Recording & Transcript: Palestine, Prisons & Abolition Teach Out!

Written By Maureen Mansfield

Alt text: A Palestinian youth scales Israel’s Apartheid Wall, raising a Palestinian flag in one hand, during a protest in the West Bank village of Bilin in February 2014. Credits: Oren Ziv, ActiveStills.

Readers can now find a transcript and audio recording from the online Teach Out held on February 22, 2024, with the following speakers.

  • Yasmine / organiser / Palestinian Youth Movement, Britain

  • Tala Nasir / human rights attorney / Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, Ramallah

  • Azfar Shafi / organiser with Nijjor Manush, Britain / writer, researcher & editor at Ebb Magazine / focuses: race, imperialism, national security

We are grateful to the above speakers and our partners and co-sponsors, Books Against Borders & Lambeth CopWatch, for coming together to deliver this teach out!

*This transcript has some minor changes from the speaking remarks due to audibility issues and should not be taken as a verbatim citation of speaker remarks.

Transcript

Facilitator: Thank you for joining us for today's teach-out and discussion: Breaking the prison door - Palestine prisons and abolition. We are very excited to have us all in the space to hear from three incredible abolitionist speakers who are in the fight for Palestinian prisoner and anti-colonial liberation. These are: Tala Nasir, Azfar Shafi and Yasmine. We're very grateful for your time and to learn from you today. Today we will be covering a number of things. What are the intersections of prison liberation and anti-colonial liberation? How can the abolitionist movement in the Global North learn from prisoner liberation movements in Palestine historically and right now?

We'll jump right into our first speaker: Yasmine. Yasmine is an organiser with the Palestinian Youth Movement chapter in Britain, which is a transnational movement with chapters across North America and networks in Sweden and Italy, made up of Palestinian and Arab youth who seek to reclaim the role in their national and regional liberation struggle. Their work is focused on building revolutionary consciousness and becoming active agents in the struggle both on a local level and in relation to the struggle on the ground. PYM does this through mobilisation campaigns, political education, and cultural and artistic events and programming. They believe that their power comes from the community and from communities that are in struggle with them, working with students, grassroots organisations and community organisations. 

Yasmine, Palestinian Youth Movement Britain: Thank you. Hi, everyone. I'm really honoured to be in conversation with everyone here today. I'm gonna start by talking about Israel's carceral apparatus, most significantly its prison systems. And I want to focus on the specific dynamic - that might be an obvious point - but the dynamic between how quelling Palestinian resistance and intensification of Israeli carcerality are constantly in this dynamic. Where, if resistance intensifies, the oppression and the subjugation of the carceral system responds by also intensifying and getting more brutal. I want to focus on this dynamic from a couple of different angles tonight, and I'll consider it functionally, politically, and historically. 

I'm starting by asking: What is the purpose of the prison in historic Palestine? What function does it serve? And what does it seek to destroy, take away and hide - and what does it generate? To answer this, I'm going to turn to a classic text in Palestinian prison literature, which is Searing of Consciousness: Or Redefining Torture that was written by Walid Daqqah while he was in prison. He remains in prison to this day and is currently being held at Ayalon prison in so-called 'Israel' or, as we refer to it, 'Historic Palestine'. It was published in 2010. Walid Daqqah is a veteran prisoner - he's one of the longest held detainees in Israeli prisons. He's been in prison since 1986 and he was recently diagnosed with cancer.Despite his release date being set for March 2023, his sentence was increased by two years. So it's clear that the Zionist prison authorities want to continue his slow death from behind bars. 

In this text, in Searing of Consciousness, Walid Daqqah's primary argument is that the prisoner struggle is a political one first, and a rights-based humanitarian one second. What he does throughout the book is that he pushes the reader away from understanding the Zionist prison systems operation as merely security measures that the Zionist state is undertaking, but rather, he explains that the carceral system works in tandem with other tools of the Zionist war machine to eviscerate Palestinian revolutionary national consciousness. We quite often hear the ‘security’ framing, especially when we're hearing about the Zionist prison system. It’s tied to the terrorism framing as well, which I'm sure Azfar will speak about more. But yes - Walid Daqqah's main argument is that that is a very incorrect or at least an incomplete way of understanding the Zionist prison system. 

To quote directly from the book, he says that the Zionist prison system targets, and I quote: 'the material and moral infrastructure of resistance'. The constant sadistic repression that Palestinian prisoners experience during investigation - when they're thrown into solitary confinement or in the daily humiliations of incarceration - all of these seek to erode a proactive spirit of steadfastness, or 'Sumud', which stems out of this infrastructure of resistance [that] the Zionist prison system wants to erode or sear. Daqqah elaborates this argument further in a very crucial way. He explains that this mode of torture, the searing of national consciousness - revolutionary national consciousness - its effects are not intended to be contained within the Zionist prison walls, but rather it's targeting Palestinian collective psyche on a national level. It's experimented with inside the prison so that it can be later exported to the wider Palestinian population. 

