage, the current generation i
“in imbo,” a is too connected with the Outside, even if this reconnection has made it possible to maintain
family tes. I has also helped trsectories by enabling educational and militant paths that were previously
inaccessible, Certain detainee’ digital presence on the internet via social media messaging systems, but also
their Facebook profiles on ONG vebsites, or kept going by family and friends, help them to exist Outside, It
has given new collective resonance to detainees’ mobilizations, which have been massively relayed on social
-meclia by groups of fiends, families, activists, and NGOs.

"This mediated prison dinner resulted in restrictions on detainee rights, which we!
liscussion following the kidnapping of Corporal Shalt in Gaza in 21 and Hamas refusal to allow the
ICRC to visi him. government commistee was set up to put an end to whae were considered the
Palestinian detainees’ “privileges,” to align their conditions of detention with those supposed of Shalit,
pat pressure on Hamas. This “Olmert Committee” le to the “Shalit restrictions” in June 2011, which the
Palestinians named the Shalit Law (Qanun Shalt), and which above all ended the possibility of following
‘university courses and continued the suspension of high-school exams,

University studies particularly developed in this period, however. In 2001, 290 Palestinian prisoners
followed courses at Tel Aviv Open University. Some unauthorized to enroll followed in parallel, ike Tamer.
‘Thanks to mobile phones, others were able to access Palestinian university courses, or to complete courses
started before their arest, Abdel Nasser Fenwana a former Gazan prisoner and head of the Gaza Prisoners
and Ex-Detainees’ Affsirs Commission, reported that in 2003, Nasir Abdel Jawad defended his Chemistry



a



c already under

nd 0


PAD in Section 5 of Megaido via mobile phone before a jury from An-Najah University in Nablus, while
[Nidal Rashid Sabri and ‘Tariq Abdel Kasim Fayad did the same from Ofer before lecturers from Birzct and
al-Quaé for their Masters’ dissertations. These clandestine practices made it possible to follow courses in
Arabic, ina university of their choice, and a cheaper one, and to bypass the offical suspension of university
studies. Figures such as the General Secretary of the PFLP Ahmad Saadat, the intellectual Walid Daka, or the
PELP deputy Khalida Jarrar hold Masters degrees, Walid Daka obtained his Masters in Political Sciences at
the Open University of Tel Aviv during detention, Marwan A-Barghouti, a deputy and member ofthe Fatah
Central Committee and the Palestinian National Council, completed his Political Sciences PID at the
University of Cairo, where he was entolled before his arrest. In adalition to supervising students Inside, these
graduates give classes validated by the Palestinian universities, Ahmad Sadat teaches a histony clas at al
Aqsa University in Gaza, Khalda Jarar gave classes forthe high-school diploma in 2015 and 2017 in
Haasharon women’s prison even though the exam was suspended, and taught a class on human rights,
Furthermore, since Oslo, and in addition to ther internal and partisan elections, detainees have stood as
‘candidates inthe legislative and presidential cletions in the Occupied Territories, These ae clandestine



practices of earceralctizenships beyond the walls and not an authorized exercise of citizenship, asi allowed
for Israli detainees, who can vote in parliamentary elections. In 2000-2001, following a same principle of|
differentiation on the one hand, and the imposition of the annexation of East Jerusalem on everyone on the
other, Jerusalemite prisoners were offered the possibilty of voting in Israel legislative elections. This
proposal was refused in a common political stance. A deputy at the time of his incarceration, Marwan
Barghouti, was re-elected to the Palestinian Legislative Council in 2006 while in detention, then to Fatah
Central Commitee in 2009 and 2016, just as Ahmad Saadat became a deputy Inside and was re-appointed
Secretary General of the PFLLP. These leaders ate involved in political activity in detention, in the struggles
against the prison service, and on the Outside, va the intermediary of their parties. They also assume public
roles Outside as political and intellectual figures who regularly publish in the press and issue politcal
‘communiqués, Even ifthe breakdoven in generational transmission has matked this generation, for those
doing time in prisons where long-tcem prisoners ate held, or sharing thei cell of wing with political leaders
and intellectual figures the time spent in prison remains « period of leaning and intellectual and political
formation, of exercising citizenship and militantsm,

When he was released atthe age of thiny-three in late September 2018 after overa year’s administrative
detention, Salah Hamouri, a Jerusalemite of French nationality, had already been held in detention four times.
Since, he was again arested and has been held in administrative detention since March 7, 2022 til present,
fist in Ofer and lately in Hadarim high-security prison, Out of is five time in prison, he has been held three
times in administrative detention, with no charges, The first time in 2001, he was sixteen. He was violently
interrogated a al-Moscobiyeh for two months, and was sentenced to six months for having put up posters of
‘martyrs and was accused of belonging to the PELP youth wing, This was before the sige of the towns and
‘mass incarcerations that followed, At that time, minor:—essentially from Jerusalem—were grouped together
in’Telmond prison (Hasharon) in a separate newly-built wing. There were seventy-five Hicrosolymitans, ro
‘or three Palestinian citizens of Istacl and one or two Gaza inhabitants, A (ao respected) agreement a8
‘mace with Shabas for afew adult political detainees to be present in ofdet to organize their prison life. Only
thieteen- to sixteen-year-old youths were held there, the Istaci authorities considering until 2011 chat che age



‘of majority for Palestinians from the Territories was sixteen, It was chaos. “Nothing was organized, there was
just an Arabic teacher who came once a week. We had no television, no radio because the prison was brand-
revs, Nothing had been prepared with the Sula either for sending money [for commissary]. It was shambolic,
there were fights it was the rule ofthe jungle.” This experience contrasts with his following one in 2004,
svhen, as having reached the age of majority, he was administratively held for five months in Ofer where life
«vas highly organized both in terms of rules and daily schedules, and in tm of learning and partisan
supervision, where classes and readings were prepared by the factions. They sept in eight twenty-four-person

scot, cach of which comresponded t politcal pany. But twas above all during his hid detention 10S
2011) that he became politically structured in Ohalei Kelda prison in the Neguev, then in Section 3 of
Hadatim, where the leaders ate collectively isolated. He was nineteen, He spent nine years behind bars for
belonging tothe PFLP and for being suspected of having planned the murder of rabbi Ovadia Yusse, leader
of the Shas party

“In Ohalei Keida, clases [given by the parties] were intensified because many prisoners had already done
fifteen to twenty years in prison. We hal at least seven or eight classes a week. There, you learn to shift from
the heart tothe bra, you letn the laws ofthe stragale .. Then I was transferred to Hadarim, to section 3; 1
shared Ahmad Saadat and other leaders’ cll. They ate extraordinary people; they are examples for us. And
late, I spent rwo and a half yeas in Wali’s[Daka] cell in Gilloa Ie was a really important experience for

me. He taught me alot about the way t0 write, to publish declarations, and so on.”



Glory tothe Martyrs
reedom to the Prisoners
Healing to the Wounded
Revolution Unil Vietory