The Palestinian human rights lawyer and author Raja Shehadeh talks about his hopes and fears for his homeland, and finding a place of refuge amid the chaos of war
The Palestinian human rights lawyer and author talks about his hopes and fears for his homeland, and finding a place of refuge amid the chaos of waraja Shehadeh is at his home in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
The six “sarhas” – rejuvenating rambles – of Palestinian Walks span 26 years, all painstakingly recorded in diaries that he writes in English and which now run into hundreds of thousands of words. On the first walk, shortly after returning from studying in London, Shehadeh was shocked by what he found: “It was as though the tectonic movements that had occurred over thousands of years were now happening in a matter of months, entirely redrawing the map.
Even the house in which he now lives has historical memory embedded in its foundations. He built it with his American wife and walking companion, Penny Johnson, after the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1995, which granted limited Palestinian self-governance over parts of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. As a lawyer who had spent decades fighting for land rights on behalf of the dispossessed, Shehadeh was deeply opposed to the deal. “I decided that it’s going to be chaotic.
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