Palestinian Walks: Forays into a Vanishing Landscape
“A rare historical insight into the tragic changes taking place in Palestine.” —Jimmy Carter
From one of Palestine’s leading writers, a lyrical, elegiac account of one man’s wanderings through the landscape he loves—once pristine, now forever changed by settlements and walls—updated with a new afterword by the author.
“I often come to walk in these hills,” I said to the man who was doing all the talking and seemed to be the commander. “In fact I was once here with my wife, it was 1999, and some of your soldiers shot at us.”
“It was over on that side,” the soldier pointed out. “I was there,” he said, smiling.
When Raja Shehadeh first started hill walking in Palestine, in the late 1970s, he was not aware that he was traveling through a vanishing landscape. 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.
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Community Reviews
It's curious when he talks about settlers he mentions heavy propaganda, misleading education, and overall wrong view of the world. Yet one has to wonder if he thinks his own view is factual? He's one side in a conflict where both sides are known to misinterpret history and lie to make sense of their own story. It's a curious look into bias, but not quite curious enough to be worth it.
He comes by an abandoned house and promptly imagines that it was inhabited by Arab Muslims. With names and activities to really show us how they lived and were kicked out. He uses this anecdote to show us how much destruction the Jewish settlers are causing. Yet we know that these areas were inhabited by a ton of different religions and groups. Even Jews lived there prior to Israel. I get the emotional storytelling to show readers the real people who suffered. But it never quite hits as I really don't care about some imaginary people. It's curious to see how he thinks. Constantly making up stories to support his worldview. As a good defense lawyer needs to do. It's all about storytelling for him. Making his story stick and making the settler story sound like a big illusion. It could have worked if he had spent all the pages on his lawyer job to expand on all of this.
In a defense case he has he claims he has the best case he can ever find. Basically telling us that is he loses this land rights case it means Israel is corrupt. The owner has not registered the land during Jordan annexation of West Bank, but he has partly registered it somehow. Basically his name was on the initial documents or something. I wonder if that really proves land ownership? I think the author may be overestimating his case. Especially if this the best case scenario? That means most Muslim settlers seeking his services likely don't have any papers whatsoever and their name is found nowhere. Here there is some mention at least. I wish the whole book was just about cases. The walking is frankly boring as heck. I just couldn't get into his overly fluffy and unfocused writing about the beauty of his trips and flowers and stones. Maybe on video it could look fine. The court cases meanwhile I'm all in for.
At the end it feels completely unfocused. I'm eager to see if he has some books on legal stuff only. This walking stuff is dry.
He comes by an abandoned house and promptly imagines that it was inhabited by Arab Muslims. With names and activities to really show us how they lived and were kicked out. He uses this anecdote to show us how much destruction the Jewish settlers are causing. Yet we know that these areas were inhabited by a ton of different religions and groups. Even Jews lived there prior to Israel. I get the emotional storytelling to show readers the real people who suffered. But it never quite hits as I really don't care about some imaginary people. It's curious to see how he thinks. Constantly making up stories to support his worldview. As a good defense lawyer needs to do. It's all about storytelling for him. Making his story stick and making the settler story sound like a big illusion. It could have worked if he had spent all the pages on his lawyer job to expand on all of this.
In a defense case he has he claims he has the best case he can ever find. Basically telling us that is he loses this land rights case it means Israel is corrupt. The owner has not registered the land during Jordan annexation of West Bank, but he has partly registered it somehow. Basically his name was on the initial documents or something. I wonder if that really proves land ownership? I think the author may be overestimating his case. Especially if this the best case scenario? That means most Muslim settlers seeking his services likely don't have any papers whatsoever and their name is found nowhere. Here there is some mention at least. I wish the whole book was just about cases. The walking is frankly boring as heck. I just couldn't get into his overly fluffy and unfocused writing about the beauty of his trips and flowers and stones. Maybe on video it could look fine. The court cases meanwhile I'm all in for.
At the end it feels completely unfocused. I'm eager to see if he has some books on legal stuff only. This walking stuff is dry.
{The only reason I have rated this book this way is due to my frustration from the fact that I cannot do anything to change the circumstances that happened in this book.}
Firstly, I will state repeat that reading books about Palestine does a number of things to my mind, heart and mood. Therefore, my review and reflection on this book are emotionally charged. I do not deny this. However, I do my best to maintain a clear overall review of Palestinian Walks: Forays into Vanishing Landscapes by Raja Shehadeh for all interesting in this book.
The history of the Palestinian people and their country since the Nakba is unimaginable. Yet, they have been enduring these atrocities for decades. And if I could summarize Raja’s experience during the span of the narrative, it would be corruption, lies, stealing, colonization and terrorist acts by the Zionist illegal occupied state known as Is Not Real.
In Palestinian Walks, Raja takes readers on ‘walks’ that explore the changing landscapes around him in Palestine. As the narrative progresses the ease and peacefulness of the ‘walks’ dims with the rise of more segregation, mobility laws and freedoms of the Palestinian people are stripped away by an illegal government authority given its ‘power’ by the United Kingdom. Given the vivid descriptions of the easiness of most of the Palestinian citizens and the beautiful Palestinian landscapes of hills, long sand stretches of areas one might forget the essence of the book. But the appearance of empty structures and houses that were forcefully abandoned during the Nakba and then more losses of those simply stepping out for the day only to return and find they have been barred from returning home. Raja accounts for the changes rapidly happening in just twenty-eight years around the Palestinian people. Growing numbers of settlements being built around Gaza and the West Bank divided and separated them and at the same time took more and more of their land, homes, legal rights and resources from them.
Raja clearly feels despondent with his work and the struggle. There is also a point where Raja seems to be shunned by is own people, many of whom seemed to have relented in trying to fight the colonizers to keep their rights and homes. To me, this speaks on who defeated and helpless those Palestinians must have felt. To choose to give into your oppressor isn’t living, it is existing. And even conforming to the Zionist cruelty, their rules and their actions, as proof of the last seven decades and the last 170 DAYS, it seems, was never enough. What I feel Palestinian Walks most reveals to the reads is the stark dissonance and detachment its people saw unfold in front of their eyes. The clear, open and spacious land that they may have once known from one hilltop to another utterly changed from one day to the next as settlements, concrete walls and wired fences erected across their land separated them not only from each other but also from their connection to their country.
Now, I cannot quite remember if this book was published before or after Raja’s We Could Have Been Friends, My Father and I, but we are given more details about some of his family in Palestinian Walks. As well as learn more of how hard he tried to get property and land back that was illegally taken by the colonizers. Endless loopholes in the Zionist favors, corruption and secret deals and plans in place for the stolen land with impossible fee requests to halt the ‘developmental’ plans. As if Raja and his clients were stirring up last minute inconveniences to plans that have been in the works for years. Even if paying the bogus fees were an option, they never were, the money the Zionist ‘had’ was also stolen from the Palestinians after the Nakba and they were (still are) being funded by the US.
Writing these details and facts that have happened feels like an absurd fictitious tale spun from the most outlandish form of reality. Knowing that it is all true rattles something within my blood and bones that is something like rage. But it is more than rage; I am sadden and sickened by these actions. I know that repeating the questions of how and why repeatedly will not lead any of us anywhere. Which is why I am pushed into actionable steps that are in my ability to achieve: Read. Speak up. Support. Share Information. Be An Advocate.
Palestinian Walks is a poignant and profound exploration of the Palestinian experience through the lens of Raja’s personal narrative. If this is the first book you ever pick up by a Palestinian author, it may teach you something, it may make you think, but it will stay with you.
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