Summary
The prolonged Palestinian prison hunger strikes of 2011-2012 — begun by Khader Adnan, followed by Hana Shalabi, and spreading to a mass strike on April 17, 2012 — which Falk’s Part 3 presents as an extreme form of nonviolence and a transfer of initiative from leaders to the people (Palestine: The Legitimacy of Hope, PDF p.91-94).
Details
- Purpose as Falk gives it in the headnote: protest against abusive arrest and imprisonment, especially Administrative Detention, expression of continuing engagement with the broader struggle, and an inducement to those outside to join the protest (PDF p.91).
- Mechanism: “an appeal to the conscience and humanity of the other”, a last resort when lesser resistance seems futile; “To risk life this way without harming or even threatening the oppressor is to turn terrorism against the innocent on its head.” (PDF p.105)
- Spread: from Adnan’s individual strike, through Shalabi’s, to several detainees from the end of February 2012 and a mass strike on Palestinian Prisoners’ Day, April 17, 2012, named “the battle of empty stomachs” (PDF p.111), with totals that shift across posts (see Open questions on the source page). The April 17 strikers’ demands are listed at PDF p.112.
- Israeli responses as Falk presents them: concessions made pragmatically when strikers were at the edge of death, to avoid a resistance surge or a third intifada (PDF p.92); punitive measures including solitary confinement and threatened force-feeding “in violation of international medical standards” (PDF p.93-94); harassment, confiscation and denied family visits and hospital transfer for the mass strikers (PDF p.116-117).
- Framings Falk gives the strikes: “a Gandhian moment in the Palestinian struggle” and “a new chapter in the storyline of resistance sumud” (PDF p.114); a practice that “is now part of the Palestinian culture of resistance” (PDF p.127); and, in the headnote, a tactic whose example has spread worldwide, to Guantánamo and California prisons among others (PDF p.92).
- Comparisons Falk draws: the Irish hunger strikers of the early 1980s, Bobby Sands (whose 1981 strike also lasted sixty-six days) and Terence MacSwiney (seventy-four days, died October 25, 1920), whose coverage contrasts with Palestinian invisibility (PDF p.91-92, p.102, p.125-126).
Related pages
Palestine: The Legitimacy of Hope, Administrative Detention, Khader Adnan, Hana Shalabi, Mahmoud Sarsak, Legitimacy struggle