Smuggling Palestinian Prisoners: Smuggling Freedom, Writing from Captivity by Basil Farraj

As Israel’s genocidal violence continues to be unleashed across historic Palestine, a war has been unfolding inside Israeli prisons. This war has rid Palestinian prisoners of rights earned through decades of struggle, including their ability to write and communicate with the outside world. Despite the horrendous conditions of captivity, however, it is certain that prisoners will find ways to smuggle freedom outside their prison cells. These practices should be approached as instances of smuggling freedom rather than mere resistance practices or simple inversions of power and violence, as they are commonly conceptualized. By articulating Palestinian prisoners’ cultural productions as instances of a smuggled freedom, the article highlighted the political nature of the prisoners’ varied responses to power and violence conceptualizing them as modes of ‘politics in-the-making’. Palestinian prisoners’ long history of cultural productions, along with the processes of smuggling them out of captivity, point to an emancipatory politics in-the-making which dreams, and works for, a liberated geography. This is specifically pertinent today.