A Shared Struggle: Stories of Palestinian and Irish Hunger Strikers.

• Author: Aljamal, Yousef M.

A Shared Struggle: Stories of Palestinian and Irish Hunger Strikers

Edited by Asad Abu Sharkh and Danny Morrison

An Fhuiseog, 2021, 240 pages, [pounds sterling]10, ISBN 9781838483500

The shared history of the Palestinian and Irish peoples is evident across many instances. It is no coincidence that the Palestinian people believe that the Balfour Declaration of 1917, named after Arthur Balfour, then British Foreign Secretary, that promised the Zionist movement a national homeland for Jews in Palestine, was "the promise of those who do not own [i.e., the British] to those who do not deserve [i.e., the Zionists]" (p. 1). As revealed in A Shared Struggle by Dr. Asad Abusharkh, a Palestinian-Irish academic and a co-editor of the book, Balfour was known as 'Bloody Balfour' in Ireland due to his role in suppressing Irish protests in Cork (p. 25).

A Shared Struggle, published in July 2021 by Norma Hashim and translated by Yousef M. Aljamal, is the first book of its kind; it is unique in the sense that it brings together the experiences of Palestinian and Republican Irish hunger strikers, which are identical in many cases, in one book. The volume contains 31 entries, 24 from Palestine and seven from Ireland, detailing the experiences of political prisoners who went on hunger strike in British and Israeli prisons. The cover of the book urges the reader to dig deeper into these stories. It depicts a group of Palestinian women holding a poster that reads "Nafha, H Block, Armagh: One Struggle" and was taken during a solidarity sit-in organized by Palestinians with Irish hunger strikers during the iconic hunger strike in 1981 led by Bobby Sands, who lost his life after 66 days of hunger strike.

Richard Falk, who wrote the foreword for the book, reminds readers, "We should not be deceived into thinking that we are reading only about events in the past" (p. 21) While the struggle for self-determination in North Ireland achieved some progress with the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, the struggle for freedom in Palestine continues today. Palestinian political prisoners and hunger strikers are considered to be at the forefront of this fight for equality. For example, Kayed al-Fasfous, on November 22, 2021, ended a 131-day long hunger strike after the Israeli prison services agreed not to renew his detention under Administrative Detention. This British law continues to be used by Israel, where prisoners are held indefinitely without charge or...