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Prison Hunger Strikes in Palestine with Basil Farraj
40 Plays1 year ago
In light of the death of political prisoner Khader Adnan, Al-Shabaka analyst Basil Farraj joins host Yara Hawari to discuss Palestinian prisoners’ hunger strikes. Farraj explains how hunger strikes function as a resistance tactic, allowing prisoners to reclaim their power over life and death from the Israeli incarceration regime.
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Transcript
Introduction to Hunger Strikes and Freedom
00:00:00
Speaker
These practices, hunger strikes, have to be conceptualized, I think, as manifestation of prisoners rejecting the presence of this apartheid carceral regime, in a sense, of prisoners' desire for freedom and actually as a running towards freedom, not a running away from life. From Ashabaka, the Palestinian Policy Network, I am Yara Hawari, and this is Rethinking Palestine.
Case Study: Sheikh Khadr Adnan
00:00:35
Speaker
Earlier this month, May 2023, Sheikh Idir Adnan, a Palestinian political prisoner, died following an 86-day hunger strike in the Ramle prison clinic.
00:00:45
Speaker
He is the first Palestinian prisoner to officially die on hunger strike in an Israeli jail since 1967, while several others have been killed as a result of false feeding. This was not Khadr Adnan's first hunger strike. Indeed, over the course of two decades, he undertook no less than seven other hunger strikes, one of the first being whilst in prison in a Palestinian Authority jail.
00:01:07
Speaker
Khadr Adnan, who was affiliated with the Palestinian group Islamic Shahad, was a household name and became a symbol of prison hunger strikes or what became known as the Battle of Empty Stomachs across Palestine.
The Power and History of Hunger Strikes
00:01:19
Speaker
Today there are nearly 500 Palestinian political prisoners incarcerated in Israeli jails. Among them are 160 child prisoners and over 1,000 administrative detainees, those held about charge or trial for indefinite periods of time.
00:01:32
Speaker
Hunger striking has become one of their main tools of resistance and whilst it may seem that inflicting damage on the body is contrary to liberation, hunger strikes allows prisoners to seize back the power of life and death from the incarceration regime. This is why they've been long used as a tool of resistance around the world from Ireland to South Africa and here in Palestine.
Expert Insight: Basel Farraj on Carcerality and Resistance
00:01:50
Speaker
Joining me on this episode of Rethinking Palestine is Basel Farraj, Assistant Professor at the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Studies at Birzeit University. With an expertise in carcerality, he is also an Ashawaka policy member. Basel, thank you for joining me. Thanks, Yara. Pleasure. Basel, can you start off by talking to us about the Israeli carceral regime and give us a brief history of Palestinian hunger strikes? So if we're thinking about
00:02:17
Speaker
the logic behind the use of hunger strikes and I think as you rightly pointed out Yara that the practice of hunger strikes is not specific to Palestine or the Middle East only. It's a historic practice that has long been used in the past and in the present moment by prisoners and by those being oppressed by particular modes of oppression and violence to kind of protest their injustices. Usually and most of the time as a last resort or a last attempt kind of to force
00:02:44
Speaker
in the case of Palestinian prisoners to force the carceral authorities to grant them the rights. So if we're thinking about actually the history of the Palestinian prisoners political movement alongside the history of hunger strikes, we would understand that, you know, the use of hunger strikes or the resort to hunger strikes since
00:02:59
Speaker
1968, which is usually the period that's most commonly discussed as the beginning of these practices, that most of the rights that Palestinian prisoners have currently at this stage and which, of course, this government and the previous governments have been trying to kind of take away from the prisoners have been, one, have been gained through the resort to multiple forms of resistance practices, including
00:03:23
Speaker
uh, hunger strikes. For instance, I would say that, uh, and this is documented by multiple prisoners and by human rights organizations that even a task as simple as refusing to say, sir, to the jailer. I mean, that tried to kind of, you know, not, not to have to address your jailer by the term, sir, was granted following a hunger strike.
