CANR
WORK TITLE: GOING HOME
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE:
CITY: Ramallah
STATE:
COUNTRY: Israel
NATIONALITY:
LAST VOLUME: CANR 194
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born July 6, 1951, in Jaffa, Israel; son of Aziz (an attorney) and Wedad Shehadeh; married Penny Johnson (a writer), 1988.
EDUCATION:American University of Beirut, B.A., 1973; has also studied law in London.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Attorney, human rights activist, peace activist, and writer. Called to the Bar at Lincoln’s Inn, England, 1976; attorney in private practice in Ramallah, West Bank, Israel, 1980—. Bethlehem University, part-time instructor in law, 1978-80; International Commission of Jurists, founder and codirector of the West Bank affiliate Al-Haq/Law in the Service of Man, 1979- 90; World Council of Churches, member of human rights advisory group, Commission of the Churches on International Affairs; Netherlands Institute of Human Rights, member of international advisory council; legal advisor to the Palestinian delegation to peace talks with Israel. American Friends Service Committee, lecturer in the United States, 1985; Harvard Law School, visiting fellow in Human Rights Program, 1988.
AWARDS:Issam Sartawi Award from International Center for Peace in the Middle East, 1984, for The Third Way; Rothko Chapel Award for commitment to truth and freedom, 1986; award from Jewish Committee for Israeli-Palestinian Peace, 1988; Orwell Prize for Books, 2008, for Palestinian Walks.
RELIGION: Christian.WRITINGS
Also author of a government pamphlet titled Israeli Proposed Road Plan for the West Bank: A Question for the International Court of Justice, 1984; author of foreword to Samia Halaby’s Drawing the Kafr Qasem Massacre, 2016; contributor to periodicals, including Life, Harper’s, Middle East International, Journal of Palestinian Studies, and Journal of Peace Negotiations.
When the Birds Stopped Singing: Life in Ramallah under Siege was adapted for the stage and premiered at the Traverse Theatre in England during the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, 2004.
SIDELIGHTS
Raja Shehadeh is a Palestinian who was born in Israel shortly after his family fled Jaffa to escape Israeli aggression. Although he had never lived there, he was reared with a strong sense of Jaffa as home; his family never lost its sense of exile. Shehadeh’s father, Aziz, was an attorney and a strong supporter of the Palestinian cause. He was also one of the first to espouse a peaceful, two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Raja followed his father into law, but their collaborative work for peace and human rights ended when Aziz was murdered in 1985.
Strangers in the House and Occupier's Law
Shehadeh relates his father’s story and his own in Strangers in the House: Coming of Age in Occupied Palestine. New York Times Book Review contributor Ethan Bronner noted that the Shehadehs’ story is “a heroic one, a rare tale of principle, conviction and kindness operating in harsh circumstances. But it is also an exceptionally sad one. Their efforts had minimal impact—the Israeli military walked all over them, ransacking their offices, threatening their workers and repeatedly delaying their court dates. Meanwhile, the Palestinians ignored and condemned them.”
Strangers in the House is a “fascinating memoir,” one that “offers a chilling and moving view of life inside the Occupied Territories,” claimed a Publishers Weekly contributor. Shehadeh relates the routine humiliation and harassment Palestinians suffer at the hands of the Israeli government, including random searches, constant surveillance, and detentions at checkpoints. Noting that the Palestinian perspective is frequently overlooked in the West, the reviewer commented: “Anyone seeking a nuanced view of Palestinian experience should read this brave and lyrical book.” Naomi Hafter, a contributor to Library Journal, also praised Shehadeh’s portrait of Palestinian life, noting especially his “strong voice that is without diatribe, melodrama, or anger.”
Shehadeh once told CA: “I have always agreed with Yeats that writing is the social act of a solitary being. In my solitary journey, I travel through the events of my day as a Palestinian living under Israeli occupation. In literary terms, the terrain I traverse is uncharted. In my writing, I try to transform it into a shared experience.”
Among Shehadeh’s earlier books is Occupier’s Law: Israel and the West Bank. In this 1985 book, the author focuses on the issues of human rights and the legal situation in the West Bank. He also discusses what he sees as Israeli injustices and a campaign of repression. He writes of his belief that these must be stopped if Palestinians and Israelis are to coexist peacefully. Writing for the Link, Edward Dillon commented: “The book gives no promise of a resolution. It makes the impasse clear.” A second edition of Occupier’s Law was published in 1989.
When the Birds Stopped Singing
When the Birds Stopped Singing: Life in Ramallah under Siege, also published as When the Bulbul Stopped Singing, is another publication consisting of the author’s diaries. The book focuses on Shehadeh’s experience living under siege in Ramallah during 2002 after the second Palestinian Intifada broke out. Focusing on a one-month period between March 28 and April 28, the author details how the military siege impacted both his life and those around him.
“Shehadeh’s account attempts to offer more than a litany of tragic events,” wrote Niall Green in a review for the World Socialist Web site. “In a limited way the diary seeks to explore why things have come to such a point.” In fact, the author blames both Israeli and Palestinian leadership for the failure to stop fighting, form better relations, and improve the life of Palestinians. A Kirkus Reviews contributor called the author “a balanced and sensitive observer,” adding that “Shehadeh condemns governments, not individuals.” Referring to When the Birds Stopped Singing as a “powerful book,” a Publishers Weekly contributor went on to call it “required reading for anyone who has ever wondered what it’s like to be an ordinary citizen living in a war zone.”
Palestinian Walks
In Palestinian Walks: Forays into a Vanishing Landscape, also published as Palestinian Walks: Notes on a Vanishing Landscape, Shehadeh recounts six walks he takes between 1978 and 2006 and how his hikes on the Palestinian West Bank become increasingly less serene and bucolic as Israeli settlers arrive, concrete replaces the natural beauty he loves, and the walks become more dangerous.
“The bucolic landscape is scarcely the West Bank of popular imagination,” wrote Abby Agguire in a review for the New York Times. “It was with that prevailing impression in mind that Mr. Shehadeh set out to write the book—to put on paper his experience of the place, mediated neither by historical imagination nor by images in the news, for readers who think of it only in terms of conflict and violence.” Agguire pointed out, however, that “one walk is interrupted when Mr. Shehadeh’s ten-year-old nephew picks up an unexploded missile; another when he and his wife come under prolonged gunfire from the Palestinian police.”
As the author relates both the sights he sees and his inner feelings during the six walks, he provides an elegy for his lost hiking places and, at the same time, a metaphor for a people’s many losses as they become alienated from the land of their birth. Palestinian Walks received the Orwell Prize for Books in 2008, which is awarded for political writing. Jean Seaton, chair of the prize, was quoted in the Guardian newspaper of London as noting that Palestinian Walks “records how brutalising the loss of a landscape is, both to the losers, and to the takers.” Commenting that the book reflects the “universal resonance” of some of George Orwell’s political works, Seaton also remarked: “The judges felt it made landscape into the essence of politics, and political writing into an art.”