What Walid Daqqah's explained to us here - and also what the last four months have really proven - is that abolition in Palestine, or the dismantling of the Zionist prison system in Palestine, is synonymous with the dismantling of Zionism. And that's because imprisonment is used to suppress national leadership. It's used to punish those who choose to resist, to break apart families and the social fabric of Palestinian society, and to collectively punish Palestinians by destroying any political or cultural organisation within Palestinian society. When the Zionist prison system incarcerates our political leaders and our youth, it's at the same time developing new forms of governance and control that it seeks to practise upon the entire population. And that's why when we think of Palestine, when we think about detention and imprisonment there, we should think of them as universal experiences, just in the same way that every family in Palestine has a martyr, every family also has a prisoner. 

The struggle of the Palestinian prisoners has always been central in our national liberation struggle, in our national liberation movement and revolution. It’s defining experience under settler colonialism and occupation. It's estimated that since 1967, over 850,000 Palestinians have experienced Zionist detention. All this speaks to the fact that, unlike what Zionists outwardly advocate, or what the US or British governments will say about what unfolds in Historic Palestine as a problem of incitement or religious passion - or when the latest act of resistance by Palestinians is deemed as irrational, hateful violence - when Zionists and the US and American government identify that as the problem, that needs to be addressed. Walid Daqqah and others explain to us that actually what Israel understands and what imperialist Zionist American and British governments understand to be the root of the problem that needs to be extinguished, is the people that they're subjugating, the people's undying persistence on freedom. So they resort to searing consciousness, which means they target the Palestinian psyche through a total and comprehensive surveillance. They utilise any and all available means in society to extract compliance from the Palestinian people. 

So just to drive that point home: Walid Daqqah is saying that you need to understand the prison system as one node, that it’s both a site of where these tactics of colonial and imperial governance are experimented with and developed but also that this is one node in the broader structure of Zionist subjugation. So in order to dismantle the prison system, you need to dismantle Zionism and the tools of Zionist subjugation more broadly. We saw this especially on October 7, where the reasons for the operation were centrally also about the prisoner struggle as much as it was about liberating Gaza from siege. As you know, the euphemism that's always used for [Gaza] is an 'open air prison'. That really captures how these logics are so inseparable, and why the dismantling of Zionism can't be separated from abolition in the more literal sense of dismantling Zionist prisons. 

It’s for no small reason that Palestinian prisoners are often referred to as the compass of our struggle. And it's not merely a moralistic or symbolic slogan, but actually refers to the way that they're quite literally in the most intimate confrontation with Zionism. In many ways, they're on the front line. Their political organisation has always been a thorn in Zionism's back and a model for Palestinian, Arab, and international masses. 

I've kind of answered the question of what [is] the purpose that the prison serves; what the political implications of it are; what it disappears; and what it produces. But I want to lastly speak a little bit to the specificity of resistance within the confines of the prison. The Palestinian prisoners movement has been more than a movement to continue the struggle within the confines of the prison. The movement has been an active component and a guide for the rest of the liberation movement. Our prisons are schools for liberation, in which unity triumphs over factionalism, always reminding the Palestinian street in times of division that unity is the only answer to Zionist, and post-political and geographic fragmentation. As an example, when a cadre is entered, they immediately enter a new social political organism where seniority within the prisoner movement is based on experience and revolutionary potential. A leader in any faction is respected by members. In times of severe division on the streets, the prisoners' movement has come out demanding that the unity in the prison be reflected on the street. Another important element of the prisoner movements resistance is its knowledge production, which of course I draw on in this teach-out, but prisoners have developed curricula helping young prisoners compete for high school matriculation, university degrees, and even doctorates. 

Walid Daqqah is only one example of this. In this way, the movement transforms the prison into a site of resistance that generates political leadership for our liberation struggle. Just as an example of this, I want to reference Wisam Rafeedie's novel, The Trinity of Fundamentals, which we embarked on translating within the Palestinian Youth Movement because we felt like prison literature in general is not that accessible in English. And it's such an important and fundamental part of the struggle. The story of how the novel was written and how it eventually made it out of the prison is, in and of itself, really incredible. I'd really encourage people to check it out. 

But other than that, I mentioned this idea of political unity and political organisation within the prison, and the prisoners' movement as an important element of the Palestinian movement's resistance, and this idea of knowledge production. Obviously people will be familiar with hunger strikes as a really important tool or tactic of the Palestinian prisoners movement. For example in 2021, when we witnessed the heroic escape of six Palestinian prisoners from Gilboa prison, the Zionist prison authorities responded with mass collective punishment of Palestinian prisoners. So they [the prisoners] embarked on this mass hunger strike called the 'Volcano of Freedom' and they won the demands of the hunger strike before it even began. And since October 7, we've seen a mass rollback of the rights that prisoners won with blood, sweat and hunger - very literally blood and sweat - as a collective punishment for the resistance of the Palestinian people. And we see how, within the confines of the prison, things like your meals, your access to visitation rights, what clothes, what blankets, how you sleep, all these basic things become really intense sites of struggle that quite literally threaten the Zionist entity's existence. It's an existential threat for the Zionist entity. 

