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A Palestinian inmate walks down the corridor of an Israeli jail. He stops at a cell door to deliver meals, but food is not the only thing he carries. He also has a sheet of paper sent by a Palestinian leader within the jail, containing the numbers of all Fatah-affiliated cells where the paper should be delivered. The paper lists names of prisoners and their elected positions within the Fatah faction of the jail.

“I read 300 books in the jail about political issues and about Palestine.”

It is quiet, and most prisoners are still asleep. The inmate slides the note in with the food. The leader of the cell wakes up his cellmates and reads the contents of the note. After he finishes, he puts a check mark next to his cell number and returns the note to the messenger, who proceeds to the next cell.

When the messenger has delivered the report to every Fatah cell, he returns the note to the leaders as confirmation that all prisoners affiliated with the parties are informed of election results.

To a guard’s eye, the messenger is delivering meals according to the prison schedule. In reality, the prisoners are in the final stage of conducting an election. The prisoners call the messenger a “freedom fighter” because he risks his safety to help them communicate and organize.

Such activity is common in Israeli prisons, where the incarceration of Palestinians who allegedly pose a threat to security places many of the most educated and politically driven individuals together. Examples include recently convicted and the approximately 650 employees of the Palestinian Authority who are currently incarcerated, according to the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society, a prisoner support group that operates throughout the West Bank.

Together, these prisoners create a shadow education system, highly organized and rigorously enforced. For many of them, this self-organization is a defining moment in an environment where some are held without charge, subjected to physical pain, or denied access to their lawyers or families.

Many inmates dedicate their lives entirely to education and political organizing.

Take the case of Sa’ad Joudeh. At the age of 18, he was about to begin a four-year Bachelor of Arts program at An-Najah University when Israeli forces arrested him in his parents’ home in Nablus, a city in the northern West Bank. He was charged for involvement in activity that threatened Israeli security, and spent the next eight and a half years in prison.

Today, Joudeh is in his thirties and is the chairman of Fatah—a secular Palestinian political party—at An-Najah University. Tall and well-spoken, Joudeh will not hesitate to say that for him, education became political work.

“I read 300 books in the jail about political issues and about Palestine,” he said. “I still remember all of my friends who were in the jail, and now they are brothers with me.”

If he could go back in time and choose the direction of his life, Joudeh said he would still go to prison, where he participated in formative education and training.

“The Israelis try to make the jails a grave for the Palestinians,” Joudeh said, “but we made it … a school and university that educated prisoners.”

Joudeh is not an exception. Many previously unschooled individuals leave the jail with a high level of education, deeply rooted political affiliations, and an unbreakable sense of support from their peers, preparing rather than deterring them from fighting the occupation upon release.

What makes a “security offense”?

Around 40 percent of the male Palestinian population in the West Bank has spent time in Israeli jails, according to Addameer, a Ramallah-based prisoner support and human rights association.

“Their strategy is to destroy us,” one former prisoner said.

Abd Ala’al Al’anani, director of the Ramallah branch of the Palestinian Prisoners Society, estimates that between 7,000 and 7,500 Palestinians are currently held in Israeli jails. Around 450 of those are held without charge or trial under a practice known as . These numbers are constantly in flux due to frequent arrests and releases.

According to Lt. Col. Morris Hirsch, head of prosecution in Judea and Samaria for the Israeli Defense Forces, Palestinians can be arrested only if they are suspected of committing a crime, including what Hirsch calls “security-related criminal offenses.” This is a generic label for a wide scope of crimes, including the use of explosives, illegal possession of weapons, firing weapons, making and throwing Molotov cocktails, and throwing rocks.

However, according to Hirsch, the defining attribute of a security offense is its “nationalistic motivation,” which becomes apparent if a suspect acknowledges during interrogation that his goal is to fight the occupation.

In practice, designating actions done with nationalistic motivation as security offenses enables Israeli authorities to designate entire sectors of the Palestinian population as liable for arrest.

This tactic has become “the primary form of subjugation and control of Palestinians living in the occupied Palestinian territory” since 1967, Ayed Abu Eqtaish of Defense for Children International, a nongovernmental children’s rights organization.

Once they are in prison, these prisoners receive harsh treatment from Israeli guards and prison officials. Abeer Baker, a senior lawyer at The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, Palestinian security prisoners face disproportionately long sentences, harsh interrogation methods, and stricter living conditions than other types of inmates.

