IMPRISONMENT AS A COLONIAL TOOL
Israel’s carceral practices towards the Palestinian population are built on policies of imprisonment initially developed by the British authorities during the mandate era. During this period of colonial rule, lasting from 1920-1948, the British saw Palestinians effectively as an insurgent population to be policed and disciplined. Using the typical colonial canard of “security” under military rule, the British developed “emergency regulations” to detain both peasants and urban workers in large numbers, arbitrarily, without trial, often in what resembled concentration camps, such as Sarafand al-’Amar, located in the coastal plain of historic Palestine. Significant sections of Palestine at that time effectively became huge prisons. Imprisonment was particularly widespread and brutal with the onset of the 1936-39 Revolt, an uprising against both British colonial rule and Zionist settlement. In May 1939, British Secretary of State for Colonies at that time, Malcolm MacDonald, confirmed to the British parliament that there were 13 prison camps in Palestine housing 4,816 people. At one point that same year, the number of detainees rose to over 9,000, ten times the figure of just two years previously. Overcrowding became so severe that some detainees had to be released in order to create more room for those newly-arrested.
10000
8000
6000
4000
2000
0
1937
1939
Continuing the trajectory of increasingly ruthless and widespread imprisonment, the British went on to introduce the Defence (Emergency) Regulations of 1945, which decreed a
huge expansion in repressive instruments, including the
establishment of military tribunals to try civilians without granting the right of appeal, prohibiting the publication of books and newspapers, demolishing houses, detaining individuals administratively for an indefinite period, sealing off particular territories, and imposing curfews. Crucially, after its establishment in 1948, Israel incorporated these regulations, as well as many other British mandate laws, into its state law.
Made with FlippingBook - PDF hosting