By Ahlam Tamimi – Sep 3, 2026The following article, by liberated Palestinian prisoner and writer Ahlam Tamimi, was originally published in Arabic at Banafsaj.Many of the effects of imprisonment remain deeply embedded in the consciousness of Palestinian men and women released from Israeli occupation prisons for many years. Strip searches of Palestinian women prisoners are considered one of the most painful and degrading forms of humiliation because they violate the very essence of dignity and humanity in the most intimate of ways, turning the body into a battleground no less significant than other forms of physical torture.Within its colonial system, the occupation treats the body as something subject to security control and uses strip searches as one of its procedures of arrest, with the aim of breaking the prisoner’s will and conveying the message that the occupation is capable of violating every boundary, even the most private. Because the understanding of the body in Arab Muslim culture is connected to dignity, and protecting it is considered part of personal, national and religious identity, strip searches are among the procedures that inflict the greatest psychological harm, leaving a deep wound that strikes at this fundamental understanding.The prisoner’s body is violated from the very first moment of her arrest, when the eyes of occupation soldiers begin to invade the young woman’s body from head to toe. The commander of the arresting unit may order that she be strip-searched at the place of her arrest, whether in her home, at a checkpoint or somewhere else. She is immediately subjected to a shock that paralyzes her thinking, particularly because the order to search her is often accompanied by chaos and incessant shouting.The prisoner complies with the order, which in many cases initially involves a partial search, until she is transferred to the military jeep, where she begins her journey alone among the personnel of the Israeli Prison Service. As soon as she arrives at the detention center, another order is issued for a meticulous search, subjecting her to an even deeper shock, as this search is more invasive and brutal than the one before it.The moment the prisoner arrives at the detention center, with her hands and feet shackled, she enters an empty room leading to an office filled with men. An Israeli female prison guard stands in the middle of the room. At first, the prisoner thinks of her simply as another woman, until the guard’s gaze begins to devour her body and she orders the prisoner to remove all of her clothing.An internal dialogue begins between the prisoner and herself: “How can I take off my clothes when I have never even undressed in front of my mother?” Then: “My modesty, my religion and my upbringing prevent me from doing this.” She tries to refuse the order, stating that she is not concealing anything prohibited, only to be met with screaming and threats involving dogs, electric shocks or bringing men into the room.Every woman prisoner comes from a modest or religious environment, and she is left with two choices and no third option: comply “voluntarily” with the strip search in order to avoid the consequences, or resist the order and be subjected to a forced search.In the first case, the prisoner removes her clothes one piece at a time, without being allowed to cover one part of her body while exposing another. She swallows nervously a thousand times a minute, sweat pouring from every part of her body, while her attempts to plead for the procedure to be eased are unsuccessful.She stands completely naked. She is then ordered to turn around 360 degrees. Every attempt to cover her breasts or intimate areas with her hands is met with shouting and threats intended to force her into submission. Then she hears another command—one that makes her wish she could die upon hearing it. She is ordered to squat and spread both legs while the prison guard scrutinizes every part of her body, occupying her entire body with her gaze and carrying out the violation without the slightest mercy.The prisoner is overcome by a state of shock. Her body is among the most precious things she possesses, and her upbringing and religion have placed its violation among the gravest taboos. Despite everything, she remains steadfast and puts her clothes back on before being thrown into a locked cell underground. There, she may shed tears, and every time she tries to turn her thoughts elsewhere in an attempt to erase what has become lodged in her memory, the cell forces her to relive the scene once again.The second option is for the prisoner to refuse to submit to the strip search, responding to the screaming and insults in kind and unleashing all of her anger against the Israeli Prison Service guards. She summons to mind all of the injustices inflicted upon her people: the theft of their land, the martyrs, the wounded and the prisoners, and all the hatred inherited from her ancestors.UN: Attacking Women Part of Israel’s Systematic GenocideBut none of this protects her from an enemy that seeks to occupy her body just as it occupied her homeland.It is not easy to describe the brutal scene to which a woman prisoner is subjected as punishment for refusing to submit voluntarily to a strip search. A force of male and female prison guards attacks her, accompanied by a police dog and an electric-shock device.Then the beating, screaming and howling begin. She does not know where to look or what to focus on. As soon as she manages to gather her strength, she is subjected to an electric shock that paralyzes her movement, her eyes fixed on a dog foaming at the mouth, eager to maul her. Her clothes are torn from her body amid the beating and humiliation until she collapses naked on the floor, wrapping her arms around herself in an attempt to cover whatever she can, but to no avail.All of this may be accompanied by threats of rape and perhaps deliberate sexual harassment, but she resists and fights alone until she is thrown onto the floor of the detention cell, stripped of her clothes, her body covered in blood and bruises.Strip searches do not end in the detention cell. Rather, they extend into the details of everyday prison life, where they are suddenly carried out in entire rooms and prison sections. Strip searches may be individual or collective. They may be imposed on particular prisoners whom the prison administration regards with suspicion, or before visits with family members or lawyers, under the pretext of maintaining security.Some may believe that the psychological effects of strip searches disappear once a woman prisoner is liberated from captivity, leaving behind everything that reminds her of the experience. But the testimony of many released women prisoners demonstrates the opposite.Most former women prisoners agree that the effects extend beyond their release. They may suddenly wake in terror from their sleep, suffer frightening nightmares, establish strict boundaries even with those closest to them of the opposite sex, avoid recounting the experience publicly, and feel as though they are suffocating when they remember it.At the same time, we see many released women prisoners overcome these effects, despite their continued presence, and transform them into a state of defiance and steadfastness, affirming that the body may be violated, but the will cannot be occupied.Ahlam Tamimi is a Palestinian-Jordanian journalist and writer, originally from the village of Nabi Saleh in occupied Palestine and born in Zarqa, Jordan, in 1980. One of the first women to join the Izz el-Din al-Qassam Brigades, she escorted the martyr Izz el-Din al-Masri inside occupied al-Quds ’48 to carry out a resistance operation at a Sbarro restaurant. She was arrested and sentenced to 16 life terms in occupation prisons, and was liberated in the Wafa’ al-Ahrar prisoner exchange achieved by the Palestinian Resistance in 2011. She was forcibly exiled to Jordan; later, in 2017, the US government announced that it was adding her to its most-wanted list and issued a $5 million reward for her capture. (Samidoun: Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network)