But just like everything in the Palestinian struggle, there's a rich history to the prisoners' centrality in the struggle that goes back before the establishment of the Zionist entity and the colonisation of Palestine in 1948. Indeed, much of the entire prison apparatus that is operated by Israel today was inherited from the British Mandate, which lasted from 1920 until 1948. I'm going to focus on two specific historical moments. And that's in 1930, when the British police executed three resistance fighters in Akka prison, and the story of this execution. The story of the three resistance fighters is commemorated and immortalised in a song that Palestinians pass on from generation to generation. But this was kind of  the beginning of the use of imprisonment and detention as a tool of collective punishment. That became very, very common during the 1936-39 Great Arab Revolt, or the Great Uprising. This was a peasant uprising against British imperial rule and Zionist colonisation. During that time is when we see administrative detention become a tactic of collective punishment, a counter-revolutionary tactic to quell down and clamp down uprising. Of course, we know that this is a key issue for the prisoners' movement until today. It was a legal tool that the British used in Ireland and then they brought to Palestine, and Zionist military courts continue to use it today. It basically allows them to indefinitely renew Palestinians' prison sentences with no trial or charge. 

So, you would not be surprised to know that imprisonment also was a key tactic during the Nakba. When 800,000 Palestinians were depopulated systematically and intentionally between 1947 and 1949, around 10% of the men that remained in Historic Palestine were then forced into forced labour camps. There are so many facets to the ways that imprisonment or detention became a tool of Zionist control and its consolidation of power over the years, since the Nakba, that was, of course, inherited from the British. Today, there's close to 1000 Palestinians held under administrative detention. But we also saw 1000s more being detained in the last four months, many in the West Bank. We've all seen the horrific images of Palestinians being detained in brutal conditions in Gaza. 

Finally, I want to end with one of the most important lessons from the prisoners' movement and that is the importance of internationalism. The leaders of the prisoners' movement often penned letters of camaraderie and solidarity with causes elsewhere. There's a famous example, or a really beautiful example, that encapsulates these linkages, which is the story of the Palestinian poet Samih al-Qasim and George Jackson, leader and martyr of the Black Panthers. After Jackson's death in Soledad Prison, his comrades found a poem penned in his notebook. And the poem, Samih al-Qasim's 'Enemy of the Sun' was mistakenly attributed to Jackson and published under his name. Unknown to his comrades at the time, that poem was actually written by a Palestinian resisting Zionist colonisation brutality. But the fact that the Black Panthers couldn't discern if the story in the poem was the story of George Jackson or the Palestinian people goes to show how our struggles are deeply connected. 

And so I leave you with the words of Samih al-Qasim in that same poem: 

'I may, if you wish, lose my livelihood. I may sell my shirt and bed. I may work as a stone cutter, a street sweeper, a porter. I may clean your stores or rummage your garbage for food. I may lay down hungry, o enemy of the sun, but I shall not compromise and to the last pulse in my veins, I shall resist.’

Thank you.

Facilitator: Thank you so much, Yasmine. Our second speaker is Tala Nasir,  human rights lawyer and Advocacy Coordinator with Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association based in Ramallah, Palestine. Addameer is a Palestinian non governmental civil institution that works to support Palestinian political prisoners. It was founded in 1991 by a group of activists and offers free legal aid to political prisoners, advocates for the rights at the national and international level, and works to end torture and other violations of prisoner rights through monitoring, legal procedures and solidarity campaigns. In addition, if you would like to make a solidarity donation to Addameer Prisoner Support, we'll be sharing that link in the chat. Over to you, Tala, thank you very much.

Tala Nasir, Addameer: Thank you, everyone. I'm really glad I'm here with you all to actually shed light on the horrible conditions the Palestinian political prisoners are subjected to after October 7. It's important to note that all these violations have been taking place since the beginning of the Israeli occupation and the settler-colonial oppression which has been imposed on Palestinians. But in this panel, I'll actually speak about the situation of Palestinian political prisoners after October 7. It has been horrible. It's important for us all to know the situation in order to, first, raise awareness; and, then, of course, to put pressure and exert pressure on our governments all over to stop all what is happening now in the Israeli prisons. It's important to note that within all the genocide taking place in Gaza, we are aware that it's hard actually to speak up regarding the prisoners issue, but it's actually important for us to do that, in addition to of course, raising the voice, our voices, of the genocide taking place in Gaza, and of course, all the killings and brutal violations in the West Bank and occupied Jerusalem. 

I'll start with the massive arrest campaigns which have been taking place since the beginning of the Israeli aggression. From October 7 and until this day, the Israeli authorities have conducted massive arrest campaigns in different villages and different places in the occupied territories. They have arrested more than 7200 Palestinians including more than 250 woman, 400 children, 51 journalists, in addition to 15 members of the Legislative Council. These numbers are actually unprecedented within these massive arrest campaigns. Currently, we're speaking about more than 10,000 Palestinian political prisoners inside the Israeli prisons, including more than 3500 administrative detainees —which means they are detained without any charges, without any trial. The administrative detention order is issued from the military commander and can be renewed indefinitely. No charges are presented against the detainee, which means these detainees are being held arbitrarily without any charges and without any trial. 

The Israelis are applying the Unlawful Combatants Law against Palestinians from Gaza. They have detained 1000s of Palestinians from Gaza. Let me speak about the Unlawful Combatants Law. They are applying this law, which is similar to the Administrative Detention Law, but it only applies to Palestinians from Gaza. They can hold Palestinians from Gaza indefinitely without charges for a very long period of time. They can also ban Palestinians from Gaza within this law from meeting with a lawyer for up to 180 days, which means six months without meeting with your lawyer - which means they are completely isolated. So of course, they [prisoners] are not meeting with their families and they are isolated from the outside world and are banned from meeting their lawyers. This is the case now for the massive arrest campaigns. 

