The Palestinian Prisoners' Movement

• In Event: International Courts, Prisons, and Restorative Justice

Abstract

Prisons are crucial locations in protracted conflicts as holding sites for authorities to siphon off political resistors, separating them from the conflict itself and punishing them. However, resistance movements themselves find ways to utilize imprisonment. Politically-motivated detainees use long-term incarceration terms to learn and teach, hone leadership skills, and study the authorities. The prison is called the university in Northern Ireland, South Africa, and Palestine. It is a site where sides of a conflict may learn to negotiate and coexist; peace agreements and propaganda coups have been forged inside prisons.

Israel has held nearly a million Palestinians in the context of the most prominent intractable conflict of our time. Over that time, the Palestinian prisoners developed a sophisticated internal structure with formal classes and democratically-elected leadership that spans political divisions, called the Palestinian Prisoners’ Movement.

This research explores organizational dynamics of the Palestinian Prisoners' Movement over 40 continuous years of imprisonment, and how it has responded to political, social, and religious authorities. The study highlights the strategies and techniques of Palestinians prisoners’ resistance, and potential for emancipation and conflict transformation.

Author

• Alyssa G. Bernstein, Queen's University Belfast