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Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, August 2008, page 58 Waging Peace Walking the Vanishing Landscape of Palestine
PALESTINIAN ATTORNEY, human and land rights activist and writer Raja Shehadeh read from his new book, Palestinian Walks: Forays into a Vanishing Landscape, at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, DC on May 30. The Foundation for Middle East Peace and the American Task Force on Palestine co-sponsored the event. Shehadeh’s book recently won the Orwell Prize, Great Britain’s top honor for political writing. There are many ways to tell the story of the Palestine/Israel conflict, which has continued for over 100 years, Shehadeh told his large group of listeners. “I have chosen to write about it by inviting the reader to join me on six walks through various parts of the West Bank” which take place over a quarter century, he explained. Noting that his walks are like a Saha, the walks his forefathers enjoyed as they wandered aimlessly throughout the land of Palestine, he described them as a “drug-free high, Palestinian style. The book is my way of capturing that feeling.” His book begins with a walk through a land that pretty much was the way Christ left it. As the years pass and the encroaching Israeli occupation grows, the Israeli settlers’ movement as well as the Israeli army have acquired ever more land, making it increasingly impossible to take such aimless walks as before. Shehadeh makes it clear that the Israelis have exploited the situation, altering the landscape of hundreds of Palestinian villages—which look as if they grew organically from the ground—with Texas suburb-style villas for almost half a million Israel Jews. “Hills were leveled, with valleys, terraces, gorges, caves, springs and archeological sites destroyed,” Shehadeh said, and “all paved with concrete.” Once the Israeli and U.S. governments agreed to build the settlements, these facts on the ground, and gave in to the violence of the settlers against the Palestinian population, the government could no longer make policy and enforce it, Shehadeh said. They were at the mercy of the extremists, “creating a greater abyss between what is workable and what is ludicrous.” And this is where it stands today. “God almighty whispers in the ear of the fanatics and they give their finger to their government and the rest of the world,” he said with the sadness of a man who has spent most of his adult life trying to prevent this very eventuality from happening. All of this has been done with billions of dollars provided by the U.S. government and completely against international law, Shehadeh pointed out. It is “highly doubtful” that the two-state solution can be implemented at this time, he added, nor can the present situation continue in its present state. He had no solution for his audience, he said, and could “leave it to you to decide.” The mood changed a bit once Shehadeh begin to read selections from his book. Listeners were drawn into the description of the walks as though they were walking beside the writer. He described fields full of a hearty thistle, known in Arabic as netish, that grows wild everywhere in the West Bank. It most likely was used to make the crown of thorns worn by Christ, Shehadeh said. These thistles, in fact, played a special part in Shehadeh’s career as a lawyer fighting for the rights of the Palestinians. Dani Kramer, Israel’s legal adviser to the military for expropriating Palestinian land, used the word netish. “How often have I heard [Kramer say] ‘but your honor the land is full of netish. I saw it with my own eyes,’” Shehadeh read, “meaning the land was not being cultivated; therefore, it was public land the Israelis settlers could use.” In the end, Shehadeh would go for a walk to forget about, “Dani’s legal fetish for netish.” After he published Palestinian Walks, a journalist from the BBC radio program “The World” wanted to interview Shehadeh while accompanying him on a walk. At the end of a pleasant path near the campus of Birzeit University in the West Bank two settlers waited for them in a car. One demanded to know what they were doing, to which Shehadeh responded they were simply taking a walk and that he was from nearby Ramallah. When the settler asked to see his ID, Shehadeh refused and asked the settler what he was doing there. The settler answered that, unlike Shehadeh, he really lived there, and called the army on his cell phone. Shehadeh and the reporter headed home. To hear the interview visit <www.theworld.org/?q=node/18180>. During the question-and-answer period, American Task Force on Palestine President Dr. Ziad J. Asali told Shehadeh that his organization strongly endorsed the two-state solution and that “the one-state solution was for the birds.” He asked for Shehadeh’s thoughts. Shehadeh replied that if the political conditions on the ground were to change, the two-state solution might be viable. Acknowledging that he is not an historian, Shehadeh said that as far as he knew no state has ever given up seized territory unless forced to do so. As of today, he noted, Israel has not been forced to do so by any outside power, nor has it had to pay a high price for its occupation. Israel’s economy is doing very well, America gives 100 percent support, and with that support Israel doesn’t have to obey international law. Without any pressure from Europe or the U.S. to give up the occupied territories, Shehadeh went on to say, it is impossible to contemplate a two-state solution. “We can talk of good will about the future,” he concluded, “but it’s all academic.” —Jamal Najjab |
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