Captive Revolution: Palestinian Women's Anti-Colonial Struggle within the Israeli Prison System

by Nahla Abdo

Overview

Women throughout the world have always played their part in struggles against colonialism, imperialism and other forms of oppression. However, there are few 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 stories of the women themselves, as well as her own experiences as a former political prisoner, Abdo draws on a wealth of oral history and primary research in order to analyse their anti-colonial struggle, their agency and their appalling treatment as political detainees. Making crucial comparisons with the experiences of female 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780745334936
Publisher:	Pluto Press
Publication date:	08/20/2014
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	264
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Nahla Abdo is an Arab feminist activist, Professor of Sociology at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. She has extensive publications on women, racism, nationalism, and the State in the Middle East, with a special focus on Palestinian women.

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CHAPTER 1

Forgotten History, Lost Voices and Silent Souls: Women Political Detainees

This chapter contextualizes and historicizes the phenomenon of female political detainees by drawing on experiences from various places around the globe, including Northern Ireland, the USA, the Middle East and North Africa. Emphasis in this chapter and throughout the book will be placed upon the gender-specific treatment of women political prisoners/ detainees (later in this chapter, I will explain my choice for using the term 'detainee' or 'political prisoner' over that of 'prisoner'). It is argued that in political detention, women's bodies are transformed into sexualized and racialized objects stripped by the colonial state in general and the prison authorities more specifically of any and all human meaning, and thus these bodies are turned into a tool of oppression. Elsewhere (Abdo 2011b) I have used the terms settler-colonial and racist to define the Israeli state. Here I would like to add another definition, namely that of racialization. Following David Theo Goldberg's definition in The Racial State (2002), Israel is defined by its power to exclude and include in racially ordered terms, aiming to produce a homogenous population by keeping racialized others and by legislating against the 'degeneracy' of indigenous minorities (Goldberg 2002: 141–47). Israel, it is argued, employs all the components of racialization against its Palestinian Other: the surveillance system, considering Palestinians as a 'demographic threat', military occupation, a racist legal system which includes the Law of Return, the Absentees' Property Law, the Jewish National Fund Law and the law of agricultural settlement which bars the selling, leasing and owning of land by 'non-Jews', namely Palestinians (Abdo 2011b). Israel's national regime, as Lentin writes, is one of justifications which produces its own logic in relation to national security, immigration, pro-natalism and 'judaicization' policies to deal with the Arab 'demographic threat'. These justifications, she adds, are part of a process of racialization which assigns racial characteristics – not necessarily skin colour – to certain groups with the effect of constraining their full equality (Lentin 2008). Directly related to women political detainees is Israel's policing of the Palestinian populations and the constructing of 'docile bodies'.

The settler colonial state and its prison institution's use of women's bodies as a site of oppression and victimization, however, does not turn women into docile subjects nor is it capable of silencing them. As will be clear throughout this book, and especially in Chapters 4 and 5, women's agency and resistance can be much stronger behind bars than it is in the free air. Women political detainees, it will be argued also turn their bodies and sexuality into a site of resistance.

I argue that all female political detainees, albeit to varying degrees, have similar experiences of humiliation, de-humanization, torture and other forms of oppression, while many if not most exercise moral and political agency and resist the prison authority and its agents. Similarities in struggle during the different stages of detention, however, do not translate into sameness: context, culture, detention circumstances and historical specificity separate and distinguish each case. Hence, the analysis presented here is not about one uniform voice of resistance; women's individual stories, voices and experiences as told by them are rather varied.

The actual voices of women political detainees all over the globe, including that of Palestinian women, has largely been lost or rendered invisible in the histories and stories of nation or state building and in the national struggles and the anti-colonial, anti-imperialist struggles in general; the academe and the research community have little to no interest in these struggles, nor are they accounted for in the growing body of resistance literature. Excluding women from recorded history in general and from the epistemology of nationalism and resistance movements more specifically exacerbates these silences and renders the women further invisible. The invisibility of female detainees' lives and experiences in the male-dominant writings of history is also shared by the almost total absence of recognition of their voices among most female or feminist writers. Still, if and when accounted for – as will be discussed in Chapter 2 – female political activists, especially those involved in militant struggles against colonialism and occupation, are portrayed negatively, are described as submissive, and are depicted as powerless subjects lacking agency or simply as 'terrorists'. In reality, the subjectivity and agency of the women involved in the struggle deserves memorialization. Their stories and voices also deserve to become sources for future knowledge in general and for a more comprehensive understanding of the Palestinian history of struggle and resistance in particular.

