A History of confinment in Palestine. The Prison Web

Abstract (English)

This book is a contemporary history of the imprisonment of Palestinians in Israeli prisons since 1967, and, recently in Palestinian facilities. Approximately 40 percent of the male population has been to prison. Incarceration endurably marks personal and collective stories and has spun a prison web over Palestinian territories, i.e., a reality of massive arrests and imprisonment and a virtuality, a larger possibility of detaining, a kind of suspended detention. It shows how the penal practices applied to Palestinians are major fractal devices of control contributing to the management of Israeli borders and to a specific bordering system. This history of confinement is that of porosity, of the in-between political, social and personal spaces people weave between Inside and Outside prison. Based on in-depth ethnographic fieldwork, oral and written sources, archives, and extensive institutional documentation, this political anthropology book deals with carceral citizenships and subjectivities. Over time, imprisonment has had profound effects on personal experiences: on masculinities, femininities, gender relations, parentality, and intimacy. Woven like a web, this story is built around places, moments, people and their testimonies.