The Lives of Fatah Political Prisoners, 1967 to 1985
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Wilfrid Laurier University Scholars Commons @ Laurier Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive) 2017 The Making of aState in Waiting: The Lives of Fatah Political Prisoners, 1967 to 1985 Rebecca Granato [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholars.wlu.ca/etd Part of the Islamic World and Near East History Commons, Political History Commons, and the Social History Commons Recommended Citation Granato, Rebecca, "The Making of aState in Waiting: The Lives of Fatah Political Prisoners, 1967 to 1985" (2017). Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive). 1988. https://scholars.wlu.ca/etd/1988 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by Scholars Commons @ Laurier. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive) by an authorized administrator of Scholars Commons @ Laurier. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The Making of a State in Waiting: The Lives of Fatah Political Prisoners, 1967 to 1985 Acknowledgements Many people helped with this project, especially in gaining access to interview subjects. I would like to thank President Imad Abu Kishek of Al Quds University, Dr. Radi Jara’ai, and Mr. Ibrahim Krishi for sharing contacts. I would also like to thank (Dr.) Abu el Haj, the Director of the Abu Jihad Archives, and Dr. Munther Dajani, my colleague at Al Quds Bard College, for supporting my project. During the early stages Mr. Mohammad Jamous was important to navigating the archive, as were AQB student interns who helped catalogue some of the material. Students in my prisoner narratives class helped me push the writing forward, and my assistant, Sondos Shehadeh, was helpful in cataloging materials from the archive. A heartfelt thank you to my thesis advisor, Dr. Gavin Brockett, who offered hours of advising and pages of comments critical to the revision, as well as to my committee members, Dr. Renee Worringer and Dr. Jasmin Habib, for their feedback throughout the process. Thank you to Wilfrid Laurier professors for an inspiring year of course work during my first year of the program. Completing a dissertation with a full time job is not an easy task. And to that end I have many people to thank at my place of employment, Bard College. Thank you to President Leon Botstein for his ongoing support for my research and for my role at Al Quds Bard College. My supervisor and workplace role model, Vice President for Academic Affairs Dr. Jonathan Becker, has continuously prodded me to finish, while also supporting me taking on more and more at Al Quds Bard College. My position as Associate Dean and Assistant Professor is what inspired me to finally get it done. Aileen Hanel, both a colleague and a close friend, has been supportive every step of the way. I would also like to thank my fellow Associates at the Institute for Writing & Thinking at Bard College for giving me the opportunity to write and think while leading workshops for teachers around the world - heartfelt thanks to Celia Bland and Peg Peoples for that, and of course to Dr. Deirdre D’Albertis for over twenty years of inspiration and support. Bard has shaped me in more ways that I can describe here; the institution is one in which I wholeheartedly believe and to which I will continue to dedicate myself. Researching in Jerusalem and the West Bank comes with many costs, which would have been prohibitive without the support of many institutions. Thank you to Wilfrid Laurier University Graduate Studies and the Ontario Graduate Scholarship for supporting my time in Canada. During the initial research stage, the Qattan Foundation in Ramallah offered me a residency, enabling a lengthy stay. Without funding from The Palestinian American Research Council, my time in the region would have been truncated. Thank you, especially to Penny Mitchell for her ongoing support. Finally, thank you to the Bard College Center for Civic Engagement, which has funded all of my conference travel over 2 the past four years, where I have been lucky to present my research and gain valuable feedback. Last but not least, thank you to my parents, Linda and Frank Granato. I will never forget that long ago day in Brooklyn when I first told my parents I was starting a graduate program in Middle East history in NYC. My father’s first reaction was why on earth would you leave a lucrative career for that, followed closely by his now amusing comment “why can’t you study the Midwest rather than the Middle East?” In spite of this initial pushback, and their deep concern when I shelved my career in public relations, moved to Egypt, and later to Palestine to launch Bard’s program in the West Bank, my parents have been constant sources of support and love. I hope