The Politics of Sumud: Former Palestinian Women Prisoners’ Experience of Incarceration Under Israeli Occupation
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The Politics of Sumud: Former Palestinian Women prisoners’ Experience of Incarceration under Israeli Occupation Samah Saleh Goldsmiths College, University of London Submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Sociology June 2016 1 I affirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Samah Saleh 2 Acknowledgments I would like to start by thanking the research participants, those incredible women who shared their experiences, emotions, and private lives with me, for all the time they gave me, for talking about their wounds, sadness, losses, victory, and hope. They have taught me how to be strong even when it’s dark. They gave me the opportunity to learn and to be proud of their contribution to Palestine. Their generosity has immeasurably enriched this research. Doing a PhD is a long journey of discovery, learning and finding answers; it is full of contradictions, frustrations and motivations, losing one direction and then finding it again. This journey would not have been possible without the continuous support and challenge from my supervisors. I would like to express my sincere appreciation to Professor Marsha Rosengarten and Professor David Oswell for their limitless patience, encouragement and immense knowledge. Their guidance has helped me throughout the researching and writing of this thesis. I could not imagine having better advisors and mentors for my PhD study. The Sociology Department at Goldsmiths provided a lively research community and I am grateful to its staff and postgraduates for their support and ideas, which enhanced my research experience and gave me insight to knowledge I wasn’t aware of. Special thanks to Yasmin Gunaratman and Alex Rhys Taylor for their brilliant advice and insight during my upgrade, which helped me to advance my project in the right direction. Investment in education is incredibly important because it not only aids an individual but also shapes the future of other people, which is the first step toward making change. I would like to thank the British Council’s Higher Education Scholarship Palestine (HESPAL) for generously funding the initial three years of my study. I also thank my university, An-Najah National University, for their trust and for giving me this opportunity, as well as for financing me in the last stage of my PhD. Personally, I would like to thank my family and friends in Palestine for supporting me throughout the years, financially, practically and morally, especially my parents Fayez and Wahiba Saleh. My experience in London was incredibly rich because of the friends I met. I am very grateful to all those who have given me their friendship in 3 London, or anywhere in the world, and have put up with my odd hours, kept my spirit up and encouraged me when I was frustrated, and helped me to keep going. To every single person who came into my life during this period, I can’t count names because there are too many, so please consider this as a special acknowledgment for you. 4 Abstract This thesis examines former Palestinian women prisoners’ experiences of imprisonment in Israeli colonial prisons. It traces their life experiences before, during and after prison, examining the boundaries imposed around them by Palestinian culture, which treats women’s bodies and sexuality as the representation of family honour and reputation. Another important layer of restriction is imposed by the Israeli occupation, which targets Palestinian women in their everyday lives, using various tactics to expose Palestinian private space to the public as a means of exercising power. As part of these practices, the occupation uses women’s bodies as an object of threat to control the Palestinian community, which in turn becomes more conservative in issues relating to women. I argue through the thesis that different boundaries are multilayered and far from fixed. Furthermore, the politics of social relations and interaction that take place within them are varied and affect women in different ways. It is in this context that I suggest that women create a space of negotiation according to their awareness of the nature of a space, and their boundaries within it, to exercise their political subjecthood and agency. I discuss how former Palestinian women prisoners’ political subjecthood and their political performance shift between visibility – as community workers, mothers of political prisoners, participants in funerals, marches, or protests, and even as housewives – to invisibility when they take roles in the military resistance groups and employ different tactics to hide their activities from their families and communities. Hence, women are in a continuous process of spatial negotiation, demanding constant understanding and awareness of their boundaries and limitations. Sumud (steadfastness) is an important element for Palestinian women in their encounter with the Israeli occupation, and also in constructing their space of negotiation. Their practices of sumud are shaped and reshaped according to the politics of the space of negotiation these women create. Before their imprisonment, Palestinian women perform their sumud by bearing the Israeli occupation’s efforts to control Palestinian homes. After imprisonment, this sumud is reconstructed as resistance against collaboration with the Israeli prison authority, and determination to challenge the limitations of prison by centering their daily lives on politics and preparation for life after their release. In this thesis, drawing on feminist 5 standpoint theories, I facilitate voicing the former Palestinian women prisoners’ silenced experiences and shed light on their often-unrecognized roles in resisting the Israeli occupation. 6 Table of Contents Chapter One: Introduction ................................................................................................... 11 The Multiple Layers of Absence .................................................................................................... 11 Palestinian Women Between the Hammer and the Anvil: Negotiating Visibility .............. 15 Women and Political Movements .................................................................................................. 21 Space of Negotiation ......................................................................................................................... 24 Research Questions .......................................................................................................................... 29 Methodology: Finding Women’s Voices ...................................................................................... 31 Thesis Outline .................................................................................................................................... 32 Chapter Two: Literature Review ........................................................................................ 36 The Politics of Incarceration .......................................................................................................... 36 The Conflict of Traditions: Women’s Bodies in Colonial Settings ........................................ 42 Is There a Private Space? ........................................................................................................................... 45 Moving Out of Private Space ..................................................................................................................... 48 Historical Background of Palestinian Women’s Roles in Resistance Movements ............. 49 Women Break Gender Norms in Armed Resistance ................................................................ 54 Gender within Armed Groups .................................................................................................................... 56 For Women It Is All About Negotiation ...................................................................................... 57 Conclusion .......................................................................................................................................... 62 Chapter Three: Methodology ............................................................................................... 64 Introduction ....................................................................................................................................... 64 Them and Me ..................................................................................................................................... 65 The Story of This Research ............................................................................................................ 70 Life Experience in Research ........................................................................................................... 75 Research in Action ............................................................................................................................ 77 The Preparation Stage: Using social media – London ..................................................................... 77 Beginning the Fieldwork – Starting from Nablus to the Entire West Bank ................................ 80 Unexpected Challenges: Working Around the Gendered Stigma of Imprisonment ................. 82 Negotiating Interviews ................................................................................................................................. 84 Facilitate giving Women a Voice: Oral Histories- Life Story ................................................. 87 Methods in Progress: The Interview Settings ............................................................................