Palestinian women activists between resistance literature and prison literature

Palestinian writer and former prisoner Aisha Odeh (activists)

Resistance literature and prison literature in Palestine express the life experiences of contemporary Palestinian women in two different ways.

Resistance literature reflects the challenges of Palestinian society and its struggle against difficult circumstances, with an emphasis on the strong spirit and steadfastness in the face of political and social challenges.

While prison literature deals with the experiences of individuals who have been arrested and detained, highlighting the difficulties and harsh conditions they go through, and highlighting the strength of will and resilience in the face of repression. Both of them combine to highlight the strong spirit of the Palestinian people and the impact of political circumstances on their lives and experiences.

 Confronting injustice

In resistance literature, the creative writer Ghassan Kanafani is considered the spiritual father who made Palestinian and Arab novelistic and short-story creativity breathe resistance. He became a true expression of his pain resulting from colonialism and the Nakba, and he carried his hopes for liberation and return, especially in his famous quatrains: “Men in the Sun” and “What’s Left for You?” ", "Umm Saad", then "Returning to Haifa", in which he expressed the new awareness that began to crystallize among the Palestinian people, who began to wake up from the repercussions of the painful wound of their catastrophe.

As for prison literature, it is possible to point out a large number of writings, through which Palestinian prisoners presented an accurate vision of their personal experiences in captivity and the harsh conditions they go through.

Especially since the number of Palestinian citizens who passed through the occupation cells is approximately one million. Which makes these books a collection of vivid and painful experiences that highlight the power of steadfastness and defiance in the face of occupation and oppression.

In this context, women played a prominent role in the Palestinian resistance through their literary, intellectual and cultural contributions to the fight against colonialism, injustice and oppression. It was concentrated in many literary works that express this Arab woman’s vision and life experiences.

For example, the Palestinian poet Fadwa Tuqan was one of the key women who contributed significantly to the literary resistance. Along with many other women who influenced the Arab literary scene and contributed to embodying various life and cultural experiences through literary criticism and the production of novels, poetry, and short stories.

A symbol of revolutions and struggle

The role of women in resistance literature was represented by addressing the stories and roles of women who resist occupation, injustice, and tyranny, where women were depicted in strong and courageous images that made them a symbol of revolutions and the struggle for freedom, dignity, and success in all areas of life.

In addition, teaching resistance literature and building a free and just society, where the main focus is on enhancing the role of women in rebuilding damaged communities after war and occupation, and taking advantage of the opportunities available to them and participating in all aspects of life.

Thus, resistance literature carried values ​​​​to empower women to be bearers of a message that comprehensively reflects their role and encourages them to play a major role in finding solutions to society’s problems, as well as to support it in its ongoing struggle to achieve freedom and justice.

Arab women wrote and published poems and texts embodying the suffering of the Arab people, expressing their courage and steadfastness in the face of injustice and occupation. It also played an important role in developing national identity and encouraging people to join the struggle to liberate their countries from colonialism.

Women also created new styles in literature and poetry, expressing the concerns of women, society and freedom, enriching the Arab literary scene and successfully conveying their messages to a wider audience. Among the most famous women writers who played a prominent role in Arab resistance literature, there are many among whom we mention, in addition to Fadwa Tuqan, Samira Azzam, who excelled in writing short stories in Palestine and throughout the Arab Levant.

Literature that seeks freedom

Turning to prison literature, we find this type of literature occupies a prominent place in the Palestinian literary product, as it represents an integral part of Arab literature aiming for freedom, whether at the level of prose or poetry. It is one of the types of true writing, which some have called “free literature.” Or "arrest literature." While some called it “Prisoner of War Literature,” others called it “Prison Literature.”

This is something that is understood by the Palestinian people throughout the occupied country, where nearly a tenth of their children, a number that is not exaggerated, have tasted the bitterness of the occupation prisons. They have tasted all kinds of torment and imbibed the pain of oppression and deprivation, and faced their executioners with patience, steadfastness and defiance. Some of them were liberated, some of them were still waiting, and some of them met their Lord and were never able to see the sun of freedom again.

The arrest was not limited to men; Rather, it affected the struggling women of Palestine who entered the prison and were subjected to torture, oppression and humiliation, but they proved their courage and steadfastness in the face of their executioners.

Among the names of the women who wrote about their experiences behind bars: Zakia Shamout (Umm Masoud), Nahida Nazzal, Halima Freitekh, Khitam Khattab, Aisha Odeh, and Dr. Souad Ghoneim... all of them telling their stories with captivity and their suffering with him as part of the suffering of the Palestinian people from the Zionist occupation and its unlimited oppression. .

For example, but not limited to, the writer Aisha Odeh lived the bitterness of the Zionist military rule and the injustice of its prisons. She is a daughter of Palestine, born in 1944 in the village of Deir Jarir in the Ramallah district. She was imprisoned on March 1, 1969, and the occupation blew up her family’s home following her arrest. She was among the first group of women detained in Palestine after the 1967 war.

She did not gain her freedom except through a prisoner exchange, so she was released in 1979 and deported to Jordan, but she returned to the homeland after the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1994. To tell her experience as a freedom fighter and a freed prisoner deported from the homeland, where she told the story, it was honest and transparent, without Heroics or claims, and the bottom line of what she wanted to say in her story that she penned in “Dreams of Freedom” was that the detainee is first and foremost a defenseless human being in front of a barbaric, merciless machine.

Bitter experiences

She reformulated her detention experience in a flamboyant literary narrative style that shines with aesthetics and transparency of language that expresses a painful experience. She continued that experience in her book: “A Different Day,” before documenting the experiences of detention in the occupation prisons of female activists who shared that bitter experience with her in her book: “A Price for the Sun.” Among them are the Moroccan Nadia Bradley and her Palestinian companions Nahla Al-Bayed, Afifa Hanna Noura, and Latifa Al-Hawari. Aida Saad, Rasmiya Odeh, Maryam Shakhshir, Dalal Abu Qamar, Therese Halsa, and Randa Al-Nabulsi.

It is also possible to recall the experience of "Sulafa Jadallah", who began photographing the fighters of the Palestinian revolution. When the June 5, 1967 war occurred, she and Palestinian cinematographer Hani Jawhariya filmed the events and effects of that war, and the tragedy of the Palestinian displacement that occurred during it.

In 1969, she produced the first film of Palestinian struggle cinema (No... to the peaceful solution). In the same year, Sulafa was shot in the head while filming. Which led to her becoming paralyzed from the outside and stopping her work as a cinematographer. Sulafa Jadallah is considered the first photographer in the history of the Palestinian revolution.

Finally, resistance literature and prison literature continue to have a strong and positive impact on members of society, in that they represent a real and honest reality in the face of the injustice and tyranny of the occupation.

A detailed description of themselves, their hopes, and their personal and national ambitions, in a way that helps them escape from the pressures of fear, detention, and the atmosphere of repression and restriction into the vast world of imagination, in which the writer can monitor reality mixed with imagination and create honest literary content in which he sheds light on a suffering that is known only to those who have lived and coexisted with it.

Considering the human meanings it carries, it carries literary content and creative eloquence that makes it closer to the listener and reader than others, through which it was able to attract the attention of interested people, academics, and critics throughout the greater Arab world and beyond.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.