Between 1987 and 1994, well more than one hundred thousand Palestinians were incarcerated as “security” prisoners by Israeli occupation forces. The experiences of these men presented particular problems of representation. While the author tried to empathetically write about their human experiences of suffering, he discovered that trauma can be appropriated by different groups and invested with different emotional and political meanings. During the uprising called the Intifada of the 1980s and early 1990s, the nationalist youth described prisoners (often themselves) as a vanguard in the Palestinian struggle. After the arrival of the Palestinian Authority in 1994, the prisoners were recast as victims in need of rehabilitation, and many became rank-and-file members of Palestinian security. The process of ethnographic discovery described here suggests that ethnography aimed only at providing a “native's point of view” is insufficient. Politically engaged anthropology can and should do more than trying to humanize cultural others who suffer.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Abu-Lughod, Lila
. 1993. Writing women's worlds.Berkeley: University of California Press.
2.
Al-Haq
. 1990. Punishing a nation: Israeli human rights violations during the Palestinian uprising: December 1987-December 1988.Boston: South End.
Amnesty International
. 1997. Israel/Occupied Territories, administrative detention: Despair, uncertainty and lack of due process.New York: Amnesty International.
5.
Amnesty International
. 2000. Annual report.New York: Amnesty International.
Aronson, Geoffrey1999. Settlement monitor.Journal of Palestine Studies28 (4): 135-144.
8.
Asad, Talal
. 1997. On torture, or cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment. In Social suffering, edited by Arthur Kleinman, Veena Das, and Margaret Lock. Berkeley: University of California Press.
9.
Assad, Samar. 2000. Arafat's Fatah led gun battles. Associated Press wire, May 11.
10.
Bornstein, Avram
. 2002. Crossing the green line between Palestine and Israel.Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
11.
B'Tselem: Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories
. 1991. The interrogation of Palestinians during the Intifada: Ill-treatment, “moderate physical pressure” or torture?Jerusalem, Israel: B'Tselem.
12.
B'Tselem: Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories
. 1992. The interrogation of Palestinians during the Intifada: Follow-up to March 1991.Jerusalem, Israel: B'Tselem.
13.
B'Tselem: Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories
. 1997. Prisoners of peace: Administrative detention during the Oslo process.Jerusalem: Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories.
14.
Dombrowski, Kirk
. 2001. Against culture.Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
15.
Foster, Don
, and Donald Skinner. 1990. Detention and violence: Beyond victimology. In Political violence and the struggle in South Africa, edited by Chebani Mangayi and Andre du Toit.New York: St. Martin's.
16.
Gaza Community Mental Health Program
. 1995. Report 1994-1995.Gaza: Gaza Community Mental Health Program.
17.
Ginbar, Yuval
. 1993. The “new procedure” in GSS interrogations: The case of Abd A-Nasser `Ubeid.Jerusalem, Israel: B'Tselem.
18.
Ginbar, Yuval
. 1998. Routine torture: Interrogation methods of the General Security Service.Jerusalem, Israel: B'Tselem.
19.
Golan, Daphna
. 1992. Detention without trial: Administrative detention in the occupied territories since the beginning of the intifada.Jerusalem, Israel: B'Tselem.
20.
Heyman, Josiah McC
. 1998. Finding a moral heart for U.S. immigration policy: An anthropological perspective.American Ethnological Society Monograph Series 7.Arlington, VA: American Anthropological Association.
21.
Hiltermann, Joost
. 1990. Trade unions and women's committees: Sustaining movement, creating space. Middle East Report (May-August), 32-36.
22.
Hiltermann, Joost
. 1991. The women's movement during the uprising.Journal of Palestine Studies20 (3): 48-57.
23.
Hiltermann, Joost
. 1992. Behind the intifada: Labor and women's committees in the occupied territories.Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
24.
Human Rights Watch/Middle East
. 1991. Prison conditions in Israel and the occupied territories.New York: Human Rights Watch.
25.
Human Rights Watch/Middle East
. 1994. Torture and ill-treatment: Israel's interrogation of Palestinians from the Occupied Territories.New York: Human Rights Watch.
26.
Human Rights Watch/Middle East
. 1998a. An analysis of the Wye river memorandum. Press release.
27.
Human Rights Watch/Middle East
. 1998b. Palestinian self-rule areas: Human rights under the Palestinian Authority.New York: Human Rights Watch.
28.
Isaac, Jad
. 1989. A socio-economic study of administrative detainees at Ansar 3.Journal of Palestine Studies18 (4): 102-109.
29.
Khalil, Mahmoud Lutfi Yaseen
. 1988. Al-Tajrabat al-a'taqaliah fi al-Sijin al-Israeliah.Amman: Ibn Rushd House (Arabic).
30.