Several reviewers also had high praise for Palestinian Walks. “The sense of love and loss that permeates this poignant book transcends the brambly politics of the region,” wrote a contributor to National Geographic, adding that the author’s “deeply felt accounts become lessons for us all on the fundamental value of unbridled nature in the landscape of our lives.” Commenting that the author “captures the awesome beauty of the ancient landscape,” Jewish Week contributor Sandee Brawarsky went on to note the author’s efforts to cope with his anger over the situation and accept what is happening. The reviewer wrote: “Through honest and daring writing, Shehadeh is able to move away from anger. He explains that writing the book was his seventh journey.”
Seeking Palestine and Where the Line Is Drawn
(open new)Shehadeh coedited Seeking Palestine: New Palestinian Writing on Exile and Home with Penny Johnson in 2012. This collection of stories compiles thoughts and explorations of Palestinian writers on the state of Palestine, the concept of home, and living in exile. Many of the tales covering the displacement of Palestinians lean more toward the political rather than romanticizing the exile looking back to the homeland. A Publishers Weekly contributor observed that the contributions are “deeply personal and more poetic than academic.” In a review in Choice, V.M. Natarajan claimed that these “beautiful and haunting” contributions combine to make for “an indispensable work for popular and scholarly collections.”
In 2017 Shehadeh published Where the Line Is Drawn: A Tale of Crossings, Friendships, and Fifty Years of Occupation in Israel-Palestine. The account examines Palestinian-Israeli relations since the middle of the twentieth century. Shehadeh discusses his friendship with Jewish Canadian psychologist Abramovitch, who he first met in 1977 upon his settling in Jerusalem. They trace their commonalities despite the difficulties in the region.
Booklist contributor Terry Hong found that the author “writes a gentle, hopeful book of what could and should be.” A contributor to Kirkus Reviews called Shehadeh “one of Palestine’s most respected writers.” The critic also observed that Shehadeh’s essays are “fashioned like short stories.” The same Kirkus Reviews contributor concluded by referring to Where the Line Is Drawn as “a beautifully impressionistic exploration of shared cultural understanding despite the narrowing of borders.”
Going Home
Shehadeh published the memoir Going Home: A Walk through Fifty Years of Occupation in 2020. Shehadeh reflects on life in Ramallah across the fifty years in which he has lived there in this personal account. He considers the rapid growth and urbanization of the city and significant changes to the soundscape. He also looks at how Israeli occupation has changed the feel of the city.
A contributor to Kirkus Reviews described it as being “a candid, nostalgic reflection on life in Ramallah.” The same reviewer called Going Home “a moving memoir of the far-reaching challenges of life in the Middle East.” Writing in the London Guardian, Ian Black commented that “Going Home cements the author’s reputation as the best-known Palestinian writing in English. Interestingly, there is only one mention in it of a word (a concept really) that was the centrepiece of his previous books—sumoud—steadfastness in Arabic, less pompously translated as ‘hanging in there’. Retracing his steps he now finds little that is heroic, including the grim period of the second intifada and the return of all-out occupation.” Reviewing the memoir in the Big Issue, Dani Garavelli remarked that “Shehadeh’s descriptive powers are balanced by the acuity of his political insights. From a secular perspective, he laments the growing number of head scarves and the azan (call to prayer) as evidence that religion rather than nationalism now provides the public with its sense of identity. Yet, he is also discomfited by the rise in consumerism.” Writing in Geographical, Katie Burton noted that “among these stories Shehadeh slips into a more standard exercise in nostalgia.” Burton concluded by saying that the memoir “is a story of regret, failure, anger and ageing, but it is not as hopeless as its author would have us believe.”(close new)
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, November 15, 2001, John Green, review of Strangers in the House, p. 546; April 1, 2008, Colleen Mondor, review of Palestinian Walks, p. 22; June 1, 2017, Terry Hong, review of Where the Line is Drawn: A Tale of Crossings, Friendships, and Fifty Years of Occupation in Israel-Palestine, p. 46.
Bookseller, April 25, 2008, “Profile Title Wins Orwell,” award for Palestinian Walks, p. 6; May 2, 2008, Tom Tivnan, “Finding Shared Ground: What Is the Relationship Like between a Jewish Publisher and Palestinian Author? Tom Tivnan Talks to Profile’s Andrew Franklin and Orwell Prize Winner Raja Shehadeh,” p. 24.
Choice, August 1, 2013, V.M. Natarajan, review of Seeking Palestine: New Palestinian Writing on Exile and Home, p. 2224.
Economist, June 12, 2008, “A Sad and Beautiful Account of a Much Changed Landscape,” review of Palestinian Walks.
Foreign Affairs, September 22, 1989, John C. Campbell, review of Occupier’s Law: Israel and the West Bank,
Geographical, January 1, 2008, Nick Smith, review of Palestinian Walks, p. 76; September 16, 2019, Katie Burton, review of Going Home: A Walk through Fifty Years of Occupation.
Guardian (London, England), April 25, 2008, Lindesay Irvine, “Orwell Prize Goes to Lament for Palestinian Landscape;” August 8, 2019, Ian Black, review of Going Home.
Hartford Courant, February 17, 2002, Steve Courtney, review of Strangers in the House.
Independent (London, England), September 9, 2007, Tom Boncza-Tomaszewski, review of Palestinian Walks.
Jerusalem Post, August 2, 2008, Zalman Shoval, “The ‘Economist’ Rewrites History.”
Jewish Week, June 25, 2008, Sandee Brawarsky, review of Palestinian Walks.
Journal of Palestine Studies, March 22, 1998, John Quigley, review of From Occupation to Interim Accords: Israel and the Palestinian Territories, p. 106.
Kirkus Reviews, June 15, 2003, review of When the Birds Stopped Singing, p. 851; May 1, 2008, review of Palestinian Walks; May 1, 2017, review of Where the Line is Drawn; December 15, 2019, review of Going Home.
Library Journal, January 1, 2002, Naomi Hafter, review of Strangers in the House, p. 116; August 1, 2003, Nader Entessar, review of When the Birds Stopped Singing, p. 108; May 15, 2008, Maureen J. Delaney-Lehman, review of Palestinian Walks, p. 122.
Link, May 1, 1986, Edward Dillon, review of Occupier’s Law.
M2 Best Books, October 22, 2003, review of “Shehadeh Releases Another Slice of Shattered Middle Eastern Life.”
Middle East, October 1, 2007, Fred Rhodes, review of Palestinian Walks, p. 65; March 1, 2017, review of Where the Line is Drawn.
Middle East Journal, March 22, 1998, review of From Occupation to Interim Accords, p. 308; September 22, 2008, Adam Valen Levinson, review of Palestinian Walks, p. 739.
National Geographic, June 1, 2008, Don George, “New Books That Transport Us,” includes review of Palestinian Walks.
New Internationalist, August 14, 2019, Peter Whittaker, “Raja Shehadeh on Israel’s Memory and the Nakba.”
New Yorker, June 9, 2008, review of Palestinian Walks, p. 115.
New York Times, August 13, 2008, Abby Aguirre, review of Palestinian Walks p. 1.
