Diary 
Raja Shehadeh
My first book of diaries covered 1980, a few years after I returned from studying law in England and began practising as a lawyer in the occupied West Bank. I was fascinated then by the notion of sumoud – ‘perseverance’. I saw the perseverance of ordinary Palestinians who were determined to remain on their land as the best antidote to Israeli policies aimed at ridding the country of its Palestinian inhabitants. Sumoud was the way I felt I was challenging the occupier. But I had also become involved in human rights work and believed that by documenting and exposing the Israeli Government’s violations of human rights I would help bring an end to them.
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Raja Shehadeh is a Palestinian lawyer and a founder of the human rights organisation al-Haq. He has written several books about the Middle East; Strangers in the House: Coming of Age in Occupied Palestine is due from Profile next month.
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