This paper traces a paradigm shift in Israeli carceral policies toward Palestinian political prisoners, offering a new theoretical framework of the carceral state in conflict. Non-democratic, illiberal and hybrid regimes typically use incarceration to suppress political resistance and opposition in contexts such as liberation and anti-colonial struggles, civil war, civil unrest and protests, or to suppress racial, ethnic and class conflicts. Current literature on political prisoners is dominated by a framework of state oppression and prisoners’ resistance. The oppression-resistance framework treats the state and the prisoners as constant opposites who struggle from a distance over control and political power. Conversely, I offer a relational approach that treats prisons as sites of encounter, where prisoners, prison staff, professionals, and government officials interact and negotiate. The resulting dynamics of change in carceral policies and prisoners' organization are all tightly connected to the politics of conflict. Ever since the occupation of 1967, Israel has mass-arrested Palestinians and transferred them into Israeli prisons. The year 2000 was a watershed moment when the “Oslo Process” peace negotiations failed, and the second intifada broke out. It also marked a paradigm shift in Israeli carceral policies, driven by Israel’s new position that there was “no partner for peace.” Before 2000, Palestinian prisoners used encounters with Israeli prisoners, professionals, and prison staff, as well as in-prison and academic education – all allowed for by carceral policies – to develop an intimate knowledge of Israeli society and politics. Subsequently, the Palestinian prisoners’ movement became instrumental in reconciliation processes leading to the Oslo Accords. However, following 2000, new carceral policies shrunk spaces for encounters, minimized prisoners’ communications with the outside, banned individual education and rehabilitation, all while seeking open conflict with the collective prisoners’ body. This new “state-induced radicalization” sought to maintain prisoners as dangerous enemies to justify the protracted conflict. Thus, I argue that carceral policies and prisoners’ agency are shaped by in-prison encounters and political agendas that could either encourage reconciliation or foster radicalization. Going beyond oppression and resistance, reconciliation and radicalization are alternative carceral paradigms that are formed through encounters and can be pursued both by prisoners and by the state. This framework highlighting the potential role of prisoners in transitional justice and reconciliation, as well as the potential role of the state in conflict escalation and radicalization.