New York Times Book Review, December 30, 2001, Ethan Bronner, review of Strangers in the House, p. 18.
Publishers Weekly, December 24, 2001, review of Strangers in the House, p. 55; August 4, 2003, review of When the Birds Stopped Singing, p. 66; March 3, 2008, review of Palestinian Walks, p. 35; October 29, 2012, review of Seeking Palestine, p. 39.
Times (London, England), December 9, 2007, Anthony Sattin, “The Best Travel Books of 2007,” includes review of Palestinian Walks.
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, August 1, 2008, Jamal Najjab, “Walking the Vanishing Landscape of Palestine,” p. 58.
ONLINE
Americans for Middle East Understanding website, http://www.ameu.org/ (March 9, 2009), author profile.
Arab Democracy, http://www.arabdemocracy.com/ (August 25, 2008), review of Palestinian Walks.
BBC, http://news.bbc.co.uk/ (September 25, 2007), Martin Asser, review of Palestinian Walks.
Bethlehem University website, https://www.bethlehem.edu/ (2015), author interview.
Big Issue, https://www.bigissue.com/ (August 8, 2019), Dani Garavelli, review of Going Home.
English Pen Online World Atlas, http://penatlas.org/online/ (July 2, 2008), author profile.
Haaretz, http://www.haaretz.com/ (February 22, 2009), Zafrir Rinat, review of Palestinian Walks.
Huffington Post, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ (July 4, 2008), James Zogby, “Palestinian Walks: Holy Land Lost.”
London Review Book Shop, http://www.lrbshop.co.uk/ (February 22, 2009), review of Palestinian Walks.
Middle East Online, http://www.middle-east-online.com/ (August 7, 2007), review of Palestinian Walks.
Mondoweiss, https://mondoweiss.net/ (November 20, 2018), Jaclynn Ashly, “I’ve Been Obsessed with Time.”
News from Nowhere, http://www.newsfromnowhere.org.uk/ (February 22, 2009), review of Palestinian Walks.
Orwell Prize Web site, http://www.theorwellprize.co.uk/ (February 22, 2009), “Raja Shehadeh: Honoured by Palestinian National Authority.”
Peacework, http://www.peaceworkmagazine.org/ (February 22, 2009), Ellen Cantarow, “Palestine—Father and Son: An Interview with Raja Shehadeh”; Henry Steiner, review of Strangers in the House.
World Socialist website, http://www.wsws.org/ (November 17, 2004), Niall Green, review of When the Bulbul Stopped Singing.
Raja Shehadeh
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Raja Shehadeh (born 1951) is a Palestinian lawyer and writer, who was born in Jaffa,[1] Israel and who currently lives in Ramallah, West Bank.
Raja Shehadeh
Contents
1 Biography
2 Legal and literary career
3 Published works
4 References
5 External links
Biography
Raja Shehadeh studied law in London. His grandfather, Saleem, was a judge in the courts of the British Mandate of Palestine. His great-great-uncle, the journalist Najib Nassar, founded the Haifa-based newspaper Al-Karmil in the last years of the Ottoman Empire, before World War I. His father, Aziz, also a lawyer, was one of the first Palestinians to publicly support a two-state solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict.[2] Shehadeh is from a Palestinian Christian family.[3] Adam Shatz has cited Shehadeh as one of two people who have provided a formative influence of his understanding of the Middle East conflict, writing that 'Anguished and somewhat fragile, he is a man who, in spite of his understandable bitterness, has continued to dream of a future beyond the occupation, a kind of neo-Ottoman federation where Arabs and Jews would live as equals.'[4]
Legal and literary career
Shehadeh is a founder of the human rights organization Al-Haq,[2] an affiliate of the International Commission of Jurists. He has written several books on international law, human rights and the Middle East.[5] Strangers in the House was described by The Economist as "distinctive and truly impressive".[6] In 2008, he won the Orwell Prize, Britain's pre-eminent award for political writing, for his book Palestinian Walks.[7] Shehadeh was critical of the Palestinian National Authority for having imported on its return the prejudices of the Palestinian diaspora. He himself resigned his work as an advisor in dissent from the PLO during the Madrid peace negotiations, and considers the continuing hostility of the Palestinian diaspora for failing to come to terms with the realities of Palestinians who have endured the occupation for decades, and who have built their civic institutions while exercising the traditional values of sumud rather than indulging in impractical cults of heroism.[8][9] In July 2018, his biographical Where the Line is Drawn: Crossing Boundaries in Occupied Palestine was chosen for BBC Radio 4's Book of the Week, and was narrated by actor Peter Polycarpou.
Published works
Shehadeh's published works include:
Strangers in the House (2002)
When the Bulbul Stopped Singing (2003)
Palestinian Walks: Forays into a Vanishing Landscape (2007, 2nd edition published as Palestinian Walks: Notes on a Vanishing Landscape (2008)
A Rift In Time: Travels With My Ottoman Uncle (2010)
Occupation Diaries (2012)
Where the Line is Drawn: Crossing Boundaries in Occupied Palestine (2017)
Language of War, Language of Peace (2015)
Life Behind Israeli Checkpoints (2017)
Raja Shehadeh is a Palestinian lawyer and writer, and founder of the human rights organisation Al-Haq. His latest book is Going Home: A Walk Through Fifty Years of Occupation
RAJA SHEHADEH ON ISRAEL'S MEMORY AND THE NAKBA
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20 September 2019 Palestine
Peter Whittaker speaks to writer, lawyer and human rights activist Raja Shehadeh about the politics of memory in Palestine and Israel.
It is over 50 years since Israel occupied the West Bank and began seizing Palestinian land and building Israeli settlements, illegal under international law. Peace and justice in the region seem further away than ever. The question arises, how is it possible to live under occupation and maintain hope? For Palestinian writer, lawyer and human rights activist Raja Shehadeh, the answer is a tenacious refusal to be denied the joys of life and also in ‘exposing the ills inflicted on my own society. Not in the distant yonder but in the dirt, pain and suffering of the here and now’.
Shehadeh’s family were driven out of Jaffa following Israel’s founding in 1948, and he currently lives in the West Bank. In 1979 he co-founded the respected human rights organization al-Haq, and in 1991 he was adviser to the PLO delegation at the Madrid peace negotiations. His books include Strangers in the House, an account of his childhood, and Palestinian Walks, winner of the 2008 Orwell Prize. In his most recent work, Going Home, he cites as an inspiration Bergman’s Wild Strawberries, a film imbued with memories and loss.
From his home in Ramallah he gave me his response to the idea that remembering is the duty of those oppressed while forgetting is the luxury of the oppressor. ‘So true in the case of the Palestinians. We carry the memory of the Nakba [catastrophe] year after year like a duty and a burden because forgetting would be like abandonment of a right we’re still struggling to realize. In contrast most Israelis have the luxury of not only forgetting about the Nakba but that it happened at all.’
Throughout his writing, Raja has returned to the concept of sumoud or steadfastness as a tool of resistance. He told me how this expresses itself on a day-to-day basis. ‘For a long time it has been Israel’s objective to drive the Palestinians out of their land and take it over. Building homes, establishing new businesses, and making life more tolerable for the Palestinians is a way of opposing [this]... Every person who returns after a period of study abroad to establish himself/herself here feels like a victory for sumoud.’
