Palestinian Political Organizations In Israeli Prisons

Palestinian Political Organizations in Israeli Prisons examines the evolution and changes within the Palestinian Prisoners Movement and the structural opportunities and constraints that inform collective resistance today. Drawing on observation-based fieldwork and over 40 interviews with ex-prisoners and additional interviews with lawyers and advocates, this book presents a sociological account of Palestinian prisoners in Israel - an important reflection of the wider Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Oslo Accords, the peace agreements between the Palestinian Liberation Organization and Israel, transformed not only Palestinian politics but the entire prison environment. By exploring issues including the specific characteristics of women's resistance, the effects of the Islamicization, new hunger strike strategies, consumerism within the prison, parenting children, and escapes, Palestinian Political Organizations in Israeli Prisons offers a fresh analysis of political resistance in Israeli prisons. Applying a social movement approach and drawing comparisons to other politically motivated prisoner groups, the book traces the effects of changes from the Oslo Accords through to today, including the Second Intifada, the split between Hamas and Fatah, the co-option of the Palestinian Authority, and increasingly systematic prison management, explaining how these factors have affected life for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons and influence conflicts today.

This book is a comprehensive study of Palestinian political prisoners held by the Israelis and charts the development of this community and its role within the politics of the ongoing conflict.

Since the occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in 1967, more than a quarter of the Palestinians have been imprisoned by Israel on political grounds. This is the first major study that examines the community of Palestinian political prisoners in the Israeli prison system. Esmail Nashif explicates the processes that transformed this colonial system into a Palestinian generative site for constructing national, social, and cultural identities. Based on ethnographic, archival, and textual data, the book explores the material conditions of the prison, the education system, organizational structure, and the intellectual and aesthetic dimensions of the community's building processes. Like other political prisoners in the late colonial era, in the Arab World, and South Africa, the Palestinian prisoners over-invested in meaning production and its related techniques of reading, writing and interpretation in order to regain their historical agency. This community came to be one of the major sites of the Palestinian national movement, and as such reshaped the realities of the Palestine/Israel conflict at many levels that challenged both the Palestinian national movement and the Israeli authorities. Theoretically grounded, well-written and illuminating, this book covers a field which is not very recurrent in the academic works and is certain to advance Palestinian scholarship substantially.

Palestinian prisoners charged with security-related offences are immediately taken as a threat to Israel's security. They are seen as potential, if not actual, suicide bombers. This stereotype ignores the political nature of the Palestinian prisoners' actions and their desire for liberty. By highlighting the various images of Palestinian prisoners in the Israel-Palestine conflict, Abeer Baker and Anat Matar chart their changing fortunes. Essays written by prisoners, ex-prisoners, Human rights defenders, lawyers and academic researchers analyze the political nature of imprisonment and Israeli attitudes towards Palestinian prisoners. These contributions deal with the prisoners' status within Palestinian society, the conditions of their imprisonment and various legal procedures used by the Israeli military courts in order to criminalize and de-politicize them. Also addressed are Israel's breaches of international treaties in its treatment of the Palestinian prisoners, practices of torture and solitary confinement, exchange deals and prospects for release. This is a unique intervention within Middle East studies that will inspire those working in human rights, international law and the peace process.

Providing a contemporary history of the Palestinian prisoners movement, this book illustrates the centrality of the movement in the broader Palestinian national struggle. Based on direct interviews with former prisoners and former security sector personnel, it offers new insights into the strategies that prisoners employed to gain rights over time, as well as the tactics used by prison authorities to maintain control. Prisons have functioned as microcosms of the broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict for decades, with the Israeli state aiming to use mass incarceration for security, and Palestinian prisoners seeking to take back the prison space for organizing and resistance. Prisoners’ actions included but were not limited to hunger strikes, as prisoners often relied more on everyday acts of noncompliance and developing an internal "counterorder" to challenge authorities. The volume demonstrates how the Palestinian prisoners movement was intertwined with the Palestinian national movement, strongest in the popular mobilization era of the 1970s and 1980s, and significantly weaker and more fragmented after the Oslo Accords of the 1990s and the second intifada. Presenting a fresh analysis of a central, but often overlooked aspect of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the volume offers valuable reflections on prison-based resistance in protracted conflicts more broadly. It is a key resource to students and scholars interested in contemporary conversations on mass incarceration, criminal justice, Middle East politics and history.

This is the plight of the thousands of Palestinian prisoners in Israel.

Palestinian prisoners charged with security-related offences are immediately taken as a threat to Israel's security. They are seen as potential, if not actual, suicide bombers. This stereotype ignores the political nature of the Palestinian prisoners' actions and their desire for liberty. By highlighting the various images of Palestinian prisoners in the Israel-Palestine conflict, Abeer Baker and Anat Matar chart their changing fortunes. Essays written by prisoners, ex-prisoners, Human rights defenders, lawyers and academic researchers analyze the political nature of imprisonment and Israeli attitudes towards Palestinian prisoners. These contributions deal with the prisoners' status within Palestinian society, the conditions of their imprisonment and various legal procedures used by the Israeli military courts in order to criminalize and de-politicize them. Also addressed are Israel's breaches of international treaties in its treatment of the Palestinian prisoners, practices of torture and solitary confinement, exchange deals and prospects for release. This is a unique intervention within Middle East studies that will inspire those working in human rights, international law and the peace process.

Women throughout the world have always played their part in struggles against colonialism, imperialism and other forms of oppression. However, there are hardly any academic books on Arab political prisoners, fewer still on the Palestinians who have been detained in their thousands for their political activism and resistance. Nahla Abdo's Captive Revolution seeks to break the silence on Palestinian women political detainees, providing a vital contribution to research on women, revolutions, national liberation and anti-colonial resistance. Based on the stories of the women themselves, Abdo draws on a wealth of oral history and primary research in order to analyse Palestinian women's anti-colonial struggle, their agency and their treatment as political detainees. Making crucial comparisons with the experiences of women political detainees in other conflicts, and emphasising the vital role Palestinian political culture and memorialisation of the 'Nakba' have had on their resilience and resistance, Captive Revolution is a rich and revealing addition to our knowledge of this little-studied phenomenon.