The Freedom theatre, based in the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank, describes itself as “a platform for cultural resistance”. It is truly political theatre exploring Palestinian experience, giving voice to stories often ignored by the media and politicians in the competing narratives of international politics, and using art to investigate identity and the meaning of home.

What home really means is at the heart of The Siege, a passionate, unashamedly partisan and ultimately affecting retelling of the story of the 2002 siege at the Church of the Nativity, considered one of the world’s holiest places. Inspired by interviews with the survivors, it is told from the point of view of some of the armed Palestinian fighters who took refuge in the Bethlehem church during the height of the second intifada, as they tried and failed to defend the city from the might of the Israeli military. Along with 200 civilians, they were given sanctuary by the church’s resident priests and nuns and spent 39 days there with dwindling food, water and medical supplies.

This is not the greatest of plays: there is little individual characterisation, so you never really get to know the fighters, the action sometimes stutters and lacks fluidity, and in the early stages – when everyone shouts a great deal – it resembles a stalled Hollywood action movie in which the heroes are holed up in a terrible jam and start turning on each other. Even so, it develops into an unexpectedly compelling theatrical experience with a rough and ready energy, and, in the very act of its telling, speaks for the voiceless and forgotten.

It also raises some knotty philosophical questions. Among these are whether a cat has a soul – and if you have a right to kill and eat it if you are starving – and the purpose of resistance. As one of the fighters observes: “Revolution is like a fish, and the people are its water”; it is nothing without the support of people. And what if those fighting are putting others at risk? Many civilians were caught up in the siege and Bethlehem was placed under lockdown, putting lives at risk.

Most fascinatingly of all, The Siege shows how those young men fighting for the very notion of home, and longing to lead normal family lives, ended up losing everything after a European-brokered deal led to their expulsion. Thirteen years on, they remain exiles: homeless, stateless nomads with no hope of return.

• At Battersea Arts Centre until 23 May. Box office: 020-7223 2223. Then touring.