Under conditions of oppression, the simplest act speaks of resistance. Walking in his landscape, bearing witness to his community, is an ongoing dialogue for Shehadeh. He told me that he agrees with Rebecca Solnit’s idea that ‘the history of walking is a history of freedom and of the definition of pleasure’. He writes evocatively about the tended spaces encountered on his walks around Ramallah. You can, he says, always tell when a garden is the product of a hired gardener or the loving hands of the owner. Ramallah, once surrounded by vegetation, is now hemmed in by Israeli settlements and for Shehadeh the cultivation of green spaces is an important component of sumoud: ‘The openness and access to the surrounding countryside have been severely compromised by the presence of the settlements. This has also diminished the knowledge of and attachment to the land which adversely affects sumoud. Those of my generation would miss the land more than anything else when we leave here even on short vacations.’
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I strongly believe that the Middle East should not be fragmented and is bound to be united.
In Occupation Diaries, published in 2012, Shehadeh wrote that ‘the veneer of civilization and decency in Israel is getting thinner’. I asked him if he saw this process as irreversible, with Netanyahu, emboldened by Trump, brazenly disregarding international law. His reply encompasses both legal and moral dimensions: ‘Unless Israel’s flouting of international law is checked, getting away with the illegal annexation and gross violations this country is committing will seriously contribute to the demise of this body of law to the detriment of all. Israel is doing its best to ensure that this process of illegal annexation is seen as irreversible but this then is part of the psychological warfare it is waging: why continue the struggling, if all is lost and the process is irreversible. We cannot afford to succumb to this.’
Raja’s tone has, understandably, become increasingly melancholic with the passing years but never bitter or defeated. He has written of his belief that a just settlement in Palestine could eventually lead to a regional confederation of states. I asked if this remained his hope for the future: ‘With age one begins to see things in perspective and take the longer-term view. We must not stop insisting on ending the occupation and the establishment of a Palestinian state even if as a transitory measure for a future regional confederation. I strongly believe that the Middle East should not be fragmented and is bound to be united. You could call it geographical determinism. We, in this region, continue to suffer from the effects of the colonial meddling in our region that has lasted for a very long time. But there are fundamental changes that are coming. Perhaps a time will come when the only option will be co-operate or perish.’
Going Home: a walk through fifty years of occupation by Raja Shehadeh has just been published by Profile Books.
“I’ve been obsessed with time” – a visit to Raja Shehadeh
News Jaclynn Ashly on November 20, 2018 2 Comments
Raja Shehadeh, by Jaclynn Ashly
Ramallah, occupied West Bank – Palestinian author Raja Shehadeh has used his pen to delicately trace the contours of Palestinian history and landscapes, bringing readers into the harsh and complicated realities that shape daily life in the West Bank, where some two and a half million Palestinians have remained under an Israeli military occupation for more than half a century.
Shehadeh, who also practices law, wrote his first book in 1982, titled The Third Way: A Journal of Life in the West Bank, which painted a nuanced portrait of life in the occupied territory and created the ideological foundation for his future books.
“[The book] started when I went to the United States for the first time,” the 67-year-old told me at his office in Ramallah city, where shelves of legal books and documents line the white walls.
“I met a close friend of mine, who, although he is Palestinian and follows things here, he really had no idea what life was like here,” he explained. “When I returned [to the West Bank] I wrote him lengthy letters trying to explain how it is day to day. And it wasn’t a dramatic thing. It was little harassments and difficulties that people outside could not imagine happening at all.”
“I realized there was a need for such writing, and I expanded it into a book,” he said.
The book consists of stories and journal entries written by Shehadeh. Its title is derived from a saying among inmates at the Treblinka extermination camp in Nazi occupied Poland during the Holocaust: “Faced with two alternatives, always choose the third.”
In Palestine, he uses this saying to explore the options Palestinians have under Israel’s occupation: to either face “exile or submissive capitulation” or “blind, consuming hate.”
The third way is sumud, or steadfastness, a word used by Palestinians to articulate the act of staying on the land, regardless of the difficulties in doing so, in order to resist Israel’s ultimate goal of expelling Palestinians from their lands.
Shehadeh has since written 10 books, his most popular being Palestinian Walks: Notes on a Vanishing Landscape, which explores his changing relationship with the landscape of the West Bank owing to Israel’s settler colonial project.
He has a new book set to be released next year, titled Going Home. Although Shehadeh did not want to speak at length about the focus of the book, he said it explores aging and the changing perceptions of time as “you become closer to the end.”
“I’ve become rather obsessed with time,” Shehadeh said. “Maybe that’s why it bothered me so much that you showed up late.” He smiled and chuckled – the first sign of warmth he showed me since I had agitated him by arriving a half hour late. (I had used the wrong café as a reference point to his office.)
Shehadeh lives a simple life in Ramallah city, gardening, reading, listening to classical music and, of course, writing. Shehadeh has kept a sometimes daily — sometimes weekly – private journal for decades, allowing him to revisit old events, feelings and perspectives, transforming blank pages into literary works that have earned him international acclaim.
“I have a practice of always carrying around a small piece of paper or notebook and jotting things down,” Shehadeh told me. “It’s not a journal that I make myself write. I write when I need to in order to explain things to myself, or when I’m coming to terms with things.”
From law to literature
Shehadeh, one of the founders of the Palestinian human rights group al-Haq, had always wanted to be a writer. However, after the publication of his first book, “I realized there was a lot of work to be done in the legal aspects and the human aspects [in the occupied West Bank],” he said.
He instead dedicated most of his time to challenging Israel’s occupation and human rights violations through international legal frameworks.
“The biggest asset for Palestinians is the law,” Shehadeh told Mondoweiss. “Because the law is on our side. To some extent [at the time] there was more interest and shame among the international community regarding international law.”
Shehadeh served as the legal adviser for Palestinians during the Madrid peace negotiations in 1991, but left over disagreements with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)’s focus and priorities, which the writer said valued political expediency and the return of exiled leaders over issues facing Palestinians on the ground.
“The PLO agreed to terms that, from the beginning, I thought were too restrictive,” Shehadeh said. “It would have taken great effort to bring in issues that are so relevant to us [Palestinians] here, such as [Israeli] settlements and the land.”
He sipped from a cup of coffee an assistant had brought, and then went on: “It was only about creating a self-government for Palestinians. In my mind, [the negotiations] were leading to Israel unilaterally confirming and consolidating what was already happening. I decided it was futile and left.”
Years later, the Oslo agreements were signed in secret between the PLO and the Israeli government, dramatically altering life in the occupied Palestinian territory. The agreements broke up the land in the occupied West Bank into Areas A, B, and C, leaving more than 60 percent of the West Bank under full Israeli military control, while the newly established Palestinian Authority (PA) was permitted to govern just 18 percent of the land.