Regarding the situation inside the prisons. After October 7, [Israeli forces] raided every prison in the occupied territories. They cut off the electricity in all prisons. They limited the water supply for only one hour a day. They brutally beat every prisoner inside the prisons. They are, until this day, using the policy of starvation against Palestinian political prisoners. When we visit the prisons, they say: 'We sleep starving and we wake up starving'. They are not actually having food. [Israeli forces] are only providing them with two poor-quality and poor-quantity meals. So of course, they have lost a lot of their weight because of this starving policy. They closed the prison canteen, so they can't buy anything from the canteen. They isolated the prisoners. They transferred some of the prisoners' leaders to isolation. The prisoners are denied medical care. There are some prisoners who actually have hard medical issues, such as cancer patients and so on. They closed their clinics, they banned the prisoners to go outside of prisons and hospitals and so on. This is the case until this day. The prisoners are also banned from going to the yard, to the outside yard. They keep them in their cells for the whole day. They [Israeli forces] only let them go out to take a shower only ever three to four days - prisoners only can shower every three to four days. And this is the case when they are allowed to go outside to the yard, to take a shower, because the showers are actually outside the cells. 

Since October 7 and until this day - eight - no, nine, because yesterday one of the prisoners was killed - so nine Palestinian political prisoners were killed inside the prisons. They did the autopsy for five of them. Theinitial autopsy report shows that they have bruises all over their bodies, that they had bleeding; the brutal beatings, torture and ill treatment they were subjected to inside the prisons led to their death. So they opened an investigation - the Israeli occupation - but just like we've been [seeing] for more than 30 years, they always close the investigation because they claim there is no evidence. So this is what we think will happen this time. We are still waiting. Yesterday, one of the prisoners was also killed. He was denied medical care, he had severe medical issues and then he was denied the medical care for his case. So he was killed. This number is unprecedented. In four months, nine of the prisoners were killed inside prisons. This is actually unprecedented. 

One important thing to note is that the ICRC, the International Committee of the Red Cross, is still banned from visiting the prisons. So we can't monitor what is going on inside prisons. We, as lawyers, can visit now but at the beginning of the aggression, in the first two weeks, we were completely banned from visiting the prisons. Afterwards, we could visit and we've documented a lot of testimonies which show and confirm all the torture and brutal beatings which the prisoners were subjected to. This is regarding the situation inside the prisons and the massive arrest campaigns. 

Regarding the prisoners or detainees from the Gaza Strip, since the beginning of the military invasion in Gaza, they have arrested thousands of Gazans. This is in addition to the Gazans who were arrested from inside so-called Israel. They were workers working there with, of course, permits; they had permits to enter Israel and work there. Then they were, after October 7, arrested from there. And, of course, [Israeli forces] committed torture against them and they were subjected to different violations before arresting them and during their incarceration in the prisons. 

Until this day, we have no information about the numbers of detained Palestinians from Gaza, about their whereabouts, about the situation they are held in. We only know that from the beginning of the aggression, the Israeli occupation opened two military camps to hold the Palestinians from Gaza in these military camps. One military camp is called Sde Teman, it's near Beersheba. The other one is called Anatout and it's near Jerusalem. We only know that they are holding women detainees in Anatout and other detainees - men, children - are being held in Sde Teman camp. But of course, till this day, we are completely banned from visiting these two military camps. We've heard horrible testimonies from released prisoners from these military camps. You know, they published - one Israeli writer published an article in Haaretz newspaper, it's an Israeli newspaper - the Israeli army disclosed some information regarding the situation in Sde Teman military camp. We think this writer could get into this camp. She wrote about horrible conditions... that Palestinians are subjected to horrible conditions inside there. They are 24/7 blindfolded and handcuffed. They are subjected to torture and ill treatment, they cannot sleep, they only sleep on mattresses on the floor. It's a camp which is open, there’s nothing to cover this camp. They also told her that many detainees have been killed in this military camp. 

Until this day, we don't know the names of the martyrs, the killed Palestinians in this military camp, or the situation, or how they were killed. We are calling this 'enforced disappearance' because we have no information regarding the cases and the names and the situation of the Palestinian detainees from Gaza. This is until this day. All lawyers are still banned from visiting any detainee from the Gaza Strip. 

Regarding women detainees, some of them were transferred from Gaza to Al-Dumun prison. We could visit women detainees from the West Bank, occupied Jerusalem and the ‘48 occupied territories, but we were banned from visiting the Gazan detainees in Al-Dumun prison. They are completely isolated from each other. They can't actually communicate with other detainees from the West Bank, Jerusalem and occupied territories. So, this is the case regarding the Palestinians from Gaza. This is in addition to the horrible videos which were disseminated along social media platforms. Of course, they were taken from the soldiers themselves. We've put together some videos of the torture and ill treatment which the Palestinian detainees were subjected to during this period, and it's really important for everyone to see these horrible acts and violations and crimes which were committed against Palestinian prisoners. This is a brief of what is happening until this day.

