This project is developed within a 3rd Cycle Merit Scholarship attributed by Iscte-IUL.

This project will engage with two main interconnected topics. The first one focuses on Israel's use of administrative detention that incarcerates Palestinians for undisclosed reasons. The second is Palestinian's use of hunger strikes that ultimately aims to end Israel's practice of administrative detention and secure the release of prisoners. 

Hunger strikes as a powerful form of resistance are wielded as a last resort tool to achieve Palestinian political prisoners' demands by reclaiming the agency and control over each one's body through the refusal to eat. Paradoxically, this radical form of resistance that functions through self-sacrifice increases its strength as the visibility of the hunger strike and the continuous deterioration of the prisoners' bodies grows. 

Considering the above-interconnected topics as the main objects of study, I want to examine how successful this tool of prison-based resistance has been since the Second Intifada (2000-2005) to understand if the objectives of Palestinian political prisoners incarcerated in administrative detention have been successfully attained. Methodologically speaking, I will use a qualitative approach, in particular conducting fieldwork in East Jerusalem and the West Bank with and about former Palestinian political prisoners who participated in hunger strikes. Concepts of necroresistance, prison-based resistance, carceral power and sumud will be explored through former Palestinian political prisoners' experiences. This means that the micro-level will be my thesis's main level of analysis. I will also analyse the Israel Prison Service (IPS) practices through reports from Human Rights and inter-Governmental Organisations, such as the United Nations, Amnesty International, B'Tselem, Human Rights Watch and Addameer.

Additionally, there are other two primary objectives: (i) to analyse the change from collective to individual hunger strikes after the Second Intifada; (ii) to explore the role of Palestinian political parties in the contemporary Palestinian political prison resistance. Equally important, the analysis of Israel's use of administrative detention will not be limited to Palestinian men, but I also aim to research the impact of Israel's measures on Palestinian women and how they have used hunger strikes. 

Based on these assumptions and objectives, the PhD research will engage with the following central question, "How can hunger strikes be framed in the contemporary Palestinian Resistance movement?". I will also analyse three sub-questions: "How Israel's policies of administrative detention helped to unite different fronts of Palestinian resistance?"; "How individual hunger strikes have changed the power of this tool of resistance?" and "How has Israel's reaction changed to individual Palestinian hunger strikes in the last twenty years?"

As Palestinian political prisoners' resistance is intrinsically linked to the Palestinian resistance movement outside the IPS and against Israel's settler-colonial state, not only settler-colonial Israeli practices will be explored but also the Palestinian resistance movement outside the IPS. Overall, the main contribution to this topic will be to ascertain why and how collective hunger strikes are now made more often individually and how this might have transformed the impact of collective hunger strikes.

Keywords: Hunger strikes; Palestinian resistance; Necroresistance; Israel; Sumud.

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