“I was very disappointed [after Oslo],” Shehadeh said calmly, his hands clasped together and resting on his knee. “It made a difference in my whole life, because until then I was giving up everything I could to the legal aspect of the struggle.”
“My life really changed. I felt that my work had amounted to very little in terms of political effectiveness […] Since Oslo, the Palestinian leadership has been excusing its failures and holding onto this deal, which they are bound to hold onto because they have no power to get out of it. And it has been downhill ever since.”
It was Shehadeh’s frustrations with Oslo that spurred him to leave al-Haq and direct his energy towards writing.
‘My father would feel very disappointed’
While Shehadeh always wrote on the side, even as he did legal work documenting Israel’s violations in the Palestinian territory, the first book he was able to dedicate a significant amount of time to was Strangers in the House: Coming of Age in Occupied Palestine, which he wrote when he was in his late 30s.
The memoir explores Shehadeh’s complicated relationship with his father Aziz, an accomplished lawyer who was stabbed and left to bleed to death near his home in Ramallah in 1985. Israeli authorities were accused of harboring political motives and not investigating the murder properly, and the case has since remained unsolved.
His father had, and continues to have, a profound influence on Shehadeh, and to this day the book was the most challenging for him to write, he tells Mondoweiss.
“Parents are extremely important and the perceptions and relationships change when one changes in time,” he said. “Whenever I tried to write something else, I would get back to that subject in my mind. So it was important and difficult to write.”
Since then, he has explored his relationship with his father in many of his books.
His father Aziz was one of the first Palestinians to promote a two-state solution and recognition of an Israeli state. In 1953, his father won a case against Barclays bank that allowed Palestinian refugees to access their accounts after Israel had seized them in 1948, when Israel was established upon the expulsion of some 750,000 Palestinians from their lands.
“I think my father would feel very disappointed [by the current state of the Palestinian territory],” Shehadeh said, without hesitation. “He realized early on, before many others, that we have to make a peace deal with Israel.”
However, Aziz was unique in his ability to see the potential positives in making a peace deal, Shehadeh noted. “He thought that Israelis and Palestinians working together would bring about a much better people, for both of us,” the writer explained. “We complement each other and we can do great things together.”
Shehadeh says that he has also inherited parts of his father’s vision. Like Shehadeh, Aziz understood the importance of Palestinians staying on the land. “My father would do everything possible to help Palestinians stay here. Every new person staying here was a gain.”
However, unlike his father, Shehadeh does not support a two-state or one-state solution to the decades-old conflict, noting that these discussions were “irrelevant.” Instead, the writer says his “dream” is “one region,” reminiscent of a Greater Syria, and believes this will inevitably become the future.
“It will come one day. But it’s a dream, just like the one-state solution is a dream,” he said. “It’s futile for us to dream now. I think we should focus on calling for the end of the occupation, and then we can find ways that we can live together. The question is how do we relate these two nations — Palestinians and Israelis together?”
The most pressing issue for Shehadeh is the right of return for Palestinian refugees — upheld by United Nations resolution 194 — who were expelled from their homes and lands during the Zionist takeover of historic Palestine in 1948.
“The right of return is a fundamental matter for Israel, because Israel bases its state mythology on the lack of a presence or existence of a Palestinian nation,” Shehadeh explained.
“So to recognize that there was a Palestinian nation living in what became Israel means Israel has to readjust its identity. And this is essential if there’s ever going to be peace”
‘To dehumanize them, you reduce your own humanity’
His latest book, Where the Line Is Drawn: A Tale of Crossings, Friendships, and Fifty Years of Occupation in Israel-Palestine, published last year, documents Shehadeh’s shifting perspectives and relationships with several Israeli friends throughout Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territory.
“I’ve been rather obsessed with the fact that when I go to a place, let’s say a checkpoint or a certain landscape that was changed, I see it both in the way it was and the way it is now,” Shehadeh explained to me.
“These two realities are in my mind all the time […] But it’s only because of my age and experience that I can see it in this way. But anybody who is an adult now, even in their 20s or 30s, will only know about how it is now. They will have no perception or imagining of how it was before.”
These thoughts created the framework for the book, exploring various “crossings” that have changed throughout the occupation. He said that he explores “how different relationships existed between Palestinians and Israelis at various levels, the relationship and continuity of the land, the way that it was open at one point, and how the crossings into Israel have changed.”
Shehadeh’s book, which in part focused on his relationship with his Israeli friend Henry and included personal letters exchanged between the two friends, examines these relationships in a humanistic, thoughtful and honest way.
In a land where even the most mundane aspects of Palestinian life are shaped by Israel’s occupation, it can be a personal struggle not to become bitter and resentful toward Israelis as a whole.
But Shehadeh has been able to transcend these feelings. “To dehumanize them [Israelis], you reduce your own humanity,” he said.
“I’ve passed through stages,” Shehadeh added. “The first intifada was one, when I would be so angry and so full of hate, and therefore feel myself reduced by the hate. I realized it doesn’t do any good. It doesn’t provide me a service and it doesn’t give my cause a service.”
“It doesn’t help me in my life or my understandings. So I got over it, and I never succumbed to it again.”
Continuing Sumud
Much has changed throughout the decades Shehadeh has been writing.
He remembers when it was difficult to get away with even mentioning Palestine in his books. When he did write that controversial nine-letter word, his books were often taken from public library shelves and torn apart.
“I remember going to Barnes and Noble, and noticing that one of my books — When the Birds Stopped Singing: Life in Ramallah Under Siege — was placed in the military history section,” he said, noting that he believes someone had placed it there so that no one would see it.
However, “now there are many books and intellectuals who are critical of Israel, which was not the case before.”
Meanwhile, he said, Israel has shifted farther to the right, with US President Donald Trump “allowing Israel to do whatever it wants.” Shehadeh believes that this is in fact bad for Israel.
“It is destroying the country,” he told Mondoweiss. “They are becoming fascists.”
For the daily life of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, Shehadeh believes that it has become more complex. “I think in the past it used to be a lot simpler because we all understood occupation and we all thought it would end soon. But as time went on we realized that’s not the case,” he said.
“But it was clear where we were moving and the situation wasn’t confusing,”’ he continued. “At the same time, daily life was much more difficult and obstructed.”
However, now in the occupied West Bank, he says, there are more opportunities and possibilities for Palestinians. Particularly in cities like Ramallah, which boomed after 1997 becoming the de-facto capital of the West Bank, Palestinians have more access to economic ventures or other projects than they did before.
According to Shehadeh, this is all part of the continuing sumud, and represents developments that have made it easier for Palestinians to remain here. “If you think about Ramallah, as bad as the government [Palestinian Authority] is, they’ve managed to make it possible for people to lead their lives with clean streets and cafes.”
Ramallah’s active cultural scene, consisting of everything from visual arts, poetry and theater to hip hop and underground music, is an important element of sumud. “The assertion of the self is an important part of the resistance,” Shehadeh says.
“People are staying, and that’s very important. There is power in the fact that despite everything Israel has tried to do we are still staying,” he said, highlighting that the population of Palestinians and Israelis within Israel-Palestine is almost equal.
