Were excited to welcome Raja Shehadeh as well as palestines leading writer. Shehadeh is also a lawyer and the founder of the pioneering Palestinian Human Rights Organization alhaq. Hes the author of several acclaimed, including strangers the house occupation diaries and palestinian works, which won the prestigious orwell. His latest is a memoir that delves into the complex relationship he had with his father, as well as recounting the story of the battle against the various oppressors, reminding of the threat to freedom and democracy exacted by such forces. Tonights event is in partnership with the museum of the Palestinian People. Its a very moving Little Museum between du pont and adams, morgan, and they also have a middle eastern bookstore next door to that. So you can check that out for your middle eastern books. Also, visit our spices. So if you join me in welcoming raja shehata. I was looking forward to you. Thank you all for. Which is really. Yeah, yeah. This and im sure and thank you for politics prose and the museum the Palestinian People for hosting this event. I will start by from the book from the very beginning of the book for few pages. And then i present the book and do a little more reading and, and that would be my role before the your questions you cant hear. I am listening thanks. Now now is it better . Okay. I could hear him entering office with his usual gusto. As always, he took the. I took a deep breath when my father came, he stopped at reception to get the latest messages and then asked, has anyone called with small, quick steps thumping the ground . He walked past my room, followed by his secretary, to whom he had already. He was already dictating letters concerning the days court hearings. He was wearing a dark suit with the well ironed white shirt and the black tie and carrying his heavy black leather briefcase. Then he doubled back and peered through the open door to into my room. He saw me looking over the map, covered in cobweb lines and asked accusingly, what are you doing . Dont you have any work to do . Before i could explain, he had darted into his office to resume dictating. I stayed in my examining the new 1984 military order, plus attached map that my father had with me. No plan number 50 as it was designated was the blueprint for the Israeli Occupation authoritys long term of creating a new west bank road network that was bound to have a devastating effect on the palestinian landscape, on tradition, towns and villages and on the agricultural. So studying it, i could see where future roads were to be built, how the existing network of roads was to be altered from a north, south to east west grid. And how the Jordan Valley was to get a new road, one that would Better Connect it to israel and consolidate it as the countrys eastern border. The implications were massive. I gave my father time to finish dictating his letters, then i walked over to his office to show him the new order and map which had just only arrived in the post that day when i suggested to him that we should submit to the proposal. He was not enthusiastic. He didnt seem to share my sense of foreboding about the impact that the order would have on the land. The phone rang. And he answered as he had to hear how can i help you, waving me away. He sank into a conversation with his client, but i continued to think about the new road and a few weeks earlier i had taken the solitary drive. Well down what we called the latrun road. Since linked the hilly town of ramallah to the coastal city of jaffa, via della truman monastery. On both sides of the road i could see terraced hills dotted with the olive trees in full leaf, the trees on the slopes of these undulating hills were all approximately the same height, and they were all olives. As i drove west, the hills were awash, sunlight and the trees cast, the shadows over the all the way down to the ready on the hill, to my right was a plot that belonged to my client. He had just heard that the occupation authorities expropriated it and were planning to establish better on and settle it with israeli. I couldnt understand why what was the point of putting israeli civilians in the midst of our hills so close to a palestinian village . How could how would the settlers get their electricity and water . They couldnt depend. On the Inadequate Services from the nearby village . Could they possibly have planned for an alternative . It was then that the wadi i thought struck me like lightning. What if our israeli occupiers were already who already had control of the network serving us were proposing to construct a superior network of water electricity and roads connecting, the settlements to israel that mean that they could cut us off without affecting their own people. We would be completely at the for essential services. When i saw the military order mounting announcing the new road plan, i feared that the Israeli Military was taking the first step to prepare the way for this eventuality. As you can gather from the reading, i was trying to. Recruit my father father to a to me in existing consequences of the 1967 occupation. I was not aware then of his in resisting the effects of the nakba of 1940 548. But this book is not about the resistance. This book is not only about the resistance to, the occupation and the mutual work on resisting the occupation. The 48 effects of the 48. Its also a book on the complicated and challenging father relationship. As i was preparing to write the book, a friend of mine wrote me a copy of the palestine Telephone Directory of jaffa aviv, dated january 1944. There i found my fathers name and my name a judge saleem hadi. Emotion overwhelmed me all that history of the life in jaffa had been and all the work of my father in has been erased. This the catalyst that it started me thinking about fathers legacy and i was slowly getting ready to open that cabinet that kept my fathers files. In the final years of his life. I saw my father to put his documents in order and then to put them in files and index them and so on and after his death, they stayed. My fathers in my mothers house and i didnt want to look them. My mother kept telling, why dont you come and take them away . And i said, no, i dont want i have my own life to live and my cabinets to fill. And i dont want to involved with my fathers affairs. And then yeah, yeah. After years, somebody brought me a of a little booklet that my father had written in 1936 called the arab case, the abc of the arab case for palestine i looked at that little booklet and saw, well, it was written and clearly it put the and i thought my father had done lots of work. I need to at. And then i started opening that cabinet and there found a tremendous documents and and files that had all his work. So on my father was forced out of jaffa in 1948. He was expecting to return and his expectation to return was due to the fact that the partition scheme of 1947 had left jaffa. The arab section of the arab state. And so he expected that, if the worst happens in palestine, the partition he. Jaffa remain in the arab side and he would be able to return. And then his hopes were raised december 11, 1948, when u. N. Resolution 194, which stated that refugees wishing to return should be permitted to return and compensation should be paid, those choosing not to return and at the same time, after the resolution in the palestine conciliation commission, which is also a un body, was established to carry out the resolution. 