One last thing is it's important to note that the Israeli occupation authorities amended the military orders and military law in order to impose further control and repression against Palestinians. We know that Israelis are arresting as many Palestinians as possible to try to silence Palestinians, to prevent them and ban them from raising their voices about what is happening in Gaza. They are doing this by two ways or two policies. The first one is administrative detention; because they are holding Palestinians without any charges. They are holding activists and lawyers, journalists, and many other Palestinians. The other policy is that they are charging some of the Palestinians with the charge of incitement on social media platforms. This means that if you post a picture of a Gazan child, of a dead Gazan child, this can be 'incitement'. They can arrest yo, because of your posting this image or this post. These are two methods they are using to impose further control on Palestinians, especially within the genocide taking place in Gaza. Just like I said, they’re aiming to silence them to prevent them from raising their voices against what is happening. 

These violations not only amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity, and all that. These crimes have to stop. Everyone has to put pressure on our governments. When I say ‘on our governments’ I don't mean, you know, I know the protests taking place all over the world are really important. But it's been four months. We have to do something more. The genocide is continuing. The prisoners, the massive arrest campaigns, the killing of prisoners inside the prisons, the enforced disappearances. All these crimes...we have to put more pressure on our governments in order to stop this as soon as possible because everyday passes, we are losing a soul, we are losing someone inside prisons, outside prisons, everywhere in Palestine, in the West Bank, occupied Jerusalem, in the ‘48 occupied territories, and in Gaza. 

Thank you. 

Facilitator: Tala, thank you so much. Our third and final speaker is Azfar Shafi. Azfar Shafi is a researcher and a writer with a focus on race, imperialism, national security and climate. He has organised in movements against racism, state violence, and around the Palestinian liberation struggle. He is part of the Bengali left group, Nijjor Manush, and an editor at Ebb Magazine. Today, he will be talking about the connection between British counter-terror policies and British imperialism, how British counterterrorism criminalises Palestine solidarity here and the struggle in Palestine, and some steps forward for Palestine solidarity. Over to you, Azfar. 

Azfar Shafi: I don’t think I particularly need to explain why counter-terror laws are relevant when talking about Palestine and Palestine solidarity today. In the last 4 and a half months, we’ve seen a very visible and concerted attempt to crack down on Palestine solidarity demos with counter-terror police powers. We’ve seen counter-terrorism or counter-terrorism-adjacent initiatives promoting a pro-normalisation line on Palestine in British schools to try and mould the minds of the youth. And we’ve seen Zionist groups such as UK Lawyers for Israel explicitly advising pro-Israel activists to weaponise terror laws against Palestine activists, while Zionist organisations and lobby groups have long been at the forefront driving terror laws in an ever more repressive direction. 

But I think we need a more expansive understanding of how counter-terrorism, in its many forms, operates, and how it is integral to the question of Palestine. I’m dividing this up into two sections: 1) Impact of counter-terrorism on policing and state violence in Britain 2) Impact of British counter-terrorism on Palestine and Palestinian groups 3) Impact of counter-terrorism on Palestine solidarity. 

Impact of counter-terrorism on policing and state violence 

Initially, I was going to speak about the History and Impact of counter-terrorism on policing and state violence in Britain, but in the interest of time I’ll condense it to a few sentences. Over the course of the 1990s, it was the Third World asylum seeker and the terrorist that  increasingly became seen as one and the same by British counter-terrorism - particularly Tamils from Sri Lanka, Kurds largely from Iraq, Turkey and elsewhere, Sikhs from India, Egyptians, Algerians, and, of course, Palestinians. The war on asylum blurred effortlessly into the war on terror after 2001. So what does this mean for our struggles here today? It means we should understand the struggle against counter-terror powers in Britain as an extension of border powers in Britain, and as the means through which British domestic policing has been expanded and militarised. There was a time when armed police in London was a rarity, but it’s become increasingly routine, explicitly because of the supposed ‘terror threat’. We need to place counter-terrorism firmly within the nexus of policing and state violence, rather than externalising or compartmentalising it as merely a fringe or just a ‘Muslim issue’. 

Impact of British CT on Palestine and Palestinian groups. 

One of the most powerful powers under Britain’s counter-terror regime is what is known as ‘proscription’, the ability to designate groups as terrorists and to criminalise support, expressions of support, encouraging support, financing and membership of the group, and even displaying their flag or uniform. We can see how this has been used to target Palestinian groups and their allies: Hamas’ Qassem Brigades, its military wing, was banned in 2001 and in its entirety in 2021; Palestinian Islamic Jihad in 2001; PFLP-General Command in 2014; Lebanese Hezbollah military wing banned in 2008 and entirely; in 2019 Ansar Allah/‘Houthis’ in Yemen came very close to being proscribed during Priti Patel’s time as Home Secretary a couple of years ago, and may very well find itself proscribed soon. There has been a major drive led by the Labour Party and rightwing Tory ministers to proscribe Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in part because of ‘long-standing concerns about Iran’s threats to Israel’. I don’t like the term ‘double standards’ - it’s an intellectually and analytically empty framework. But we can truly see in split screen: at the same time that the British state continues to mobilise funds, arms and military personnel in support of Israeli exterminationism in Gaza. And how trying to exercise not only material support but intellectual support for nearly every group currently leading the struggle against the Zionist entity in and around Palestine is criminalised to the point of up to 14 years in jail here in Britain. In fact, just last week we saw the example of 3 young women convicted of a terror offence for wearing pictures of parachutes on their person while protesting in London last year - with the judge himself conceding that their crime was not expressing support for Hamas but merely for ‘arousing reasonable suspicion that they were supporting Hamas’. 