“That’s a great achievement considering how much Israel has tried to prevent it.”
Shehadeh politely glanced at his watch to check the time. We had been speaking for about two hours, and I thought it was best to finally end the interview.
The acclaimed writer walked me out. “Thank you for your time,” I said, and his reply was brief. “Yes, thank you. Good bye.” His eyes lowered to the ground as he gently closed the door in front of him.
Raja Shehadeh, a Palestinian lawyer and award-winning author, came to Bethlehem University on May 5th to present his most recent book ‘Language of War, Language of Peace’. In this book he explores the 'politics of language' and the 'language of politics' in the Israeli Palestine conflict and specifically reflects on the legal and cultural walls that the language of politics creates, which confine today's Palestinians just like physical borders and checkpoints.
Shehadeh was invited by the Department of English and Mrs. Hanadi Younan, Dean of Arts and Chairperson of the English Department, introduced the writer to the audience.
Shehadeh read excerpts from his writings and engaged in a conversation with attending students, faculty members, and visitors about the themes featured his books; the language of colonialism and occupation, and the transformations of the land and natural surroundings as a result of geopolitics.
Shehadeh, Raja GOING HOME The New Press (Adult Nonfiction) $24.99 3, 10 ISBN: 978-1-62097-577-0
A longtime resident of Ramallah, Palestine, reflects on the city's transformation.
Orwell Prize-winning writer, lawyer, and human rights advocate Shehadeh (Where the Line Is Drawn: A Tale of Crossings, Friendships, and Fifty Years of Occupation in Israel-Palestine, 2017, etc.) interweaves personal revelations and political history in a candid, nostalgic reflection on life in Ramallah, where he grew up and has lived for the last 50 years. Walking around his neighborhood on the 50th anniversary of Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, he recalls a place far different from the crowded, urbanized city of today. Ramallah, he writes, "used to have the charm and atmosphere of the mountain villages of Lebanon." Store owners would keep caged songbirds outside their shops; their gentle chirping could be heard by everyone. Now, "their song has been replaced by the noise of traffic." Parks have given way to high-rise developments, traffic-clogged crossroads, and commercial buildings: "In the past, it did not matter that there were no designated green areas in Ramallah, situated as it was in a large natural garden of its own." Now the city is bereft of quiet places of respite. Even more crucial, Ramallah struggles under Israeli dominance and aggression, which have fomented anger and hatred and altered the city and culture dramatically. Shehadeh worked tenaciously to get rid of the occupation, but after the first Oslo Accord, which failed to create a Palestinian state, he has felt only resignation. His human rights activism has felt futile, leaving him to adjust to a deteriorating political situation as the occupation intensified and Israeli settlements expanded. While much of the population has grown up under the occupation, the author remembers another world and regrets its loss. The occupation, he writes, "has walked with me like a shadow, stalking me, sometimes posing a challenge but more often a threat."
A moving memoir of the far-reaching challenges of life in the Middle East.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2019 Kirkus Media LLC
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"Shehadeh, Raja: GOING HOME." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Dec. 2019. Gale General OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A608364715/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=2d7e7c97. Accessed 14 Jan. 2020.
Where the Line Is Drawn: A Tale of Crossings, Friendships, and Fifty Years of Occupation in Israel-Palestine. By Raja Shehadeh. June 2017. 240p. New Press, $25.95 (9781620972915). 956.9405.
With the publication of Palestinian Walks (2008), Shehadeh recognized Henry Abramovitch as an important "walking companion" in his lyrical, bittersweet record of the encroaching Israeli occupation of his Palestinian homeland. That mention becomes the focus of Shehadeh's newest title, in which he chronicles a half-century of Palestinian-Israeli relations through his friendship with the Jewish, Canadian, Yale psychology PhD Abramovitch, who settles in Jerusalem. Their initial 1977 meeting is noted with a seemingly dismissive detail--preference for black coffee because of lactose intolerance: "we both belong to the same racial group and are among the majority (70%) of intolerants," Abramovitch notes, immediately emphasizing their commonality. Throughout the decades, the two friends maintain respect, admiration, and most definitely deep love for each other amidst searing arguments and piercing disappointments. Despite bearing witness to senseless violence on both sides of the titular "line," Shehadeh--a Ramallah-based human-rights activist and lawyer--writes a gentle, hopeful book of what could and should be. His belief in "we will"--have a sovereign state, lasting peace, and mutual forgiveness--inspires, exemplifies, and leads.--Terry Hong
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 American Library Association
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Hong, Terry. "Where the Line is Drawn: A Tale of Crossings, Friendships, and Fifty Years of Occupation in Israel-Palestine." Booklist, June 2017, p. 46. Gale General OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A498582668/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=bdf29195. Accessed 14 Jan. 2020.
Shehadeh, Raja WHERE THE LINE IS DRAWN New Press (Adult Nonfiction) $25.95 6, 13 ISBN: 978-1-62097-291-5
One of Palestine's most respected writers reflects on 50 years of Israeli occupation and riven friendships.With grieving family driven out of their Jaffa home after the founding of Israel in 1948, an event the Palestinians refer to as the Nakba ("Catastrophe"), Shehadeh (Language of War, Language of Peace: Palestine, Israel and the Search for Justice, 2015, etc.), who was born in 1951, grew up among a deeply oppressed people under the increasingly "imperial arrogance" of the occupier. In these essays, fashioned like short stories, the author looks back on five decades of occupation through the prism of unlikely friendships with Israelis and sticky crossings between the two sides. Shehadeh's father was an enlightened lawyer who believed fervently in the possibility of peace between the Palestinians and Israelis, even bringing his son, recently returned from studying law in London, to hear Egyptian president Anwar Sadat address the Knesset in Tel Aviv on Nov. 20, 1977, an experience the author recounts in "Henry." From this first encounter between two young seekers--Henry, an Israeli with a doctorate in psychology from Yale, and the author, who was trying to figure out his own way in life amid the "stifling, traditional society" of Ramallah--a lifelong friendship was born, though it became rocky as the two Intifadas spiraled out. Indeed, as Shehadeh immersed himself in human rights activism, "politics began to cast a dark shadow over my relationship with Henry." In other essays, the author chronicles his return to Jaffa, the city of his father--who, we learn, was murdered in the 1980s by an Israeli collaborator--and wonders what his life would be like had his family insisted on staying. Shehadeh learned Hebrew once it became clear that the Israeli occupation was not going to end, and the border patrols and restrictions grew increasingly onerous and terrifying. A beautifully impressionistic exploration of shared cultural understanding despite the narrowing of borders.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
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"Shehadeh, Raja: WHERE THE LINE IS DRAWN." Kirkus Reviews, 1 May 2017. Gale General OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A491002846/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=74288bee. Accessed 14 Jan. 2020.
