It seems, at times, that the conflict between Israel and Palestine is far too big for any one person to encapsulate. Even if all the endless back and forth could be summed up in one volume, it would be inevitably tainted by the biases of its author, a sad fact for a tragic feud which seems as far as ever from resolution. If, then, the whole of the conflict is too vast to grasp, what about a glimpse, from the ground, from the trenches, from where life happens? What can that tell us? A great deal, it turns out.
Raja Shehadeh, a Palestinian lawyer and the founder of one of the first Arab human rights organizations in the region, writes clearly and compellingly about a country he loves very much, a country in his blood. Palestinian Walks does speak movingly to the broader conflict over this ancient, contested ground, but it is as much a travel log as a chronicle of conflict, the accumulation of years of strolls Mr. Shehadeh and his wife have taken through their country. He devotes as much time here to the flowers and the fruits as he does to Israel's poisonous settlement policies which are carving up the land and transforming it from a country Christ might've recognized into a concrete jungle only Donald Trump could appreciate. And it's among Mr. Shehadeh's rolling hills that he writes of the 1967 land grab which has literally divided Palestine ever since, a land grab, he argues, which was unlawful by any measure, a land grab which he has been forced to challenge in Jewish courts which predictably refuse to recognize his logic.
His pain, palpable throughout, culminates in the book's last few pages wherein Mr. Shehadeh, on one of his walks, comes across a Jewish settler with whom he argues. Though this episode feels a bit too perfectly staged to be totally authentic, it sums up succinctly the complete disconnect that exists between these two cultures, cultures which ironically have so very much in common. For they have both been persecuted, the Jews by the Europeans and the Palestinians by the Jews. But rather than acknowledge past wrongs as a means of avoiding the ones to come, they march on, oppressor and oppressed, and the land is the worse off for it.
A wonderful book which, if it does proselytize, does so gently and with a lawyer's reason. An important read. (3/5 Stars)
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