ABSTRACT
The Abu Jihad Centre for the Palestinian Captives’ Movement is located in a small three-bedroom apartment on the fifth floor of a building in Um al
Sharayt, a lower middle-class neighbourhood in south Ramallah.1 The Centre’s
main aim is to gather and archive written material and art produced by poli-
tical captives while serving time in Israeli prisons. Since starting its activities
around the end of 1993, the Centre has collected thousands of prison note-
books, and several hundred plastic art products. When, in December 2000, I
first met Fahid Abu al Haj, the director of the Centre and a former political
captive, he was extremely enthusiastic and supportive of my project. Fahid’s own narrative of his personal history is more than telling about the Palestinian
social and national formations. He grew up in Kwbar, a small village north
of Ramallah, as an ‘illiterate peasant’, as he describes himself in his early years.
Passing through the rites of passage of the Palestinian national movement –
clandestine political activities, political captivity, coalition with political
power centres, a formal position in the hierarchy of one’s organization –
Fahid came to be a prominent figure in the local politics of his organization,
Fateh. Of all the socio-national rites of passage that he went through, his first arrest and interrogation were the basic formative experiences.
