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.