Harsh Realities: Force Feeding and Discrimination
00:03:41
Speaker
And on which, um, actually one of the early Palestinians who died, uh, in Israeli prisons was, uh, Abdul Qadr, Abul Fahim, who passed away, uh, who was killed basically,
00:03:51
Speaker
being forced by the Israeli authorities in 1970 during the hunger strike in Asgharan prison. Of course, after Abdul Qadr al-Fahim, there were a couple others of the Palestinian prisoners who died following complications or being forced by the Israeli authorities. So what I'm trying to say is that the history of hunger strikes, of course, as you had
00:04:09
Speaker
appointed. It's not specific to Palestine, but I think its emergence in the Israeli-Karsal regime shows, one, the history of injustices and the denial of rights that Palestinian prisoners had to constantly struggle with. And second, their attempt to kind of forcibly take their rights away from the Karsal authorities, which also, I think, sheds light on the way the Israeli-Karsal regime continues and has been
00:04:34
Speaker
dehumanizing Palestinians and treating them as, you know, as not human subjects. And I think that's how we can understand the constantly emerging, not only hunger strikes, but also other forms of resistance practices. To understand this, I think you have to understand that the Israeli carceral regime, of course, when I say carceral, it's not only, you know, the physical space of the prison itself, but it's the broader policies that Israel uses and implements to kind of treat and deal with the occupied Palestinian population, whether in the 1948 area or
00:05:01
Speaker
in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. And once we understand that the Israeli Karzai regime is based on this kind of discrimination, utter discrimination actually, between the Palestinian political prisoners and the rights that are granted to quote-unquote Jewish prisoners, whether they are security prisoners, what Israel, the term that Israel usually uses for Palestinian prisoners, or quote-unquote civilian prisoners.
00:05:23
Speaker
You would understand that the Israeli regime itself differentiates the moment you enter that carceral space, the prison, it differentiates between you as a subject Palestinian political prisoner and that categorization by itself, you know, being categorized as security prisoner already takes away several rights that are constantly awarded and granted to Jewish prisoners. So that's the first layer. So understand that kind of the.
00:05:45
Speaker
the racial aspect of the scarcity regime, which places Palestinian prisoners, I think, in a very difficult position, where they constantly have to fight for their rights, rights that are not only guaranteed or should be guaranteed by international norms, but also through struggle, as I had mentioned previously, that they had actually acquired, for example, the right to pens, to notebooks, to their libraries, to political organizations, through multiple protests, including hunger strikes.
00:06:12
Speaker
Down Basel, people might assume that a hunger strike is the opposite of fighting for liberation. Indeed, one might assume that this is an attempt to end one's life. Can you explain to us why hunger strikes are considered a struggle for liberation and are used as a form of resistance? So once we understand that the Karsa regime itself functions on this kind of racial or as a racial process,
00:06:35
Speaker
that discriminates between Palestinians and other prisoners or others outside
Understanding the Political Nature of Hunger Strikes
00:06:39
Speaker
the prison. We would understand that the Israeli regime intentionally kind of takes away prisoners' rights. And in this sense, we can understand and conceptualize, I think, hunger strikes not as some might want to kind of highlight that these are kind of prisoners are approaching their own death willingly because they do not want to live, for example, as the Israeli discourse might want to say, actually. And we had seen this through
00:07:04
Speaker
the statements of multiple Israeli ministers over the past years. They would, for example, categorize hunger strikes as the terrorist act.
00:07:12
Speaker
or as a prisoner's attempt to kill themselves. But understanding this broader, I think, political nature of captivity, we would understand that what prisoners are doing when they resort to either collective or individual hunger strikes is an attempt, actually is a last attempt, and I'm not saying here last, as in the only attempt, but it's an attempt to kind of to force Israeli authorities, the carceral authorities, the government, to grant them rights that they deserve, in a sense. And we could, once we understand this and kind of highlight the racial aspect of the carceral regime,
00:07:40
Speaker
We would understand that these practices, that prisoners practices, whether they are smuggling writings or trying to find creative ways of communicating with their family members or writing about captivity or even or hunger strikes or for example, you know, the recent attempts to boycott Israeli military courts.
00:07:57
Speaker
that these protests, these mechanisms of protest, these confrontation practices, highlight the political nature of captivity. And also, I think in my understanding, they are part of this broader struggle against the Israeli regime, whether it be inside the prison itself so that Israel presents service policies or outside prisons where Palestinians continue to protest and find creative ways of rejecting
00:08:21
Speaker
the presence of this apartheid carceral regime in a sense. So just kind of to go back to your question, Yara, I definitely agree. I mean, these practices, hunger strikes have to be conceptualized, I think, as a manifestation of prisoners' desire for freedom, I think, and actually as a running towards freedom, not a running away from life, if that makes sense.
