Qasam al-Haj is a Palestinian scholar teaching at Birzeit University. The text above is excerpted from an essay first published in the inaugural issue of Al-Janub: The Palestinian Journal of Liberation Studies, a new initiative aiming to produce and circulate militant research about Palestine and the global south in service of liberation. In the essay, al-Haj attends to the perspectives of captive scholars and thinkers, many of whom she interviewed herself. This excerpt was translated from Arabic by members of the New York War Crimes editorial collective.
Hadarim Prison University1 is one of the primary sites for the production of the Palestinian national narrative. This narrative of resistance manifests in precisely the space designed to suppress and negate it – in other words, the Zionist prison. The Hadarim Prison University exemplifies two modern institutions (the university and the prison) that feed off one another, while the place and purpose of each is constantly embattled and negated. Here I will discuss some of the mechanisms of survival and coalition-building employed by Palestinian prisoners at Hadarim as they seize their right to regular university education while rebelling against the Zionist colonial system.2
The university at Hadarim was initiated by the popular political leader and prisoner Marwan Barghouti. He consulted several personalities and academic institutions with the intention of setting up a university in prison that would be administered and run by the captives themselves.3 Formal education inside Zionist prisons had been banned since 2011. Instituted by a bill known as Shalit’s Law, Benjamin Netanyahu himself announced that “the party is over,” restricting Palestinian prisoners from their right to higher education inside prisons.
Al-Quds University was the first to agree to Barghouti’s proposal, partly because he had been a lecturer there prior to his capture in 2002. (He also received a doctoral degree from the Institute of Research and Studies affiliated with the Arab League University in Cairo.) Following the signing of a formal agreement between Al-Quds University, the Palestinian Ministry of Education, the Palestinian Ministry of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs, and the lawyer Elias Sabbagh, Al-Quds University began officially granting bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Haradim, chosen for its geographical, political, and colonial location.4
Al-Quds University’s institutional and bureaucratic requirements stipulated a legal framework to regulate the work of Hadarim University.5 Students in captivity would be granted procedural accommodations, but the educational rigor would be maintained.6 Hadarim University first launched its master’s degree in “Israeli” studies in 2012 under Barghouti’s leadership and instruction, and the first cohort graduated in 2014. With a growing number of advanced degree-holders, a new bachelor’s degree in Political Science was later inaugurated.7 An educational and administrative body was established within the prison to address registration, organization, scheduling, and academic guidance. Former graduates would participate in teaching and administration, each according to his specialization.8 Among the most prominent members of this body are the martyred prisoner Walid Daqqa, the freed prisoner Karim Younis, and several who remain incarcerated, including Ahed Abu Ghulameh, Ahmed Saadat, Ibrahim Hamed, Abbas al-Sayed, Hussam Shaheen, Thabet al-Mardawi, and Yasser Abu Bakr.
What role has Hadarim University played: first, as a site of academic education and intellectual study, and second, as a site for knowledge production that crystalizes the Palestinian narrative from within the Zionist prison? What added value has the university offered as an institutional structure within the prison, as compared to the informal education "cells" that also proliferate within carceral spaces? I argue that what makes Hadarim University unique is a confluence of its position as a site of knowledge production and humanistic inquiry, in addition to its oppositional stance towards the Zionist jailer.9
A Site of Knowledge Production: Resisting the Institution of the Prison Through the Institution of the University
Hadarim University is a site of politicized knowledge production about Palestine. The institution contributes to a different reading of the Zionist colonial prison, that coercive and isolating space that is transformed by prisoners into a space for resistance, maneuver, and connection with the outside community. Hadarim University arms its students and graduates with new forms of knowledge in which practice and application precede academic theory. The pedagogy of hope precedes the pedagogy of education. It can be considered an institution within an institution: a modern educational institution that has shed its authoritarian pedigree housed within a prison, a modern colonial institution that exists to control, discipline, and dominate. The function of the university is to negate the function of the prison as an apparatus of domination. If prison, in the Zionist colonial context, aims to deprive the prisoner of his freedom, exile him from his society, and strip him of his faith in himself, then Hadarim University aims to negate these forms of repression at both the personal and collective level. Since the Second Intifada in 2000, the Palestinian Captive Movement had been beleaguered by divisions and setbacks that were overcome through Hadarim University; the increasing unity in the lead-up to 2017 made the hunger strike that year possible.
Most importantly, Hadarim University transforms the prison into a barrack — or a site of research and knowledge production, focused on studying and analyzing the colonizer’s tools and methods and dismantling colonial hegemony up close. The prisoner's presence inside the carceral complex enables him to describe and examine it closely. Hadarim University adopts the standard course of study at Al-Quds University, adhering to its course requirements: a bachelor’s in political science and a master’s in "Israeli" studies — specializing in regional studies, which includes twelve courses that students must complete within two years.10 Students are unable to submit a master’s thesis in prison due to the absence of a qualified committee for evaluation. Instead, they must complete comprehensive exams.11 The grades are sent to the students’ files at Al-Quds University.
Owing to the carceral conditions, Hadarim professors and students reconstruct the curriculum based on general guidelines provided by Al-Quds University and on the books, magazines, and research papers available in the prison library. This is a laborious process, as there are not enough copies of reading materials for all students in the library — there are often only single copies, unless they have been confiscated. As such, captive students create their own copies of the prescribed curriculum, which are often passed down from generation to generation.12 A special intimacy develops between the prisoner and the hand-copied material; the tedium of the transcription adds value and purpose to the educational process.