I have made them proud by being one of the first in my family to go to college and the very first to write a dissertation and become an academic. This project is dedicated to them. 3 Table of Contents Introduction 5 Chapter One: On Becoming and Being a Prisoner 40 Chapter Two: Bodily Resistance: The Hunger Strike 94 Chapter Three: Forging Local Actors: The Creation of Political Structures inside Prisons 133 Chapter Four: From Fellahin to Fatah: 184 Schooling Inside the Prisons Chapter 5: The Dissolving Collective 239 Conclusion 267 Bibliography 274 4 “I do not regret the prison life that sucked my youth inside of it, that had me spending my glorious age inside the cells. I did what I thought was right in gaining and accomplishing my goal: to return, to be a resistor. If I succeed, if I do not succeed, I will still count it as resistance, and this resistance will never end for me. So no, I do not regret anything.”1 Introduction In the fall of 2012, I met Sami al Jundi whose book, The Hour of Sunlight, is well known amongst those involved in Palestine studies, or even just living and working in the Jerusalem area. A highly readable co-authored autobiography, the book tells the story of his life, much of which was defined by his experience as a political prisoner. Sami is the classic example of the ex-prisoner I find intriguing: someone who had entered an Israeli security prison with very little formal education and came out highly educated, both culturally and politically. While we sat at the since shuttered Gate Café, Sami’s hangout just inside Damascus Gate, I told him about my project and he sized me up suspiciously. I recounted to him that I had first become interested in life inside Israeli prisons intended for those labeled “security prisoners” the previous year when Israel had reversed the policy of prisoner access to undergraduate and graduate degrees through the Open University. I told him how surprised I was that this access had existed at all. After all, why would the Israeli government allow individuals who had been deemed national security threats to study subjects like Zionist thought, the subject of at least one in-prison 1 Yacoub Odeh, interview with author, September 2015. 5 doctoral dissertation in the early 2000s?2 I also told him about how reading his book had made me realize that the educational programming long preceded the Open University’s degree offerings3: by the time of his imprisonment in the 1980s, prisoners underwent rigorous academic training, divided into stages with defined objectives and accompanying reading lists. I expressed to Sami that I wanted to better understand how the education these men received helped shape their role in political life after their sentences ended. What is so intriguing about this period in Palestinian history is that many of today’s political players are those very same individuals who were trained behind prison gates. These individuals cut their political teeth inside Israeli prisons. I became aware that the conversation was not moving beyond the surface. As I had experienced with the handful of other ex-prisoners with whom I had already spoken, neither my well-rehearsed pitch about my academic interests, nor my assertions about the way I was planning to use the material, were persuading Sami to share details that had not appeared in his book. Through these initial interviews, I learned a very important lesson: academic credentials alone cannot advance research of this kind. As it turned out, the years I had spent in the West Bank and the connections I have forged across communities mattered much more. Among the many cultural complexities researchers encounter in the West Bank and Jerusalem, human trust is one of the most difficult to navigate; it is either based on an individual’s intuition or rooted in a trusted source’s personal recommendation. I gained access to interview subjects only after many months 2 This is the focus of Jabril Rajoub’s doctoral dissertation. Rajoub has been the Deputy Secretary of the Fatah Committee since 2009 and is currently the Minister of Sport. He also teaches at Al Quds University. 3 After Oslo, the Open University of Isarel allowed for prisoners to complete academic degrees. Ynet reported in 2009 that by that time 250 political prisoners were part of this program. [Ynet news, “100 Palestinian Prisoners Complete Academic Studies in Jail,” Ronny Shaked, August 4, 2009.] 6 of cultivating existing contacts and forging new ones, but especially by having reputable colleagues and friends vouch for me. Since 2012, I have conducted dozens of interviews with ex-prisoners from the West Bank and Jerusalem. Through these conversations I have begun to untangle the complicated world of the political prisoner, both during time inside the prison, but also post-release.