Kleinman, Arthur
, Veena Das, and Margaret Lock, eds. 1997. Social suffering.Berkeley: University of California Press.
31.
Kleinman, Arthur
, and Joan Kleinman. 1997. The appeal of experience, the dismay of images: Cultural appropriations of suffering in our times. In Social suffering, edited by Arthur Kleinman, Veena Das, and Margaret Lock.Berkeley: University of California Press.
32.
Law: The Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights and the Environment. 1998a. Israeli reciprocity and Palestinian security. Press release, October 16.
33.
Kleinman, Arthur
, and Joan Kleinman. 1998b. Large scale arbitrary arrests. Press release, October 30.
34.
Lustic, Ian
. 1988. For the land and the lord.New York: Council on Foreign Relations.
35.
Mahmood, Cynthia Keppley
. 1996. Fighting for faith and nation: Dialogues with Sikh militants.Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
36.
Mishal, Shaul
, and Reuben Aharoni. 1994. Speaking stones: Communiques from the intifada underground.Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.
37.
Morris, David
. 1997. About suffering: Voice, genre, and moral community. In Social suffering, edited by Arthur Kleinman, Veena Das, and Margaret Lock.Berkeley: University of California Press.
38.
Nasser, Jamal
, and Roger Heacock, eds. 1990. Intifada: Palestine at the crossroads.New York: Praeger.
39.
Palestinian Centre for Human Rights
. 1998. Anti-incitement decree. Press release, December 3.
40.
Palestinian Human Rights Information Center
. 1991. The cost of freedom.Chicago: Palestinian Human Rights Information Center.
41.
Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group. 1998a. During the negotiations of the Israeli/Palestinian peace and security agreement at Wye plantation, the Palestinian police arrests journalists and prevents them from contacting the political opposition and confiscates their films and tapes. Press release, October 24.
42.
Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group. 1998b. One citizen falls victim and four others wounded (all from Fateh group), as a result of gunfire released by the Palestinian military intelligence. Press release, October 26.
43.
Peteet, Julie
. 1994. Male gender and rituals of resistance in the Palestinian intifada: A cultural politics of violence.American Ethnologist21 (1): 31-49.
44.
Punamaki, Raija-Leena
. 1988. Experiences of torture, means of coping, and level of symptoms among Palestinian political prisoners.Journal of Palestine Studies27 (4): 81-96.
Robben, Antonius
. 1995. The politics of truth and emotion among victims and perpetrators of violence. In Fieldwork under fire, edited by Carolyn Nordstrom and Antonius Robben.Berkeley: University of California Press.
47.
Robben, Antonius
, and Marcelo Suarez-Orozco, eds. 2000. Cultures under siege: Collective violence and trauma.New York: Cambridge University Press.
48.
Robinson, Glenn
. 1993. The role of the professional middle class in the mobilization of Palestinian society: The medical and agricultural committees.International Journal of Middle East Studies25:301-326.
49.
Scheper-Hughes, Nancy
. 1992. Death without weeping.Berkeley: University of California Press.
50.
Scheper-Hughes, Nancy
. 1995. The primacy of the ethical: Propositions for a militant anthropology.Current Anthropology36:409-440.
51.
Seifert, Ruth
. 1996. The second front: The logic of sexual violence in wars.Women's Studies International Forum19 (1/2): 35-43.
52.
Shehadeh, Raja
. 1989. Occupier's law: Israel and the West Bank.Washington, DC: Institute of Palestine Studies.
53.
Sider, Gerald
. 1993. Lumbee Indian histories.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
54.
Sider, Gerald
, and Gavin Smith. 1997. Introduction. In Between history and histories: The making of silences and commemorations, edited by Gerald Sider and Gavin Smith.Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press.
55.
Sluka, Jeffrey
, ed. 2000. Death squad: The anthropology of state terror.Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
56.
Suarez-Orozco, Marcelo
, and Antonius Robben. 2000. Interdisciplinary perspectives on violence and trauma. In Cultures under siege: Collective violence and trauma, edited by Antonius Robben and Marcelo Suarez-Orozco.New York: Cambridge University Press.
57.
Tamari, Salim
. 1990a. Eyeless in Judea: Israel's strategy of collaborators and forgeries. Middle East Report, 164/165.
58.
Tamari, Salim
. 1990b. Revolt of the petit bourgeoisie. In Intifada: Palestine at the crossroads, edited by Jamal Nassar and Roger Heacock.New York: Praeger.
59.
Volkan, Vamik
, and Norman Itzkowitz. 2000. Modern Greek and Turkish identities and the psychodynamics of Greek-Turkish relations. In Cultures under siege: Collective violence and trauma, edited by Antonius Robben and Marcelo Suarez-Orozco.New York: Cambridge University Press.