The use of proscription powers has started ramping up in recent years, and while a designation was always inherently political and was always a means to roll back decades long practice of anti-colonial solidarity in Britain, we can see now how politics is firmly in the driving seat - with Zionist groups leading the charge for proscription in Britain. Hamas, for example, was proscribed only after its role in impeding Israel’s assault on Gaza in summer 2021 - effectively as a reward for Israel. Hezbollah was proscribed in 2019 after lobbying from Zionist groups in Britain. We can also see how the banning of parties that are in government or part of governing coalitions has also increased recently. Hamas has run Gaza’s civil administration since 2006, Hezbollah is in the ruling alliance in Lebanon, Ansar Allah de facto governs Yemen. If we understand proscription as a means of delegitimisation, as connected with a system of financial and political sanctions, and as signalling an intention to depose those groups, then the proscription of governing parties should be understood as a quiet declaration of war. A war on Hamas, a war on Hezbollah, a war on the principles of Palestinian and Arab liberation, and war in defence of Zionism. 

But counter-terrorism is not just about proscription - about banning and repression - but also about prescription - about imposing a course of action. What does this mean in the context of Palestine? It means we need to understand how British counter-terrorism interests internationally govern and shape the process of state-building in Palestine, under the so-called Middle East Peace Process (MEPP) as outlined by the Oslo Accords. Upholding the MEPP means Britain funding programmes to preserve and defend the rule of Mahmoud Abbas’ Palestinian Authority - which is to say, the ‘good Palestinians’ - in order to stave off the appeal of other Palestinian factions, including armed resistance groups - which is to say, the ‘bad Palestinians’. This is quite explicitly framed by the British foreign office in terms of preventing the ‘lure of militant ideologies’ and ‘reducing violent extremism and terrorism’ by ‘improving PA viability and legitimacy’. But given the deep-seated and probably terminal crisis of legitimacy of the PA, this state-building project means the preservation of an untenable status quo, propping up the moribund Oslo process in order to ensure a pliant, powerless, dependent Palestinian semi-government that will act as a subcontractor for Israeli security and keep business open for western imperialism. 

The preservation of that untenable status quo is entrenched through policing and security which means funding and ‘reforming’ the same Palestinian Authority security forces which are presently arresting and brutalising Palestinians in the West Bank for protesting against the slaughter of their people in Gaza. We can see this from the list of projects funded by the British foreign office, which include, just by way of example: £10.8 million to ‘support the development of capable, accountable and responsive security and justice services for citizens in the Occupied Palestinian Territories’. Another £3.3 million ‘to support the development of an accountable and responsive security and justice services for citizens in the Occupied Palestinian Territories’ £2.8 million to deliver a more capable, accountable and sustainable Palestinian security sector £1.16million to develop the capacity of the Palestinian Civil Police (PCP) and other security services in the West Bank. £388,000 as part of a project to establish a new Police Training Facility in Jericho. Of course, these figures pale in comparison to the half billion pounds of British arms sales to Israel since 2015. But the point is for us to understand how the policing of Palestine solidarity here in Britain through counter-terror laws is connected up to the preservation of Zionist hegemony in Palestine through counter-terrorism international component, including through the Palestinian Authority’s policing of Palestinians and other forms of Palestinian resistance. 

Impact of counter-terrorism on Palestine solidarity 

So what does counter-terrorism mean for Palestine solidarity? Along with the clear and escalating repression of Palestinian solidarity by counter-tererorism -which we must oppose - I think we also need to be attentive to the ideological impact on Palestine solidarity. For that, I think we need to be honest with ourselves, that the Al Aqsa Flood operation shone a light on the many cracks and contradictions within the British Palestine solidarity movement. It shook the ideological bedrock upon which much of Palestine solidarity has been built in recent decades - that is to say, Palestine solidarity premised on one hand on an unwritten contract of Palestinian victimhood, on the other, by the presumed redeemability of Israel or Israeli society, and which is deeply constrained by the ideological buffer zone placed around ideas of anti-imperialism, anti-Zionism and national liberation. In practice this means a solidarity movement that has an almost ritualistic allegiance to purely legalistic or non-violent tactics such as BDS - which we should of course support and defend - but which therefore tries to diminish or dismiss the necessity of organised armed resistance to Israel by the Palestinian people. 

It means a movement that defers too often to the so-called ‘Israeli left’, on anti-Netanyahu Israelis and on liberal Israeli NGOs, as if they are the vanguard of resistance to Zionism or somehow more ‘reliable’ interlocutors than Palestinians. This is all, of course, not solely down to counter-terrorism. But it is a tendency within Palestine solidarity that has been strengthened and empowered in a context where counter-terrorism has sought to criminalise various forms of solidarity with Palestine and created a discursive binary between ‘good, peaceful Palestinians’ and ‘bad Palestinian terrorists’. If we understand that the story of Palestine’s eventual liberation will be defined by a division between pre-October 7 and post-October 7, 2023, then we also need to make sure that Palestine solidarity in Britain is defined by a pre-October 7 and post-October 7. I have been heartened to see how there’s been a growing current of militancy, ideological clarity and principled solidarity within our movement. It’s very important that going forward this is the tendency that is strengthened and which we use as a bridge for a renewed struggle against Britain’s counter-terror and national security laws which try to rein in and repress militant solidarity - and understand both as necessarily part of the struggle against imperialism here in Britain.

