Ethnography and the politics of prisoners in Palestine-Israel

Between 1987 and 1994, well more than one hundred thousand Palestinians were incarcerated as "security" prisoners by Israeli occupation forces. The experiences of these men presented particular problems of representation. While the author tried to empathetically write about their human experiences of suffering, he discovered that trauma can be appropriated by different groups and invested with different emotional and political meanings. During the uprising called the Intifada of the 1980s and early 1990s, the nationalist youth described prisoners (often themselves) as a vanguard in the Palestinian struggle. After the arrival of the Palestinian Authority in 1994, the prisoners were recast as victims in need of rehabilitation, and many became rank-and-file members of Palestinian security. The process of ethnographic discovery described here suggests that ethnography aimed only at providing a "native's point of view" is insufficient. Politically engaged anthropology can and should do more than trying to humanize cultural others who suffer.