Establishing a Prisoners’ Collective

Abstract

Abstract The Palestinian Prisoners Movement emerged out of the need to organize against intolerable crowding and starvation-level rations in the 1960s and 1970s. Aided by prison management’s attempt to disperse ‘hothead’ prisoners, leaders were able to bring new organizational ideas across the prison system. This chapter explains this history and the role of political factions—primarily Fatah, Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad—in structuring the Movement’s daily life, education, and leadership. It describes the Movement’s repertoire of resistance, that is, strategies that members used to assert control over space, educate themselves, maintain security, and wrest demands from the prison authorities during the Movement’s height before and during the First Intifada. The chapter also delves into the ‘Mother of All Battles’, a massive 1992 hunger strike, and how leadership structures developed in prison provided a model for leadership of the First Intifada.