00:08:43
Speaker
And I think also on the same time we could understand what Khadr Adnan has done. Unfortunately, of course, his death, which was very difficult to bear for the Palestinian prisoners and for the Palestinian national movement in a sense. But I think what he has been constantly doing through his multiple hunger strikes is protesting this injustice of administrative detention. It's actually 20 step further by protesting the entire base upon which this military presence functions. So the Israeli military orders, Israeli military courts,
00:09:13
Speaker
that formed the backbone of this Israeli racial carceral reality. So in a sense, again, just to reiterate, it's running towards freedom or imagined freedom that we all aspire towards. I think it's very painful. I cannot imagine what being in a hunger strike has meant to, not only to the families of prisoners, but the prisoners themselves. I think it's a very painful resistance practice. But we should definitely emphasize that Palestinian prisoners' long history and trajectory of confrontation practices
00:09:41
Speaker
has always included these political manifestations of freedom. And I think hunger strikes are one instance. And ultimately, again, as I had begun, what prisoners had gained over the years had been through struggle, their rights. They were not granted, they were not given by the Israeli authorities out of care for prisoners. They were granted to prisoners' constant confrontation against the Karsten regime. And hunger strikes have constantly been one example, one site of struggle.
00:10:07
Speaker
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Current Demands and Protests
00:10:20
Speaker
You mentioned that one of the first hunger strikes was to win the right to not address the prison guards as sir, and that Khadr Adnan went on strike to protest his administrative detention. What other kinds of demands do hunger strikers make nowadays?
00:10:33
Speaker
Yeah, so I was mentioning the 1970 Askaland hunger strike, which was a seven-day hunger strike. One of the prisoners' demands, which were written actually on that stage on a cigarette, one of the articles documenting this early hunger strike notes, that one of the demands was written on a cigarette pack, and it included kind of the prisoners' refusal to address their jailer as quote-unquote, sir.
00:10:53
Speaker
And that's when Abdul Qadr Abul Fahim died after being force fed with what's referred to as the Zonda. So it's the force feeding tube that the Zila authorities had used against his body. The other demands, for example, include the 2012 mass hunger strike and the 2014 mass hunger strike that in addition to demanding an end to the use of administrative detention, which the listeners might know, it's Israeli recourse to arbitrary
00:11:17
Speaker
and prolonged detention of Palestinians based on, quote unquote, secret files that are not shared or secret materials that are not shared with the detainee or his lawyers or her lawyers. But the other demands also included an end to a solitary confinement and isolation practices of prisoners. There had been also in 2012 the demand of restoring family visitations for Gazan families, for Gazan prisoners. And then the 2014, for example, mass hunger strike, which you might remember, it was
00:11:48
Speaker
mass kind of particular mass hunger strike particularly focused on administrative detainees, which was kind of one of the first collective attempts to counter the use of administrative detention. And I think if we look back again at the history of hunger strikes, we would notice, and this is, of course, epitomized by by Khadr Adnan's martyrdom, is that the recent resort to hunger strikes has been
00:12:12
Speaker
you know, an attempt to scream against this arbitrary policy. And just to give the listeners here some recent statistics, for example, at Damir, which is one of the organizations that work for prisoners' rights in Palestine.
00:12:25
Speaker
They show that this month in May, there are 1,014 administrative detainees, which is a huge jump from the past month. So we can see that the Israeli authorities are resorting more and more to administrative detention as a practice of punishing Palestinians.
00:12:43
Speaker
So in this sense, we could understand the constant resort or attempt to use hunger strikes as a means to counter administrative detention and the practice it implies. And also just to also contextualize a recent event on May 15, Palestinian prisoners for a one-day hunger strike demanding the release of Khadr Adnan's body and demanding the release of Walid Baka and the end of solitary confinement of
00:13:08
Speaker
of the general security of the Popular Front for the liberation of Palestine, Ahmad Sadat, and two of his comrades who have been sent to solitary confinement recently. So here, in a sense, what I'm saying is that multiple demands are issued through hunger strikes. I think it depends on the context and the particular moment in our struggle for liberation. But they range from demanding or refusing to say, sir,
00:13:31
Speaker
to demanding freedom as we had seen in the recent individual hunger strikes by Palestinian prisoners. And I think that was the demand, right? It was freedom for Khadr Adnan and for the other prisoners who individually striked against administrative detention. Let's turn back to Khadr
Legacy of Adnan's Strikes
00:13:48
Speaker
Adnan. He was such an important figure among Palestinian political prisoners as one of the leaders of the hunger strikes. But why is he important for Palestinian society beyond the prison walls?
