Raja Shehadeh

Raja Shehadeh is the author of Palestinian Walks. An expanded version of his two Edward Said Lectures – the other one was given in New York – will be published next year.

The Palestinians​ who were forced out of their homes in 1948 were not regarded by Israel as refugees. That would have implied that Palestine was their country, to which they would have the right to return. This was not the way the Israeli authorities saw it, and they did their best to make sure the return would never happen. It was therefore in some sense logical, or at least consistent,...

Letter
Adam Shatz repeats an error that Avi Raz makes in his book The Bride and the Dowry regarding the murder of my father, Aziz Shehadeh (LRB, 11 October). ‘Shehadeh was finally murdered,’ Shatz writes, ‘by a Palestinian extremist who seems to have doubled as a collaborator.’ It is true that the murderer was a collaborator, but he had no link to any Palestinian political organisation. As I record...

Diary: in Ramallah

Raja Shehadeh, 25 July 2002

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...

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