Facilitator: Thanks so much, Azfar and thank you to all of our speakers. We're now moving into our Q&A part of the session. Here’s one from the audience:

'Hi, thank you so much. Do we know what companies are affiliated with these Israeli prisoners camps? Wondering if any maps exist re: companies or financial ties? Or what part of the Israeli federal budget finances the incarceration system and associated contracts.’

Yasmine, PYM: I mean, I put the concrete answers in the chat, but just to elaborate. I think it's really important to have material BDS campaigns against companies and institutions that are directly complicit in the Israeli prison system. But a lot of the connections that Azfar spoke to means that there's a lot of local struggle campaigns that can be done here that would also weaken the carceral apparatus in Israel. One of the most effective ways of protecting our movements is to be organised, to be in a lot of ways on the offensive, being able to raise the political ceiling of what's acceptable speech, what's acceptable, what’s reasonable, legitimate things to be demanding. There is an existing campaign against HP Inc. [the company] not only because of the technology and the services they provide to the Israeli prison system but also the military. But in the UK, you have these conglomerate companies like Serco Group that run big portions of the prison system that probably have links to aspects of the Israeli occupation as well.

Tala Nasir, Addameer: Today, we actually have no information regarding these companies working within the prison system. But before, we had a campaign regarding G4S. It was a company which provided camera systems and all the systems to the Israeli prisons. And we did this campaign - it was before I worked with Addameer - but it was a good campaign and it was actually successful. So they actually cut off all relations with it and the Israelis, after this campaign. But now we have to find out [more]. It's important if we could find out which companies are actually working within the prison. So, if we get any help, that would be great. Of course, we can start thinking about doing this campaign regarding the relationship with these companies and the prison system.

Azfar Shafi: There is a question for me around [reading recommendations in English] and the Palestinian Authority and its entanglement with occupation. [...] It's not a secret by any means. The PA's work is predicated on having this sort of sub-contract relationship with occupational parties… maybe the others can chip in.

Yasmine, PYM: Yeah, the role of the PA is extremely sinister, because it comes out of a specific historical moment in the 1990s, when the Palestinian revolution or the Palestinian liberation movement of the time capitulated from the framework of a national liberation struggle into the framework of peace negotiations and state building. The entity that came out of those negotiations was the Palestinian Authority. The most important thing about the Palestinian Authority is the security coordination that it maintains with Israel. So, as Azfar alluded to, since then the Palestinian Authority security forces have detained and arrested Palestinians who are engaged in resistance against Israeli occupation. And it's an extremely illegitimate body in the Palestinian public.

There's a lot of great books about that whole transformation in the Palestinian struggle. A good one is Toufic Haddad's 'Palestine Limited'.

Facilitator: Another two questions:

‘I'm curious about how organisers can better prepare for state repression. We've already seen internationally that states have increased their militarization as a response to the protests, as well as use of incarceration. Are there lessons, examples, from Palestinians about resisting and preparing for state repression? 

‘What can abolitionists do more, to meet the current moment in Palestine in support of anti colonial resistance?’

Tala Nasir, Addameer: I can start. It's important first to know the laws of the country you are in, in order for you to - if you get arrested in a protest, you have to know your rights, if  this happens and all that. After knowing the law, you know some people may have the willingness and the sacrifice to get imprisoned because of the cause. It's an important cause. We always say, here in the West Bank, that everything we do is actually nothing in comparison to what is happening in Gaza and the genocide taking place. So, this is important, yes? To have this willingness to sacrifice ourselves. And to know that, yes, this might happen, we can get imprisoned because of protesting against what is happening. We also, here, are subject to this. Just like I told you before, if you write something on Facebook, you can be arrested. It's a really silly thing, but they do this. And they charge you for more than 24 months because of the incitement on social media platforms. So it's important to know the law, to educate ourselves with the law of our country, and then, yes, have this willingness.

Facilitator: Next question, from the California Coalition for Women Prisoners.

‘Do you have examples of pressure campaigns regarding prisoner conditions that have had some success? They've noted that they're in the US, but examples from anywhere.’ 

Tala Nasir, Addameer: We always have hope that these campaigns will actually work. But the only thing which works, actually, here in Palestine is when the administrative detainees go for a hunger strike, they can be released. Of course, they do this individually. They get released, but unfortunately they are re-arrested again after a few months. So, collective hunger strikes actually are not taking place now, unfortunately because of all the conditions inside the prisons, the isolating of the political leaders inside the prisons and so on. So theses campaigns actually do something. Of course, the pressure that everyone puts from everywhere in the world has an impact on the Israelis. On how they are going to treat Palestinians inside prisons. It's not a specific campaign. You know, the Palestinians did a campaign a year ago for a pregnant woman detainee. And she was released; she was released on bail and some harsh conditions, but she was released and gave birth outside the prison. So, yes, some small campaigns work. But we've been working on the administrative detention campaign for years, From the beginning of Addameer's presence in Palestine. Putting much pressure regarding one specific campaign actually matters more, or has more of an impact on the Israelis and on how they treat Palestinians regarding this issue. So, it is important. But the more important thing is to do these campaigns regarding one specific issue, you know? And of course, keep raising awareness regarding every violation, every issue, which is happening. That's why we at Addameer have now two ongoing campaigns. One is against administrative detention. The other is against military courts because of all the violations that military courts commit against Palestinian prisoners, the lack of fair trial guarantees and so on. We are putting all our efforts into these two main campaigns we've launched before. And, of course, these are not specific. And we always say that if Addameer ends and the military courts close, this means that the occupation is ended. We know it's not really easy but we are trying to do this and raise awareness and let people know about the violations that these military courts committed against Palestinians; in addition to, of course, that arbitrary administrative detention, which Palestinians are subjected to from 75 years till this day.