00:14:00
Speaker
So I think we all maybe can recall his first might have been his second hunger strike because I was reading that he also participated in hunger strike in 2004. But I'm sure most of us remember the way his first strike against administrative detention in 2011, which lasted for 66 days, the way it had managed to galvanize the Palestinian street and not only actually the Palestinian street, but how he had become a symbol of
00:14:26
Speaker
of refusing to accept Israeli military court orders and Israeli military law. I mean, I clearly remember seeing his face on the graffiti of walls in the West Bank and in Jerusalem and actually the way he had inspired later on
00:14:41
Speaker
What we have been witnessing over the past 10 years or so of mass hunger strikes and individual hunger strikes that have been demanding the end of the administrative detention as one of the cornerstone policies of Israeli carceral practice. And the way I think he had inspired other prisoners to follow his path and demand their own freedom as well.
00:15:01
Speaker
in protest of this arbitrary practice that Israel has long been practicing since its violent existence on our land. So I think that's where perhaps some of Hadr Adnan's strength comes. I mean, his image, his persona. But I think also, sadly, again, I think his martyrdom recent is also a wake up call for us.
00:15:22
Speaker
You know, this might be, I mean, this is, of course, a sad reality when we are talking about Palestinian prisoners and detainees who are sick, who are neglected. Israeli carceral practices are there not only include, you know, this kind of arbitrary punishment and excessive sentencing, but also they include the medical negligence aspect where we have
00:15:42
Speaker
least statistics show that 700 prisoners are very ill with over a dozen of them who are sick with cancer, with forms of cancer. And then we have prisoners who linger, still linger behind bars since before the signing of what was supposed to, in a sense, turn this reality into a two-state reality, which was never materialized. Instead, it materialized in the ongoing kind of
00:16:07
Speaker
captivity of those thousands of people, many of whom have spent over 35 years in captivity and those who are sentenced, for example, multiple life sentences. So I think what Khadr Adnan symbolizes is not just the hunger striking for liberation or the attempt to kind of force your jailer to give you your freedom. And in his case, it's his freedom through his death, basically this time, his martyrdom. But I think he also makes perhaps his martyrdom is
00:16:35
Speaker
is a call to action for us to relook actually at what Palestinian prisoners mean. Why did these people, why have they spent most of their lives behind bars? What does it mean to have
00:16:46
Speaker
a national movement which is not able actually, not in the past, it's in the present, it's not able or had not been able yet to liberate all of its prisoners, all of its members of its struggle, basically, and particularly to think about those who have lingered for decades behind Israel's walls, including, for instance, Walid Baqah, who as listeners might know, who has been diagnosed as well with a very rare disease. And I think here we have Khadr Adnan and we have also the triumph of
00:17:15
Speaker
of the six Palestinian prisoners who managed to dig their own way to freedom. So in a way, I think it's a wake up call and also perhaps an assertion of the Palestinian prisoners and by prisoners, I mean us outside prisons and those inside prisons, an assertion to our desire for freedom, a desire for freedom that we have to work for, that is not
00:17:40
Speaker
that will not just be simply given to us. Again, as the 1970 hunger strike, where prisoners had won their right to address their jailer as jailer through struggle. So they basically made that confrontation clear between them as prisoners, as captives, and between the prison authority as their jailer, as their occupier.
00:18:01
Speaker
That's an important point to end on, that the struggle of Palestinian political prisoners teaches us a lot about the larger struggle for Palestinian liberation. It teaches us about perseverance and collective action, but also it teaches us about finding ways to resist in spaces where there seems to be no hope. Basel, thank you so much for joining me on this episode of Rethinking Palestine.
00:18:35
Speaker
Rethinking Palestine is brought to you by Ashabaka, the Palestinian policy network. Ashabaka is the only global independent Palestinian think tank whose mission is to produce critical policy analysis and collectively imagine a new policymaking paradigm for Palestine and Palestinians worldwide.
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00:18:52
Speaker
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