Raja Shehadeh: HOW CAN PALESTINIANS AND ISRAELIS LIVE TOGETHER?

Tessa Szyszkowitz in conversation with Raja Shehadeh





HOW CAN PALESTINIANS AND ISRAELIS LIVE TOGETHER?





"What Does Israel Fear from Palestine?" is one of the recent
essay books by Palestinian author Raja Shehadeh.
Drawing on his decades of experience as a human rights lawyer and
chronicler of life under occupation, he reflects on the
historical and legal dimensions of the Israeli Palestinian
conflict and explores how fear has shaped Israeli policies
towards Palestine.





In his new book We Could Have Been Friends my Father and I, which
was just published in German in February 2025, Shehadeh describes
the conflict through the life of his father. Aziz Shehadeh was
born in Jaffa and evicted in 1948. The family then lived in
Ramallah, where Aziz saw new occupation in 1967 and where he was
devoted to resisting Israeli occupation. As a lawyer he worked to
implement a United Nations resolution for the return of
Palestinian refugees and, in 1954, won a landmark case for the
release of some of their assets. In 1984 he was
assassinated.





In his lecture and in conversation with Tessa Szyszkowitz Raja
Shehadeh will discuss – also in memory of his father – what needs
to be done to stop the bloodshed.





Raja Shehadeh is one of the most important Palestinian
writers of today. He is also a lawyer who founded the Palestinian
human rights organization Al-Haq. Shehadeh is the author
of Strangers in the House: Coming of Age in Occupied
Palestine;  Palestinian Walks: Forays into a Vanishing
Landscape, which won the 2008 Orwell Prize. His latest book
is We Could Have Been Friends My Father and I: A Palestinian
Memoir has been shortlisted for the 2023 National Book Award for
Nonfiction. He has written for The New Yorker, the New
York Times, New York Review of Books, Granta, The
Guardian, The Boston Review, and others.





Tessa Szyszkowitz is an Austrian journalist and
author (Echte Engländer, Britannien und Brexit, Picus, 2018). A
UK correspondent for the Austrian weekly Falter and a
Distinguished Fellow of the Royal United Services Institute in
London. She curates Philoxenia at Kreiskyforum.