It is over 50 years since Israel occupied the West Bank and began seizing Palestinian land and building Israeli settlements, illegal under international law. Peace and justice in the region seem further away than ever. The question arises, how is it possible to live under occupation and maintain hope? For Palestinian writer, lawyer and human rights activist Raja Shehadeh, the answer is a tenacious refusal to be denied the joys of life and also in ‘exposing the ills inflicted on my own society. Not in the distant yonder but in the dirt, pain and suffering of the here and now’.
Shehadeh’s family were driven out of Jaffa following Israel’s founding in 1948, and he currently lives in the West Bank. In 1979 he co-founded the respected human rights organization al-Haq, and in 1991 he was adviser to the PLO delegation at the Madrid peace negotiations. His books include Strangers in the House, an account of his childhood, and Palestinian Walks, winner of the 2008 Orwell Prize. In his most recent work, Going Home, he cites as an inspiration Bergman’s Wild Strawberries, a film imbued with memories and loss.
