Palestinian Walks: Notes on a Vanishing Landscape [Kindle Edition]

Winner of the Orwell Prize 2008. Raja Shehadeh's twenty seven years going on sarha's, wandering the hills of Ramallah and beyond, form the warp and the weft of a life rich with observations. The purpose of a sarha is to wander freely and aimlessly, to nourish the soul and rejuvenate. Each walk combines poignant, lyrical, reflections of a vanishing landscape with an ancient history. Along with that, eloquent stories of the people who cultivated the land with terraces of olive trees and grapevines. Poetic, political, and spiritual, this second edition has seven unique walks, each one embracing real people, past and present.

The hills are alive with the music of shepherds and their flocks, vibrant spring flowers, arid sunburnt wadis, transforming light, winter rain and snow, and Jewish settlers who claim a divine right to the land. One of the most captivating stories in the book is that of Abu Ameen, a poor stone mason. For all its poignancy, this is also an elevating story of human endurance, tested to extremes, in the harshness of a land with many restrictions.

Raja Shehadeh is a lawyer and writer living in Ramallah, a city in the Palestinian West Bank. He is also the author of the highly praised When the Bulbul Stopped Singing and Strangers in the House.

Having not long returned from a visit to Israel and the West Bank I decided to read "Palestinian Walks" written by Raja Shehadeh, a Palestinian human rights lawyer who has stayed living in the West Bank through all the troubles of the last 60 years. It was a far better book than I had anticipated with the brilliant way that Shehadeh was able to intertwine the experiences, beauty and destruction of the environment witnessed in his walks, with personal reflections and history and incidents of the region.

I agree completely with the quotes from reviews of the Independent on Sunday "Delivering what many activists neglect to mention: the odd, slightly absurd details that really touch people" and the NY Times "Few Palestinians have opened their minds and hearts with such frankness."

The sadness and frustration of Shehadeh come over, without any hatred or bigotedness, and also incredibly not giving the reader an utter sense of despair at the end. Obviously Shehadeh is critical of Israeli policy in the West Bank, but he also expresses his frustration and anger with the former PLO leadership in exile at their insistence on recognition at the expense of an adequate land solution in the Oslo Agreement, as well as corrupt practices when in control.

It was the small details that were so enlightening. In the last two walks encounters and conversations with a young Israeli settler (An Imagined Sarha) and two young, angry Muslim Palestinians (The Masked Shepherds) are recorded which are so sensitively done. The tradegy of how particularly Israeli policy, as well as fear, makes contact between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs so limited is brilliantly displayed in the conversation which makes up a large part of the chapter "An Imagined Sarha". The book is worth reading for that conversation alone.

Also the chapter "And How Did You Get Over It?" was fascinating, when a Palestinian doctor and politician with whom Raja is friends asks on a walk how Raja overcome his anger at the defeat incurred by the Oslo Agreement. Raja reflects that he has not had to suffer as much as his father had to and that when he could walk and reflect on the geography and think about previous generations and civilisations which the land barely reflects now he comments:

"For a long time my enjoyment of these hills has been impaired by a preoccupation with the changes in land law relating to them. But such man-made constructs can be diminished if looked at in a particular way. Viewed from the perspective of the land they hardly count...Stones are gathered to build houses but then they crumble and return to the land, however large and formidable they might once have been.

Thinking in the long term made it possible for me to separate "the present" from the rest of time and thereby realize that what Palestine and Israel are now would not necessarily be for ever. I was here on earth for a relatively short period and after that time passed, life would go on without my points of view, biases and fears." (p170-1)

Raja Shehadeh is a Palestinian human rights lawyer living in Ramallah. He has been walking in the Palestinian countryside for over 25 years and appreciates its wild flowers, wildlife and history. He has subtitled his book "Notes on a Vanishing Landscape" - and herein lie the sadness and anger of a whole community. Israel has become more and more confident about building settlements on Palestine land and this has brought drastic changes to the West Bank. New roads have been constructed (often restricted to Israelis), water has been diverted to supply the new housing, a 700 km "security" wall is being erected and many modern apartments and houses have appeared - often completely changing life for the local villagers.

As well as describing the walks he tells of the many distressing events that occurred. Having missed the news that a curfew had been imposed, he tells of having to beg an Israeli soldier to let him re-enter his own town. While walking he has been threatened and shot at (sometimes even by Palestinians). On one particularly telling occasion he recalls passing a group of youngsters. "They spoke to each other in Russian. They must have been the sons and daughters of new immigrants brought to Israel to inhabit the settlements established on Palestinian soil. They looked and acted as though the world belonged to them, for theirs was the new life of victory in war; ours the sour grapes of defeat."

Shehadeh is particularly angry about the way in which the courts seem to favour Israeli wishes over Palestinian. In one case the court agreed that the rightful owner of some land was a Palestinian but said that the (illegal) contract to build a settlement there should stand. He is similarly angry about the Oslo accord. He points out how recognition of the PLO was preferred over proper long term planning rights - the Palestinian were out-manoeuvred at every turn.

The walks sound wonderful and I know there are now companies organising walking holidays in the West Bank. The map at the beginning is useful but I would also have liked sketch maps of the actual walks.

This is a beautifully written book - but it is hard to read it without becoming angry.