The content of courses at Hadarim University, which all fall under the banner of Palestine studies, varies between compulsory courses and electives chosen by the prison faculty. Some courses cover political and economic issues, such as the "Security Forces" course in the master's program. Others deal with social and cultural issues, such as the "Social Movements and Political Change" course, a compulsory requirement for the bachelor's degree, and the "Women and Men in Human Societies,” which is an elective. In addition, Hadarim University organizes annual public lectures within the various courses in the master's program, creating community.
Some courses examine the structure of the Zionist military apparatus, including the "security" apparatus and various army units, while others scrutinize the internal structure of Israeli society. This provides the student-prisoner with an opportunity to learn about Israel13 and to develop critical knowledge of prison guards in their most fortified spaces. Of particular importance here is the annual lecture held as part of the "Security Services in Israel" course in the master's program, in which an open dialogue amongst the prisoners allows individuals to share stories about interrogation. They reflect on the physical and psychological dimensions of the experience and question the formation of subjects when they are “defenseless individual[s] facing a state armed with military expertise."14 The gatherings offer space for “collective and honest disclosure of prisoners’ experiences of interrogation by the Shin Bet, constituting a form of psychological rehabilitation that enables prisoners to come to grips with their human weaknesses, engaging in self-reflexivity required for the work of the resistance."15
Despite being bound by the bureaucratic procedures of Al-Quds University, which mandate exams and grading, Hadarim University still manages to transcend such complexities by transforming the margin (prison and prisoner) into the center (university and student). Ultimately, the goal is to arm the captive-student with “a critical, liberating, and not mobilizing national consciousness.”16
The rebellious act of transforming the prison into a university led to a clash between the prisoners and the Israeli Prison Service (IPS) over its repeated attempts to disrupt lectures. Syed Hussein Alatas [a Malay scholar] understands these confrontations as “cluster operations,” or Zionist colonial practices necessary for maintaining intellectual imperialism.17 In 2018, IPS personnel disrupted the “Hadarim educational circle” that assembled in the prison yard. They confiscated the circle’s chairs following the colonial law of the so-called “Erdan Committee,” which sought to ban education in prison. They then conducted room searches18 and issued strict regulations over educational material. According to Basil Ghattas, each prisoner was allowed to possess only eight books.19 Additionally, several bachelor’s faculty members from the ranks of the prisoners were transferred out of Hadarim.20
But the prisoners would not be deterred in their recalcitrant opposition to the IPS. They leveraged the transfers out of Haradim prison (and thus, out of Hadarim Prison University) to spread their educational programs to other carceral spaces.21 As such, the master’s graduates from the ranks of the incarcerated — who were forcibly or voluntarily reallocated22 — became messengers for new forms of knowledge production.
The struggle at Hadarim University is evident in Barghouti’s description of failed Israeli attempts to abolish the educational processes. He writes: “When we decided to teach and study, we did not submit a request to the jailer or ask for his permission. Rather, we rebelled daily against the denial of our rights, at the level of both form and content. Today, after a decade of trial and error, this experiment [Hadarim University] has spread to many carceral sites, such that it is impossible for the jailer to put an end to educational programs in prison; their only recourse is disruption and obstruction.”23
The relationship between the captive and the jailer is tense; it is a struggle between adversaries. The jailer observes some form of education taking place at Hadarim through the surveillance cameras and tries to disrupt the activities. The prisoners know that the jailer’s primary duty is to maintain "calm,” avoid chaos, and prevent any clashes with the prisoners. By virtue of their power and perseverance, the captives manage to rebel and resist the jailer, transcending the laws of the prison. They do not seek the approval of the prison administration, for they know that their efforts to self-organize would be quashed. This is precisely what threatens to unravel the coercive relationship between the jailer and the captives, or the oppressor and the oppressed. The oppressed here refuses to submit to the disciplinary whims of the oppressor; instead, the captives at Hadarim decide, prepare, and act.
This piece appears in the nineteenth issue of The New York War Crimes.
Endnotes
1 For more information, see, Khaled Odetallah, “Guns and Flags.”
2 For more on Hadarim University Prison, see: Qasim Al-Haj, “Hadarim Prison University: The Domestication of the Uncanny, the Philosophy of Survival,” Journal of Palestine Studies 135 (2023). [Arabic]
3 Marwan Barghouti, Interview by Author, 25 September 2023.
4 Elias Sabbagh, Interview by Author, 12 September 2021.
5 Mohammad Batta, Interview by Author, 18 May 2022.
6 Interview with Elias Sabbagh.
7 Interview with Marwan Barghouti.
8 Interview with Elias Sabbagh.
9 Al-Haj, “Hadarim Prison University.”
10 Shadi Al-Shurafa, Interview by Author, 7 January 2023. Bassel Ghattas, “The World of University Prison: An Academic Study,” in Prison Papers: from the Corridors of the Knesset to the Occupation Prisons (Beirut/Doha: Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies, 2022): 96.
11 Interview with Shadi Al-Shurafa.
12 Jihad Manasra, Interview by Author, 21 September 2021; Based Abu-Bakr, Interview by the Author, 21 December 2021.
13 Interview with Elias Sabbagh.
14 Interview with Marwan Barghouti.
15 Ibid.
16 Ibid.
17 Sayed Hussein Al-Attas,"Intellectual Imperialism: Definition, Traits and Problems,” Southeast Asian Journal of Social Science no.1 (2000): 23-45.
18 Interview with Marwan Barghouti.
19 Bassel, “The World of Prison,” 101.
20 Abdelqader Badawi, Interview with the Author, 14 September 2021.
21 Interview with Mohammad Batta.
22 Interview with Marwan Barghouti.
23 Interview with Marwan Barghouti.