Palestinian Walks

Forays into a Vanishing Landscape

By: Raja Shehadeh

Narrated by: Fajer Al-Kaisi

Raja Shehadeh is a passionate hill walker. He enjoys nothing more than heading out into the countryside that surrounds his home. But in recent years, his hikes have become less than bucolic, and sometimes downright dangerous. That is because his home is Ramallah, on the Palestinian West Bank, and the landscape he traverses is now the site of a tense standoff between his fellow Palestinians and settlers newly arrived from Israel.

In this original and evocative book, we accompany Raja on six walks taken between 1978 and 2006. The earlier forays are peaceful affairs, allowing our guide to meditate at length on the character of his native land, a terrain of olive trees on terraced hillsides, luxuriant valleys carved by sacred springs, carpets of wild iris and hyacinth, and ancient monasteries built more than a thousand years ago.

Shehadeh’s love for this magical place saturates his renderings of its history and topography. But latterly, as seemingly endless concrete is poured to build settlements and their surrounding walls, he finds the old trails are now impassable and the countryside he once traversed freely has become contested ground. He is harassed by Israeli border patrols, watches in terror as a young hiking companion picks up an unexploded missile, and even, on one occasion when accompanied by his wife, comes under prolonged gunfire.

Amid the many and varied tragedies of the Middle East, the loss of a simple pleasure such as the ability to roam the countryside at will may seem a minor matter. But in Palestinian Walks, Raja Shehadeh’s elegy for his lost footpaths becomes a heartbreaking metaphor for the deprivations of an entire people estranged from their land.

©2007 Raja Shehadeh (P)2020 Blackstone Publishing

Beautifully written, sad and revelatory

This is a beautiful series of essays/reflections/ on his life and work as a Palestinian Rights Lawyer and the changes in the countryside trails through which he has hiked and which he has loved.

This vocation of law would not necessarily lend itself itself to a devotion to translating experience into fine literature. Yet he conveys in a poetic fashion the gradual loss of place and position by describing his walks through the Palestinian hills and valleys over a period of many years.

It was surprise to learn he was critical of the Oslo Accords.

His criticism of the Oslo Accords is made from the point of view of a man of peace whose experience as a lawyer defending land rights has been routinely stymied by an imbalanced legal system, and whose understanding of what legal measures would be most appropriate to ensure the continued protection of Palestinian land rights against the determined advances of the Israeli settlement project has been the outcome of many trials and dashed expectations. In his view, the agreement implied the recognition of Palestinian rights on a symbolic political plane, without entrenching protection for actual land holdings and habitat.

For those who believed in the ostensible promise of coexistence of Oslo, this is required listening. His learned and low key account provides a fuller view of Oslo’s shortcomings. Therefore one must highly recommend this book to every reader who seeks to understand something of the impacts of the settlements and the failure of the Oslo accords to address this central issue.

Recommend for anyone and everyone

I recommend this book for anyone and everyone. This book is decidedly Palestinian, though not necessarily biased. The author is Palestinian and treats the issue from the perspective of literal walks in nature. I had never thought of the changes to the Palestinian landscapes. This book taught me a lot.
It helped me understand that this issue is a relatively recent issue and helped me realize what life was like before. It also helped me realize that the exact same lawsuits going on today and the exact same processes have been going on for decades. It’s basically the same process just different people and different cities.
The narrator does make some mistakes in the Arabic pronunciation. I suspect his Arabic is like Big Z (possibly a 2nd generation immigrant?). I don’t speak Hebrew so I can’t speak to that. I did speed it up in some areas but 1.5x or less should be good, especially cuz there are a lot of details.

Heartbreaking

Heartbreaking documentation of the colonization of the Palestinian hills and valleys. Well documented in this book from a unique local eloquent perspective indeed. Well narrated also

2 sides of a cultural clash

informative, current in scope.important to ponder. one of worlds various belief systems traumas..meddling with rightful stewards of ancient revered land by Europeans possessing Israeli passports.

Humanizes Palestinians

Excellent insights into the humanity of Palestinians experiencing chronic land theft by the Israeli state.

Great expectations, profound disappointment

The current conflict in Gaza/Israel prompted me to seek out sources and material to improve my understanding. To that end, I recently read A day in the life of Abed Salima, Letters to my Palestinian Neighbour, and Orientalism by E. Said. In my research, this writer and this particular text was frequently cited as a seminal text. Of all the Palestinian and Israel texts I've read over the past 3 months, this is the only one that I couldn't finish. With great effort, I listened to most of it, and it never improved. To be sure, this writer, alone among all the texts, did not bother to challenge his own assumptions, to interrogate or even submit to scrutiny any of his convictions. Perhaps he assumed his audience included no skeptics, a defect from which he could never recover.