The phenomenon of women's political resistance and detention is as old as colonialism, imperialism and the capitalist state (and indeed is older). Yet it is possible to trace it back, especially in the context of national liberation movements both in the North and in the South, to the 1960s. Since then and up until this day females, albeit at a lower rate than their male counterparts, have been facing the predicament of political detention. Nonetheless, this type of struggle has not generated the concern, attention and academic visibility which other forms of violence have been given, such as domestic or other types of violence in the 'private' sphere. In fact, academic and particularly feminist work on female political detainees has either not been done or, when attended to, remains virtually invisible within academic and other circles, hence the added value of writing about women's struggle and resistance.

Detainees or Prisoners

There is little to no consensus in the literature on prisons and prisoners regarding the definition of 'political prisoners'. Some maintain that there is a difference between 'political prisoners' and 'political detainees'. To begin with, there is hardly any state which recognizes the category of 'political prisoners', let alone 'political detainees'. In fact, while the USA uses the term political detainees for other countries' practices, it would deny that it has any of its own; examples include the American treatment of Cuba or their position on ex-political prisoners. The ex-political prisoner and US feminist Susan Rosenberg for one distinguishes between the two terms. Using the context of struggle and resistance within the USA, she argues that 'a political prisoner is someone whose beliefs or actions have put them into direct conflict with the US government, or someone who has been targeted by the government because of his/her beliefs and actions' (Rosenberg 2006: 1). This description, she argues, 'complies with international legal definitions'. On the other hand, 'individuals who make the claim of prisoners of war, such as the Puerto Rican and New Afrikan/ African-American liberation movements, who are in pursuit of the recognition of their national liberation struggles for self-determination, are defined by legal scholars as political detainees.' (Rosenberg 2006: 2)

These people, she continues, 'have been criminalized or wrongly defined as "terrorists" ... and have been repressed to the maximum' (Rosenberg 2006: 2). In other words, unlike the term political prisoner, that of political detainee remains legally unrecognized both within the USA and internationally.

Of equal importance is that most women, especially Palestinian and Lebanese ones detained in Israeli prisons, prefer to describe themselves as political detainees – an indication of the illegal acts on the part of the Israeli settler colonial regime. Responding to an Israeli reporter who kept referring to her as a prisoner and to her place of detention as a prison, internationally known Lebanese fighter Suha Bishara had the following to say: 'I resisted his [use of the] term of prison. I am in a detention camp ... the word prison refers to the place where people are kept after a transparent legal process and trial; this was not the case for us.' (Bishara 2001: 179–80)

The African-American activist Angela Davis, a member of the communist party and a Marxist feminist anti-racist scholar, on the other hand, remains reluctant to distinguish between the two terms and argues that prisoners incarcerated for social or economic offences are also political prisoners. Speaking within the context of the USA, she argues that the fact that the majority of inmates in US prisons are African Americans testifies to their poverty and lower social and educational status resulting from the state's systematic policies of economic and racial discrimination against this population (Davis 1971). In other words, for Davis virtually all prisoners are political prisoners. While I accept Davis's principal logic regarding political prisoners, it is important to note that her talk is specifically about the USA. On the other hand, Rosenberg's failure to bring the state into the equation in her notion of 'political detainee' – a concept largely applicable to the study of the struggle of Palestinian women (and men) under Israeli occupation since 1967 – is problematic. In almost all cases of political detention, the struggle against colonialism and occupation is simultaneously a struggle against the state. After all, it is the state which embodies, personifies and practises colonialism, occupation and imperialism.

A sort of vagueness seems to engulf the concept of political prisoners at levels other than the state or government. For example, Amnesty International refrains from using the term 'political prisoners'; instead, it uses the term 'prisoner of conscience' to describe political prisoners who have used non-violent means to protest oppression. This definition, I argue, is somewhat elastic and rather vague, as it excludes freedom fighters and anti-colonial, anti-imperialist strugglers or resisters who might also use armed struggle against colonialism and occupation. This holds also true for the recent attempts by international human rights organizations that have tried to assist in the release of political prisoners on humanitarian grounds. Although the intention of such organizations is novel, their ideological or political stand remains limited to a small number of individuals, seen by them having been as wrongly incarcerated on religious or belief grounds. In other words, a mission which refrains from acknowledging the right to anti-colonial armed struggle and the need to defend political detainees.

Within certain historical conjunctures, the act of generalization and theorization of some concepts (e.g. ones such as political detainees or prisoners) can misrepresent or omit certain particularities considered by the detainees as being very crucial. In prisons and detention camps, the concept of being a political prisoner or a political detainee becomes part of the identity of the detainee; it is the one which they refuse to change or give up and for which they are willing to struggle in order to keep it as their chosen identity under their lived circumstances. Most political prisoners, especially among Northern Irish and Palestinian women (and men), have historically used and continue to use the notion of political detainee as an identity which distinguishes them from other inmates (deemed as criminals). This is so, for example, in the case of Northern Ireland women fighters who, beginning in 1974, staged major strikes against the introduction of the Prevention of Terrorism Acts. All of these acts, which allowed internment without trial, single-judge courts, powers of detention and search, and the designation of criminal status to political prisoners, caused a major upheaval in prisons. In the late 1970s, both women and men political detainees staged major demonstrations and held protests known as the 'blanket protest' and the 'dirty protest' in which they refused to wear prison uniforms and insisted on their status as political detainees and not as 'criminals'. The issue of criminalization of political detainees and its impact on political detainees will be explored further in this chapter.