Crossing boundaries in Occupied Palestine
By Raja Shehadeh
Published by Profile Books
ISBN: 9781781256534
Price [pounds sterling]14.99 hardbacke
As a young boy, Raja Shehadeh was entranced by a forbidden Israeli postage stamp in his uncle's album, intrigued by tales of a green land beyond the border. Impossible then to know what Israel would come to mean to him, or to foresee the future occupation of his home in Palestine. Later, as a young lawyer, he worked to halt land seizures and towards peace and justice in the region, and made close friends with several young Israelis. But as life became increasingly unbearable under Occupation, and horizons shrank, it was impossible to escape politics or the past, and friendships and hopes were put to the test. Brave, intelligent and deeply controversial, in Where the Line is Drawn award-winning author Raja Shehadeh explores the devastating effect of Occupation on even the most intimate aspects of life. Looking back over decades of political turmoil, Shehadeh traces the impact on the fragile bonds of friendship across the Israel-Palestine border, and asks whether those considered bitter enemies can come together to forge a common future.
By Raja Shehadeh
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 IC Publications Ltd.
http://www.icpublications.com/
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Shehadeh, Raja. "Where the line is drawn." The Middle East, Mar. 2017. Gale General OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A491062081/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=865caa8a. Accessed 14 Jan. 2020.
Seeking Palestine: New Palestinian Writing on Exile and Home
Edited by Penny Johnson and Raja Shehadeh. Interlink/Olive Branch, $16 trade paper (224p) ISBN 978-1-56656-906-4
Editors Johnson and Shehadeh bring together 15 Palestinian writers and artists, some famous and others relative unknowns, to share their impressions of and reflections on the "quandaries of exile and unrequited homesickness ... the quintessential Palestinian experience, both actual and symbolic." Deeply personal and more poetic than academic, these contributions (emerging from a Palestinian literary festival) explore the consequences of embracing an identity where "home is forbidden from being home." While the authors come from a variety of backgrounds, they are largely Western-educated, secularly minded, progressive, and affiliated with universities. The Jewish inhabitants of Palestine are mostly invisible save for a few disconcerting moments of casual racism: Rema Hammami professes herself "horrified" to come across Israelis buying yogurt at her East Jerusalem grocery after the thaw in relations in 1994. Meanwhile, Rana Barakat describes Palestine as "an idea, a love, a goal, a movement, a massacre, a march, a parade, a poem, a thesis, a novel and, yes, a commodity, as well as a people scattered, displaced, dispossessed and determined." (Feb.)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2012 PWxyz, LLC
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"Seeking Palestine: New Palestinian Writing on Exile and Home." Publishers Weekly, 29 Oct. 2012, p. 39+. Gale General OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A307076829/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=6fbe2476. Accessed 14 Jan. 2020.
50-6606
PJ8190
2012-39275 MARC
Seeking Palestine: new Palestinian writing on exile and home, ed. by Penny Johnson and Raja Shehadeh. Olive Branch, 2013. 202p ISBN 1566569060 pbk, $16.00; ISBN 9781566569064 pbk, $16.00
Palestinian writers explore exile and home in this edited volume. While beautiful and haunting, the pieces never reduce exile to a realm of pure romance but instead politicize and historicize the displacement of Palestinians since the 1948 Nakba ("catastrophe"). Johnson (independent researcher, Institute of Women's Studies, Birzeit Univ.) and Shehadeh (a lawyer; author of Occupation Diaries, 2012) take their inspiration from the Palestine Festival of Literature, where the anthology was originally conceived. Contributors draw on the intimate and visceral, from Lila Abu-Lughod's memories of her father, to Fady Joudah's verse revelations on the insights of his children, to Karma Nabulsi's tracing of Palestinian revolutionary life across generations. In Adania Shibli's "Of Place, Time, and Language," the author recounts how her watch curiously stops moving during an Israeli airport security search: "maybe it simply refuses to count the time that is seized from my life." The book's sections, "Exile/Home," "Home/Exile," and "At Home in What World?" structure an arc, moving from displacement across great distance, to internal exile, and finally the possible or impossible future: the exile's object of longing. Selected images from artist Emily Jacir precede each section, juxtaposing photographs with Arabic and English text. An indispensable work for popular and scholarly collections. Summing Up: Essential. **** Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers.--V. M. Natarajan, Barnard College
Natarajan, V.M.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2013 American Library Association CHOICE
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Natarajan, V.M. "Seeking Palestine: new Palestinian writing on exile and home." CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, Aug. 2013, p. 2224+. Gale General OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A338216559/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=dca1a167. Accessed 14 Jan. 2020.
Going Home by Raja Shehadeh review – a walk through 50 years of occupation
The changing face of one West Bank city, and the ‘overwhelming reality’ of continued Israeli control
Ian Black
@ian_black
Wed 7 Aug 2019 10.00 BSTLast modified on Thu 8 Aug 2019 15.43 BST
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A Palestinian carries his son and a Palestinian flag in Ramallah, West Bank, during a protest in June.
A Palestinian carries his son and a Palestinian flag in Ramallah, West Bank, during a protest in June. Photograph: UPI/Barcroft Media
Ramallah, just north of Jerusalem in the West Bank, used to be a pretty if dull provincial town. It nestled in the hills overlooking the Mediterranean to the west and the Jordan Valley to the east. The churches and mosques scattered among its red-roofed stone houses gave it a pastoral quality enhanced by flourishing jacarandas, bougainvilleas and cypresses. Raja Shehadeh was born there in 1950, two years after the Nakba, the expulsion, flight and dispossession of Palestinians when Israel was created at the end of the British mandate. His parents were refugees from Jaffa, the country’s once vibrant port. Shehadeh was 16 in 1967 when “our unwanted, unrecognised neighbours from across the horizon came and took over our lives”, as he puts it.
Following law studies in London in the 1970s he returned to found Al-Haq, the human rights organisation that did pioneering work documenting abuses under what was then seen – from abroad – as Israel’s relatively liberal rule. His new book, Going Home, records a poignant and thought-provoking stroll around Ramallah on 5 June 2017 – the 50th anniversary of the Israeli occupation.
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Shehadeh’s anniversary walk combines the personal and the political. Childhood memories of Jordanian rule – when local taxi drivers touted for passengers travelling to Jerusalem, Amman and Beirut – are accompanied by reflections on the universal ravages of ageing. Relations with his father, who was murdered by a collaborator in 1985, were always difficult. After the landmark Oslo agreement in 1993, Shehadeh’s dentist warned him that he was grinding his teeth. He reflects throughout on the gardens and wildlife he loves. Writing keeps him sane in a melancholy environment.
The creation of the quasi-government of the Palestinian Authority saw Palestinian policemen replace Israeli troops in patrolling Ramallah. It is no longer a backwater. Restaurants, ice-cream parlours and diplomatic missions line the streets. Branches of KFC and Pizza Hut draw crowds from nearby villages. Property prices are soaring, fuelled by foreign aid, bank loans and exiles selling their now distant homes – though without paying any local taxes. Palestinian flags – once strictly banned – flutter everywhere in “the city of our confinement”. In a hilly part of town tall buildings now block a once soothing evening breeze.
