Abstract:
This essay honors Khader Adnan’s life and martyrdom in May 2023 following eighty-seven days of hunger strike in protest against his illegal administrative detention by the Israeli regime. Adnan is an important figure of Palestinian resistance who, in 2012, revived waves of mass Palestinian hunger strikes in Israeli prisons. Through these hunger strikes, Adnan aspired to a life of dignity, and sacrificing his body was not about death as much as it was about life and freedom. As Adnan’s story shows, through the embodied praxis of hunger striking, Palestinian prisoners assert ownership over their bodies and fates, deciding when and how to die in the face of the Israeli carceral regime that keeps them confined indefinitely.