Suffering and liberalism :the case of hunger strikes in Palestine -

Abstract

This thesis explores a series of hunger strikes that took place in 2011 and 2012, involving Palestinian prisoners in Israeli-controlled prisons and detention centres. Hunger strikes are an assertion of rights, namely the right to refuse sustenance. I employ a liberal framework of universal rights, and ask: what type of challenge do Palestinian hunger strikes constitute to liberal conceptions of human rights? Hunger strikes, I claim, cannot be conceptualized as a solitary undertaking; rather, they communicate with a specific constituency. Moreover, they are a way of reclaiming agency through the use of the body as a tool of resistance. In this way, they subvert the proscribed power structures of the modern prison system. I examine these ideas through the examples of Republican hunger strikers in Northern Ireland in the 1980s and the example of Gandhi’s hunger strikes in India in the 1930s and 1940s. These case studies provide examples of different ideologies underlying hunger striking, and provide a backdrop to a close analysis of the Palestinian hunger strikes, their rhetoric and how they were received. I argue that the Palestinian hunger strikers appeal to liberal conceptions of human rights, therefore constituting a challenge to the international community and its claim to rescue victims of suffering. Conversely, this appeal to a post-Cold War politics of humanitarianism results in the sidelining of the political demands underlying the hunger strikes.