Yasmine, PYM: Yeah. I was just gonna speak to that question. In the same stream of this idea of injecting the politics back into thinking about how we talk about Palestine and the messages, the slogans, the narrative and the discourses, around the Palestinian struggle, I think something that would be really fundamental, actually, for the prisoners struggle is to - and it started to shift already in the last couple of months - but it's to normalise naming Zionism and identifying that as the enemy and the target. And identifying the institutions that exist in Britain to be targeted from an abolitionist perspective. I think that is actually a really important and fundamental step. Because, specifically here in England, the way these institutions are so protected is quite unique as well, to the British context. Obviously, this is the US' war as much as Israel's war. But in the UK, there's this specific protection of the Zionist embassy, and the specific protection of the JNF [Jewish National Fund] that needs to be peeled back. It's a very important political target. And, in the same way that Tala just said - if we end administrative detention, if we end military courts, you end the occupation... That's why targeting Zionism, in campaigns or in the messaging around it, you’ll be [also targeting] the struggle of Palestinian prisoners. 

Targeting Zionism fundamentally will alleviate the condition of Palestinian prisoners because it weakens the infrastructure of Zionism here in England. And I think accusations of anti-semitism, counter-terror laws, have become...  their effectiveness is slowly eroding. People are much less scared now to speak out. There needs to be a normalisation of naming Zionism and isolating Zionist institutions until eventually a Zionist state is made a pariah. That's the logical way that you think about advancing the politics around Palestinian prisoners in our context: confronting Zionism. That's the only way that you also alleviate the repression.

Facilitator: Another two questions from the audience.

‘How can we evolve in our UK solidarity campaigns to recognise the validity of armed resistance? How to challenge the framing of Palestinian people in victimhood? And how to challenge the 'unspoken contract' mentioned by Azfar, especially as it seems to be pervasive in more liberal circles.’

‘How important do you think was the issue of Palestinian prisoners as the motivation behind the October 7th attack? And what could be done to balance more the terminology around the illegality of arbitrary detention versus substitutes?’

Tala Nasir, Addameer: Regarding the first section of the question: Does it have to take the killing of more than 30,000 Palestinians in order to relieve Palestinian political prisoners? This is really hard. This is horrible, that they had to do all this in order to release Palestinian political prisoners, because of all the harsh conditions inside the prisons. The struggle of Palestinian political prisoners is important to every Palestinian and it took more than 30,000 killed Palestinians in order to get political prisoners outside the prison. Yes, this is the case. The prisoner situation is really important for every Palestinian. Every Palestinian works on releasing Palestinian political prisoners through every means, and all ways, all methods; even if it has to take all these killings and genocide taking place in Gaza. This shows the importance of our people inside the prisons, because every Palestinian family has at least one political prisoner inside Israeli prisons. 

Regarding the second question. Some people started calling Palestinian prisoners as 'hostages'. Yes, This can apply to administrative detainees. But you know why it does not apply to all Palestinian political prisoners? Because we are being tried before military courts. This is an important thing and no less important than calling them hostages. The lack of fair trial guarantees inside these military courts is actually really important to shed light on. We are tried before these military courts. That's why we are not hostages. We should not undermine the case of military courts, because they are trying us before these military courts. Which lack, just like I said, fair trial guarantees, no charges are presented, we are tried before military judges, through military prosecution, and all what is taking place inside military courts. So, not all Palestinian political prisoners are 'hostages', because they are being tried before this military system. And this military system is really important to always raise awareness about because calling them 'hostages' means there is no military court system, there is no military system at all, which is imposed on Palestinians. This is one important thing for us to know. 

Administrative detainees, because they are not tried before any courts, because no charges are presented, we can call them 'hostages'. But regarding the other Palestinians, it's important that we raise awareness about military courts and about trying Palestinians in these military courts and imposing military orders against Palestinians.

Yasmine, PYM: Yeah, I just have one point, which is that I think what the movement here needs is more of the base building character. The only way that the movement is going to be able to confront these ideological and narrative challenges is for them to be more rooted in the grassroots of the people that show up for these demonstrations. Which is what we're trying to do in the PYM, but it would be nice to see the organisations that have way bigger capacities as well to shift towards that tactic. But obviously, that's difficult for the reasons that Azfar outlined.

Facilitator: Thank you all. That's all we have time for today. To support the critical work of Addameer on the ground, you can choose to make a solidarity donation via their international partner, War on Want, via this link:

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Additional Reading & Resources Named in the Teach Out!





Maureen Mansfield
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