Walid Daqqah is a 61-year-old Palestinian political prisoner. The writer, intellectual, and organizer has been imprisoned in Israeli jails since 1986, almost 37 years. Following a recent life-threatening diagnosis and his deteriorating health, Palestinian organizations have launched a campaign to demand that Israeli authorities release him and provide necessary and urgent medical care, which they have refused to do.
Renowned writer and former political prisoner Wisam Rafeedie wrote the following piece about Daqqah’s struggle and steadfast resistance.
In the conclusion of his exemplary study on ‘Searing of Consciousness: Or Redefining Torture’ (2010) Walid Daqqah proves that Zionist ambitions to control Palestinian prisoners point towards the desire to completely sear Palestinian prisoners’ consciousness and control its formation. He recalls a conversation in 2006 between Ya’akov Ganot, then Prison Service commander, and the National Security minister Gideon Ezra during the latter’s visit to Gilboa prison that took place within earshot of the prisoners. Ganot said: “rest assured…you can put your trust in knowing that I will make them [the prisoners] raise the Israeli flag and sing Hatikva (the Israeli national anthem).”
Perhaps Ganot or the prison’s intelligence officers had read Michel Foucault or Zygmunt Bauman and other social theorists and studied the methodologies of domination, hegemony and control of individuals and groups. Or perhaps not. However, what is clear is that the calculations of different Zionist institutions that are responsible for making decisions around Palestinian prisoners have generated the opposite results than what they intended. Palestinian prisoners have never sung the Hatikva and have never raised the Zionist flag. On the contrary, their collective and individual struggle has only strengthened and escalated to record levels since 2006.
As usual, life does not proceed according to the assessments of academic researchers and the analysis of intelligence officers. What they fail to realize and what their sacred methodical measurement cannot capture is a militant will, armed with a rooted national ideological consciousness. Yet, the credibility of our analysis requires us to acknowledge some particular and serious setbacks, specifically how the image of receding unity amongst the prisoner movement has been fostered. This has led to the break up of some of its joints through the creation and development of the ‘Kapo’[2] system which Daqqah does not overlook in his study. Yet the prisoners’ collective and individual resistance continues, deepens and grows. This is the undeniable, overwhelmingly positive reality.
Walid Daqqah, throughout his 37 years of steadfastness while imprisoned— has produced scientifically astute intellectual contributions that expose the prison’s administrative policies and principled literary works that are aimed at the youth, all while battling his deadly illness with strength and human spirit that embraces his wife Sana’a and daughter Milad’s humanity— he has become an exemplary model of that rooted national ideological consciousness. Indeed, getting married and having a child while he is imprisoned contains within it significant symbolism. His child Milad was conceived through liberated sperm and is symbolic of his determination to live a dignified life like others, have children and play with them, despite the intrusive watch of Zionists and the limitations on family visits. Those who banked on Palestinian prisoners’ singing the Hatikva and raising the Zionist flag now witness his companionship of a comrade, through the fence that separates visitors, over the long years of incarceration.
The resisting prisoner does not need to prove their humanity. That is a moot point— they deserve to live it. It is the Zionist prison guard that lacks humanity in the face of the resisting prisoner. Walid has not only affirmed his humanity but has proven that his consciousness, like thousands of other prisoners, has not been seared. He has exposed Israel’s policy and practice of searing consciousness that targets prisoners.
Throughout all the stages of his life in prison, Walid has never relinquished his leading role in the prisoners’ movement, and it was my honor to witness this role in Askalan prison in 1997.[3] He was always committed to his role in the national struggle as an activist of high consciousness, unlike the handful of leaders that chose to play the role of the ‘Kapo’. Walid never stopped his sharp intellectual production, or literary writing for adolescents or building fraternity and camaraderie amongst his fellow prisoners who all bear witness to his character.
Such is a disobedient conscience that cannot be seared, this is the mythical consciousness that Muthaffar al-Nawab poetically expressed. Walid is facing the politics of daily, continuous murder, in the same way that the martyrs Nasir Abu Hamid, Khader Adnan and others before them did. And the term daily murder is not a figure of speech but the objective reality that affirms the Zionist carceral system’s ambitions to sear the prisoners’ consciousness and aspirations. What is Walid Daqqah, if not an exemplary model of a stubborn consciousness that is un-searable?
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Endnotes
[1] In the title, Rafeedie plays on the choice of term Daqqah has made in the title of his study ‘Searing of Consciousness: or on redefining torture’ which in arabic draws on the process of welding metal. It signifies the force with which the Zionist carceral system weaponizes psychological and physical, tangible and intangible warfare in seeking to sear the consciousness of palestinian prisoners
[2] The ‘Kapo’ system is a tactic of prison governance that co-opts prisoners into the supervision of their fellow prisoners through the promise of some privileges. The term was originally used in the context of the Nazi camps in Europe for the ‘prisoner functionary’ that was assigned by the SS to supervise other prisoners. It is a derogatory term for those who betray their fellow prisoners by playing a role in prison governance.
[3] Rafeedie was imprisoned under the Zionist policy of administrative detention between August 1994 and May 1997.
Wisam Rafeedie is a former Palestinian political prisoner, full-time researcher and lecturer at the Department of Social Sciences at Bethlehem University – Palestine. He previously worked as a part-time lecturer in Sociology and Cultural Studies at Birzeit University. He holds two master’s degrees from Birzeit University, one in sociology for his thesis on the changes in the status of women in contemporary Palestinian literature before and after Oslo, and the other in contemporary Arab studies.
Rafeedie wrote his novel, The Trinity of Fundamentals, during his time in Zionist prison in 1993. The Palestinian Youth Movement will be publishing an English translation of the novel with 1804 Books at the end of 2023. Sign up here to be notified when The Trinity of Fundamentals is available for purchase.
This piece was translated from Arabic to English by the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM). PYM launched an online petition calling for the immediate release of Walid Daqqah.