These cultural changes reflect broader shifts. Shehadeh nostalgically remembers an Italian pop group that used to perform before 1967. But these days the sound of Qur’anic readings between calls to prayer fills the air. “The defeat of the nationalist project in Palestine by Israel that followed in the wake of Oslo encouraged the rise of political Islam,” he writes. “Religion has become another weapon in the arsenal of struggle.” Many more women wear headscarves. His bleak but hardly surprising conclusion is that his own generation has not managed to challenge the “overwhelming reality” of Israel’s control. How the young are supposed to achieve that is not explained.
Israeli outposts first started appearing in the early 1970s and played a starring role in Shehadeh’s acclaimed 2007 book Palestinian Walks. Nowadays the settlers have their own access roads that are barred to Palestinians, reinforcing the argument that a form of apartheid is in place in the West Bank and that there is a distinct possibility of formal Israeli annexation of large parts it. Beit El, one of the early settlements, is clearly visible from the centre of Ramallah. Israeli army checkpoints surround it on all sides, reinforcing the sense that it is a bubble. Still, life in the West Bank is far better than elsewhere – especially the besieged Gaza Strip.
Going Home cements the author’s reputation as the best-known Palestinian writing in English. Interestingly, there is only one mention in it of a word (a concept really) that was the centrepiece of his previous books – sumoud – steadfastness in Arabic, less pompously translated as “hanging in there”. Retracing his steps he now finds little that is heroic, including the grim period of the second intifada and the return of all-out occupation. “It’s more a chronicle of repeated failures. Both we and the Israelis who were against the settlement project have failed to find a way of living together and that’s the biggest tragedy. Now time is running out.”
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Walking past St George’s School, Shehadeh remembers the teenage pupil who was shot dead – live on camera – while demonstrating near an Israeli prison and army checkpoint, on a plain with a pond that was a haven for migrating birds but is no longer accessible to Palestinians. “For me and my generation the struggle has aged, become blocked, just like that road is blocked,” he laments. “I know how it used to be, but I don’t know how to unblock it and allow the life that was once there to thrive again.”
• Going Home is published by Profile (£14.99). To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £15, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99.
Book reviews: Going Home, Raja Shehadeh; Say Say Say, Lila Savage
Palestinian writer Raja Shehadeh’s memoir is saturated with regret, both personal and political, but he brings places and people to life with his visceral writing.
August 8, 2019
By Dani Garavelli@DaniGaravelli1
Palestinian writer Raja Shehadeh’s memoir Going Home: A Walk Through Fifty Years of Occupation was inspired by Ingmar Bergman’s Wild Strawberries, a film in which an old man reflects on his life, and it shares its melancholy and dreamlike quality. On the anniversary of the Six-Day War, Shehadeh, now 68, sets off on a walking tour of Ramallah. His journey is a tale of two cities: the invisible one he summons up from childhood, with its bakeries and haberdasheries, and the one that exists today: filled with high-rises, cafes and burger joints.
As he walks, he reflects on his own experiences and that of the West Bank, as it has faced the upheaval of the occupation, the Olso Accords and two intifadas. Going Home is a book saturated with regret, both personal and political. Shehadeh harbours guilt about his youthful arrogance, his fraught relationship with his father, and his failure to effect the change he dreamed of in his roles as lawyer and human rights activist.
More than 20 years after the signing of the Oslo Accords, the lives of its citizens are still trammelled by the Israeli state. “Could it be that I have lived a mock existence of words, led a false paper life?” he asks.
Shehadeh has the ability to conjure up places so viscerally you want to reach out and pluck the fruit from the trees. On the street leading to the hisba (market) “the pavement [is] crammed with sacks of brown dried figs, raisins, black carob beans and solid white yoghurt balls”.
He is captivated by flowers: purple jacaranda, light blue rabbit-ear irises, yellow birds of paradise flowers, pink bougainvillea.
And the setting is not the only thing that shines; along the way, Shehadeh encounters an assortment of mavericks, some alive, some dead, who transform his canvas from a vibrant van Gogh garden into a bustling Bruegel townscape. Here, scrabbling around in a recycling bin is Abu Hassan, the hoarder. There, sticking a monocle in his eye, is the German watchmaker.
Shehadeh’s descriptive powers are balanced by the acuity of his political insights. From a secular perspective, he laments the growing number of head scarves and the azan (call to prayer) as evidence that religion rather than nationalism now provides the public with its sense of identity. Yet, he is also discomfited by the rise in consumerism, in particular the posters for banks that have replaced those of martyrs on the wall.
Shehadeh’s prognosis for Palestine is bleak; lamenting the changes wrought to the once-serene Grand Hotel, he suggests the loud music that now plays there serves as a distraction. “Perhaps noise is necessary to drown the fear,” he writes.
Lila Savage’s novel Say Say Say is also a story of lives circumscribed, this time by disability. Having suffered brain damage in a car accident, Jill has lost much of her cognitive capacity. She is looked after by her husband Bryn, but as her condition declines he hires a younger woman, Ella, to help. Ella soon finds herself emotionally involved both with Jill and Bryn, whose devotion she admires.
Savage spent a decade as a carer and she has much to say about the relationship between care-giver and care-receiver. But Ella’s
self-absorption – her tendency to centre herself and project her own feelings on to Bryn, instead of taking practical steps to help him – quickly becomes insufferable.
Illustration: Astrid Weguelin
GOING HOME: A Walk Through Fifty Years of Occupation by Raja Shehadeh review
Written by Katie Burton Published in Books
GOING HOME: A Walk Through Fifty Years of Occupation by Raja Shehadeh review
16Sep
2019
by Raja Shehadeh • Profile Books • £14.99 (hardback)
Certain points of Going Home feel unbearably melancholic. As Raja Shehadeh takes a walk through his home town of Ramallah in Palestine’s West Bank, on the 50th anniversary of Israeli occupation, he presents himself as one who has lost all hope. Describing a vigorous and optimistic young man, who always wore a ‘silly smirk’, he seeks to make it plain that that person has gone. ‘I wonder whether I wasted a large part of my life on a useless activity,’ he writes of his attempts to end the occupation of his city. ‘The world has abandoned us,’ he adds. ‘I’ve had to accept this.’
This melancholy is tempered through the many anecdotes of family life peppered throughout his walk. These stories of life in an occupied land are vibrant and illuminating, filled with memories of delicious smells and flowers, parties and gunshots, fear and incorrigible optimism. So too do Shehadeh’s musings on the changing face of the city provide a fascinating window into modern Ramallah – now an urban sprawl with few green spaces and increasingly overt religion. There is regret here, there is also anger.
Among these stories Shehadeh slips into a more standard exercise in nostalgia, one that may well prove relatable to older people all around the world who, despite living in less dramatic circumstances, also feel the world has moved on without them. Shehadeh laments that where children once played in the street with hand-made toys, the young people he sees today hang out in Pizza Hut and ‘sit at their computers or with their smart phones, playing their electronic games and growing obese’.
And yet it’s here that Shehadeh’s attempt to persuade the reader that he is a retired optimist are not entirely convincing. Despite his disdain for their choice of activities, he can’t help but betray a hope that these young people ‘might even be more successful than we were in achieving liberation’. Going Home is a story of regret, failure, anger and ageing, but it is not as hopeless as its author would have us believe.