The psychological impacts of this treatment remain with prisoners and their families long after their release, and show frequent mental disorders in detainees.

A complex system created in secrecy

Joudeh believes this harsh treatment is intended to break a prisoner’s will and suppress political activity. He said that in an effort to counteract this, many inmates dedicate their lives entirely to education and political organizing.

The majority of Palestinians in positions of power today have served long sentences in Israeli jails.

YES! spoke to four ex-prisoners about their personal experiences during prison terms that ranged from seven to 15 years. They wished to remain anonymous for security reasons.

Note that, while they felt their experiences were typical, prisoners are held in prisons and detention centers throughout the West Bank and within the borders of Israel. The layout of every jail, as well as the type of prisoners in it, varies from the last and affects the organization that occurs there. In other words, this account does not represent all prisons.

The education system arises out of an intensely regimented network implemented by the prisoners themselves. Cells are organized by political factions—predominantly Fatah, Hamas, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Upon entrance into the jail, the new prisoner is asked his political affiliation and led to an appropriate cell.

Each political faction is responsible for the organization and education of its affiliated prisoners.

Within each cell, leaders ensure that prisoners stick to a strict schedule, in order to maximize the amount of activity in each day.

One former prisoner sad that:

We wake up at six … go to the tiyul [to take a trip or walk] … They [Israeli guards] allow us to go outside for one hour … we do sports in this time. After that we return to our cell and start to study … if someone didn’t understand something, he can raise his hand and can ask a question about what he is reading … all prisoners help each other.

A typical day includes several time blocks dedicated to studying and concludes with a nightly lesson on a topic determined by the cell leader, generally relating to Palestinian culture and political resistance.

Topics of study include several classes on history, with a focus on Palestine and its political movements, relations between Israel and Palestine, and Zionism, as well as the English, Arabic, and Hebrew languages. Prisoners become well-versed in the political ideologies of their respective affiliation.

Former prisoners reported instances when most reading and writing materials were banned, for example during politically volatile periods. During these times, prisoners memorized books and shared the information orally, or smuggled them in under the guise of nonthreatening covers.

In an effort to gain access to reading and writing materials, the prisoners planned and staged hunger strikes. Prisoners said these strikes had sometimes won inmates access to a wide range of items, such as utensils, balls for sport, and educational materials. Today, prisoners equated the jail to a rich library, consisting of books brought by family members of prisoners or donated by the Red Cross.

Prisoners also described being punished for educational and political activity within the jails. Punitive measures ranged from rearranging the makeup of prisoners in the cells, transferring perceived leaders to other jails, confiscating writing and reading materials, and routine torture and isolation. Prisoners’ rights organization Addameer has cases of torture within Israeli prisons.

But these measures have not deterred inmates from organizing.

“Their strategy is to destroy us,” one former prisoner said. “I did everything in my life to continue learning, and to not let them destroy me.”

Life after prison

Bill Fletcher Jr., senior scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies, has worked to build support for Palestinians among African Americans in the United States. He points to similarities between the activities of black prisoners during the Civil Rights movement and those of Palestinian prisoners today.

Palestinian security prisoners face long sentences and harsh interrogation methods.

“You have people that were arrested for political crimes, regardless of what the actual charges were against them,” he said, “and they then started organizing within the prisons.”

For Fletcher, the main difference between the two situations is what happens after a prisoner is released. For African American prisoners during the Civil Rights movement, long prison sentences often led to fewer ties to the outside world and eventual disengagement from politics. The opposite holds true for many Palestinian prisoners, Fletcher observed.

Al’anani of the Palestinian Prisoner Society agreed, saying the majority of Palestinians in positions of power today have served long sentences in Israeli jails or faced repeated arrests.

“You gain experience and are put in a position in society where you are respected because you were a freedom fighter inside the jail,” he said. “When prisoners are released, they can get into society easily and have success in many different paths. Some work in government, some in civilian jobs, others in NGOs. Some are ambassadors in foreign countries.”

Al’anani’s point supports Joudeh’s observation that, for Palestinian prisoners, education is politics. Regardless of a prisoner’s age or level of education, their experience in jail will likely drive them to continue fighting the occupation following their release, this time with more knowledge and political drive.

Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly translated the Hebrew word tiyul. The text has been updated.