When it comes to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, Western opinion is greatly influenced by cultural and religious biases, collective post-Holocaust guilt and a narrative of the conflict that is almost exclusively that of Jews living in the West. In addition, with the passage of time, a clear-eyed view of the root of the conflict is increasingly muddied by intervening world and regional events, and more recently, by internecine Palestinian conflicts. Yet, when pared down to its bare-boned essentials, there is stark, simple and undeniable reality to the conflict: The deliberate, planned, systematic dispossession of Palestinians of their land which continues unabated sixty years into the conflict. That reality, clear as day to most Arabs –and I might add, most of the rest of the world-, still does not seem to register with most Westerners. Raja Shehadeh’s book, Palestinian Walks, goes a long way into refocusing the attention of its readers to the realities of Israel’s intentions.
Shehadeh is a lawyer and human rights activist who spent decades trying to defend Palestinian lands from expropriation by Israel. In Palestinian Walks, Shehadeh, an avid walker, recounts several of his most memorable walks through the unique Palestinian landscape in the past three decades. As we go along with him on his walks, we learn much of the geology of Palestine as well as its flora and fauna. We also learn about the intricate relationship between this land, its history and its people through stories of his own extended family. He goes on to poignantly describe the devastating changes in the Palestinian landscape brought on by the settlements, the bypass roads and most recently Israel’s “security” wall. Throughout his walks Shehadeh reflects back on his struggles as a lawyer trying to defend Palestinian land from expropriation. He describes in great detail the systematic way in which Israel thwarted local and international laws to steal Palestinian land and expel its rightful owners. He exposes as a bold faced lie Israel’s contention that settlements were built only on “public” lands in the Occupied Territories. Shehadeh’s wrath is not limited to Israel though. He rails against the PLO and its failure to include the settlements in the Oslo accord, an omission that he feels has had disastrous consequences. All that Arafat was interested in, he contends, is Israeli recognition of the PLO.
Much of what Shehadeh exposes is not new; it can be found in many more scholarly books and magazines. The value of Shahedeh’s book, with its seemingly innocuous title and low key style, is that it brings the stark reality of Israel’s machinations to the general (Western) public. This is not second hand recounting of dry facts but first hand information from a man who is intimately involved. Moreover, what makes this book so powerful is the juxtaposition of the personal anecdotes from someone with a deep love of the land, with the hard facts. What also comes through in some of the anecdotes is the mindset of the “other”, the settlers and those in Israel and outside who empower them. Take, for example, this anecdote about a Palestinian farmer most of whose land was confiscated for building a settlement and what was left of his house and property was fenced in except for a passageway a few yards wide. Now the wall threatened to cut him off from his village and the houses he built for his children:
“Sabri and I were standing outside in the sun looking at the settlement through the wire fence built around his house. He was telling me about this latest case when we saw an old man walking his Labrador on the other side of the fence. I tried hard to catch the man’s eye. I wanted some indication of how he felt confining his neighbor in this way, but the man would not raise his eyes from the ground. He went solemnly through his walk, keeping pace with his dog, never showing recognition of Sabri or his guest.”
When I read this and think of the Western media’s accepted narrative of the Israeli as the perpetual victim and the Palestinian as the perpetual aggressor, it is hard not to get angry. Is there any more need to explain Palestinian rage? to answer the question of "why do they hate us?" when Barack Obama deems it only wothwhile to visit Sderot and not the thousands of Palestinians who suffered the same fate as Sabri and when Sarkosi says that the creation of the state of Israel was the greatest thing that happened in the 20th century?
As you delve further into the book, Shehadeh’s mood grows from melancholic to despondent as he realizes that his life’s work, that of trying to protect Palestinians from Israel’s seemingly insatiable appetite for other people's land was a failure. At one point, as his father once did, he briefly thinks of suicide. Some of the gloom lifts towards the end of the book as Shehadeh’s perspective changes. He has to force himself to admit his failure, the defeat of this phase of the struggle for Palestine, to enable him to move on. He also learns the virtue of patience as he realizes that while most men measure their accomplishment in the time scale of a lifetime, history follows not such time scale.
Shehadeh’s clearly thinks that Israel's current policies, disastrous as they are for the Palestinians, will ultimately doom Israelis as well. Although he does explicitly spell it out, you get the sense that he believes as did Edward Said, late in life, that the ultimate solution is a one state solution. The one state solution is gaining traction among more and more prominent Palestinians although it remains anathema to the vast majority of Israelis. I have come around to believe the same although I do not see how it will ever become acceptable to enough Israelis to make anything more than a pipe dream.
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