Engendering hunger strikes: Palestinian women in Israeli prisons

Abstract

Women have regularly resorted to hunger strikes as tools of active resistance. Using feminist anthropology and interview data, this article investigates the gendered dimension of prison resistance. It focuses on hunger striking as a means to address harsh conditions in Israeli prisons, drawing on several other cases from Ireland to the United Sates to explore the gendered nature of resistance to political imprisonment. I argue that women hunger strikers are, active participants who weaponize their lives to resist the Israeli matrix of power and the patriarchal societal norms. There have been less women in number when compared to male prisoners, but women have been more effective in collectively conducting/coordinating their pioneering action and in learning new means of resistance. Through necroresistance (transforming their body to a site of resistance) and the strategy of sumud (Arabic for 'steadfastness'), women prisoners practice a duel and dual resistance of the colonial authorities and the patriarchal society -simultaneously reclaiming ownership of their bodies and lives from both systems, even if this means their death or exclusion from their society. This does not entail constituting their bodies as masculine (or de-feminizing themselves) so they are protected from sexual abuse. Rather, they insist on feminizing their experience and challenging gendered stereotypes of women as 'victims' with 'fragile bodies'. For them, gender is not a barrier but a motivational factor in which self-sacrifice to protest injustice is far superior to enduring the wrongs of political imprisonment. By turning their bodies into sites of resistance, they resist the necropolitical matrix of power (the use of social and political power to determine how prisoners might live or die) and assert individual feminine power against colonial and patriarchal injustices.

Israel and It’s Unique Features for the United States (U.S.) and Other Countries Criminal Justice Systems

“…The IPS is accountable for the custody, care, and rehabilitation of offenders, as well as the safety and security of prisons (Itzik, 2023). These facilities differ in size, capacity, and security level, with some geared toward maximum-security inmates and others focusing on rehabilitation and reintegration (Shwaikh, 2022;.…”

“…The Israel Prison Service (IPS) runs medical clinics within prisons staffed by healthcare specialists (Ben-Natan, 2024). However, there have been issues regarding the accessibility and quality of healthcare in some facilities, including treatment delays, a lack of medical staff and supplies, and insufficient mental health services (Shwaikh, 2022). Furthermore, while some prisons exceed international standards for safety, hygiene, and living circumstances, others may lack the necessary resources and infrastructure.…”

A politics of conviction: The refusal of colonial carcerality in Palestinian graffiti

“…Since their 1967 military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza-the areas of Palestine that Zionist forces had failed to colonise during the 1948 Nakba-Israel has imprisoned over one million Palestinians (Baker, 2022). Currently, approximately 4700 Palestinians are detained by Israel as political prisoners, including 190 children and 800 people as "administrative detainees" (held indefinitely without charge or trial) (Shwaikh, 2018;Ajour, 2021). The hunger striker chooses to resist their incarceration with the only means still available to themtheir body.…”

“…Muscular arms are crossed over his mouth, representing his refusal to eat in hunger strike, until freedom is achieved. Hunger striking has long been a prominent tactic of Palestinian resistance in colonial prisons (Shwaikh, 2018; Ajour, 2021). The hunger striker chooses to resist their incarceration with the only means still available to them—their body.…”

The Materiality of Power and Bodily Matter(ing): Embodied Resistance in Palestine

“…Palestinian women are actively resisting settler colonialism in various capacities. These include political mobilization, strikes, participating in demonstrations, urban disobedience, and raising international awareness (Abdallah, 2022: 159–202; Hawari, 2019; Kayali, 2021) as well as challenging the occupation through embodied forms of resistance (Ihmoud, 2019; Shwaikh, 2022a, 2022b). Some of the women we spoke to also recounted publicizing the practice of sperm smuggling by giving interviews or appearing on TV to encourage others to follow their example.…”