Des féminités mobilisées et incarcérées en Palestine

From 1967 till today, the gendered subjectivities of Palestinian activists incarcerated in Israel have evolved according to their political and armed mobilizations and the conditions of their detention. Up till the First Intifada, prison was a site of training for political women who asserted their activism in the context of secular parties (Fatah, leftwing parties) and feminism. When, in the course of interrogations, the Israeli intelligence services turned to forms of physical and psychological abuse tied to their gender and sexuality, these women violently experienced the conflict at the level of their bodies. In response, they resignified these stigmata as so many markers of their engagement. Following the Oslo peace agreement, their actions became more diversified. Faced with the repression of the Second Intifada, they threw themselves into martyrdom operations. Violence, however, is denied in their accounts and bodies appear sexualized and feminine. Secular activists were then joined by others belonging to religious parties (Hamas, Islamic Jihad). As the experience of incarceration became commonplace, new ways of living beyond prison gradually emerged. Former inmates established feminine collective networks and their activism and periods of imprisonment came to be seen as sources of transformation for gender relations.