There are other specific reasons for differentiating between the terms prisoners and political detainees. In general, prisoners who are considered by the state to be criminals or felons (murderers, offenders, thieves and so on) are incarcerated as criminals: in general they are captured by the civil police, detained for a period of time until a court hearing is held and then a judgement made, and then incarcerated. Political detainees or political prisoners, on the other hand, undergo a totally different course of incarceration: they are often captured by the military police, gendarmerie, the security or other special forces outside of the civil sphere, and they often spend long periods in detention and interrogation without trial, sometimes spending years in prison without the right to due legal recourse. Political detainees, especially during their lengthy periods of interrogation, face physical, psychological and sexual violence in an attempt by the prison to force them to confess or divulge information needed by the prison authority.

Political prisoners and detainees, I argue, constitute a historically specific phenomenon: women (and men) in this category are incarcerated for reasons different from those of 'regular prisoners' and are treated differently under specific military or security regulations. I consider political detainees to be those individuals who were (or are) activists, politically conscious of different modes of oppression, and who have struggled and continue to engage in a struggle, including the armed struggle against oppressive conditions. Political detainees also differ from other prisoners in that they continue their political struggle during detention and re-invent new modes of determination for exercising their rights to resist and to further the goal of justice and freedom. The term political detainees used here can include prisoners of conscience: persons locked up for speaking out against their government or state, for practising their religion, or on account of their culture, race or gender. This said, the focus of this book will be on women activists and resisters who actively challenge the state, be it colonial, occupying, settler or totalitarian.

The aseera or moa'taqala (Arabic for a female political detainee or political prisoner), whether she spends a short period of time in detention camps or a long one, and similar to the tens of thousands of male asra or moa'taqaloon (plural forms for male political detainees), identify themselves and are recognized by their people as political detainees: they all challenge and resist the illegality of Israel, the occupying state. It is no coincidence that in the Palestinian Authority (PA), the name of the ministry which cares for political prisoners is known in Arabic as wizarat al-asra wal-muaa'aqaleen (Ministry of Detainees and Political Prisoners). Palestinian literature on this issue uses both concepts: detainees and political prisoners (see, e.g. Baker and Matar 2011). In some cases the terms are used interchangeably, while in others, the former (i.e. the detainee) refers to those detained without a charge, while the political prisoner refers to those who were charged and moved to Israeli prisons. All political detainees in this case are incarcerated and/or sentenced by security or military courts. With a vivid political resistance culture rich in political artefacts (including prose, poetry, theatre, films, caricature and so forth), as will be demonstrated later in this book, the term 'detainee', and not prisoner, is used here as the dominant term of reference. In this book, both terms are used – sometimes interchangeably.

Why the Silencing of Female Political Detainees?

Historically the period between the 1960s and the late 1980s has been globally recognized as the era of resistance, political activism and revolutions, during which strong resistance movements emerged, whether in the form of national liberation movements or anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggles. This era involved the use of all possible means of resistance by a large number of male and female participants, including militant forms and armed struggle. This was also the era when tens of thousands of women (and men) were actively involved in militant activities of resistance in regions such as Africa and the Middle East and in countries such as the USA, Morocco, Algeria, Ireland and various Latin American countries – and most notably among Palestinians. The global atmosphere during those years, it can be argued, was also conducive to such activism, as major international bodies and international movements, such as the United Nations and the Third World movement, sanctioned resistance to colonialism and occupation, recognizing it as a right of the colonized or occupied to resist. It was not until the late 1980s that the global mood took a drastic shift, labelling all forms of resistance and anti-state activism as terrorist activities and de-legitimizing and criminalizing all forms of resistance.

(Continues…)

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Table of Contents

Introduction
1 Forgotten History, Lost Voices and Silent Souls: Women Political Detainees
2 Anti-Colonial Resistance in Context
3 Colonialism, Imperialism and the Culture of Resistance
4 Political Detainees and the Israeli Prison System
5 Prison as a Site of Resistance
Conclusion
Afterword
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

'By interviewing Palestinian women political detainees and by situating their experiences both historically and globally, Abdo fills an important gap in both feminist and non-feminist scholarship on gender and resistance' - Simona Sharoni, Ph.D, Professor, Gender & Women's Studies, State University of New York, Plattsburgh

'Reveals just how much of the history of anti-imperialist struggles is absent when women - especially Palestinian women freedom fighters - are overlooked' - Angela Davis, Distinguished Professor Emerita, History of Consciousness and Feminist Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz

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