194. My father thought that they need to the refugees to organize themselves and so and others established the Refugee Congress called it among the Refugee Congress which had 300 and 300,000 members and. Of course that was very difficult at that time, too, to have such a Big Organization and then in 1948, the congress was invited to represent the palestinian in lausanne in switzerland, and they chose a committee of three, which my father was one of, to go to present, present the case in. Then israel said that it was would only negotiate with states and the palestinians were not it states they would not negotiate with them. And this was not first, nor will it be the last time that they felt that the israel rejected the offer of palestinians to negotiate peace with it. Unbeknownst to my father, secret negotiations were taking in 1947 between King Abdullah of jordan, east jordan and the zionists. And and in february of 48 and between the foreign minister of britain gave the green light to King Abdullah, to snatch any territory not allotted to the by partition to the so they working together to make sure that palestinian state would be established and that jordan would be expanded by taking the parts the palestine which were outside the scheme for, the and the land for the and its 75 years since, since that event, the. Throwing out of the palestinians of the land and still theres no recognition of the nakba or recognition of the right of return. And that experience tremendously painful for the palestinians and put them in grave despair. And i think that they were shocked by the fact that this small jewish minority could force them out of their land. And i think it a question of failure, of imagination. And they didnt. And a gap between the two sides the were had witnessed the holocaust and were affected by the holocaust. And the palestinians had no idea there would be the would be able to throw them out. I think this is similar what is happening in the west bank, where we also in the west bank had. Immediate couldnt imagine that israeli would be able to build settlements and to bring over half a million to to to the to the west bank and in such short period of time. A prominent novelist who said that the creation of israel was a miracle. And i think that it was no political at all because as the archives now show, the gap between the power of the military, power of zionists and the palestinians was so large favor of the zionists that it was that they would win and the only medical is that israel was able to throughout most of the people of the west of the land and that 50 years have passed, 75 years have passed and no recognition of what has happened. And that is the reason medicalised. In the cabinet that i opened after many years i found many other files which are very important and one of them was a file of the Barclays Bank case, which my father had taken and won. And that was the case of the fact that israel, after it was established, had closed the and frozen the accounts of the palestinians who had accounts in a bank and branches and Barclays Bank branches in israel. And they would not allow them to withdraw their money out or out of these accounts from outside and and so the idea was that they wanted to make beggars out of the palestinians who had lost everything in the course of the war and the idea was no country, no money, no country. My father took a against the Barclays Bank in the District Court in jerusalem and the jordan and he won the case and the bank had to be now in 1980 1954 he had to to london to work out the procedure for the distribution of the money and the there he. Very he. After he finished that negotiation them the foreign and the Jordanian Foreign minister wrote a letter that was published and he said that this had it had negotiated with israel and this is tantamount to treason. And so all along the border of jordan and restaurant was put to death when returned he would be arrested. So as a result he had to spend 27 months in exile in between london and rome and beirut and we were alone in ramallah with little means or little money. And without our father and while he was in london, he managed to write a memo and to the British Parliament against bashir and got john bell hood, which was in jordan. Its got bashir and who was torturing the palestinians and, uh, acting as a in very harsh ways to anyone who would raise their heads against the in jordan. When i think of him writing this memo against the group pressure, i think that how could he have imagined that the british would would be amenable to removing agent in jordan just because my father had written about about him this memo and and in fact also that he was returning to jordan he eventually and we under this hodgmans rule it also something that i thought was fearless and maybe to think youve. It is to be regretted the case of the Barclays Bank which was a way of fighting israel through the law was not and it took many before the use of the as a means for fighting israel took root and it was ten years after that after the occupation its start of the occupation that was established and i was of course part it and did help and tried to use the law as a means for resisting occupation but unfortunately the leadership the palestinian leadership outside did not take any notice of these changes in the law that were writing about and trying to stop and as a result when the oslo accords negotiations took place. In 1993 they didnt take any measures to notice of these military orders and changes in the law, and they didnt reverse them. And in 1958, there was another file which was very important also, which was in 1958, abdulkareem kassem was killed in in baghdad and and he was the uncle, king hussein. And king hussein was fearful that in jordan there would be also a coup. So you get that all the nationalist and antimonarchist and put them in prison amongst was my father and the prison that he was taken to is called the general which was a desert prison which i visited and in order to see the state of the place in, order to write about it. He stayed two months in jail and these were very harsh months in southern and when he came, i was trying to remember if if i remembered his return home and i couldnt remember it and i couldnt remember that i was thinking of my father as a hero to have endured harshness and and to have stood up to the injustice in jordan. And i wondered why and and the of why i didnt this admiration to my father is subject four of this book and. And in 1985 my father was murdered by a squatter who in the land of the Anglican Church in bethlehem in hebron. And he was never investigated because he was probably and a collaborator. I would like to read to you what wrote in the wake of this my fathers death death. For years i lived as a son. World was ruled by a fundamentally benevolent father with whom was temporarily fighting. I was sure that we were moving, always moving towards the ultimate family, and that one day we would all in harmony. When he died before this could happen, i had to wake up from my fantasy and to face the godlessness of my world and the fact that it is time bound there was not enough time for the rebellion and, the dream the rebellion had consumed all the available time. I turned around my stage when the second act would start and found that there was none. I was alone. There was no second act and no stage manager. What happened . But that didnt happen in the first act would never happen. Life moves in real time. But then i was in my prime, going full speed ahead with my human rights work, thinking the world of my self. Having been a slow developer, i was beginning to feel able at long last to realize pretension and experience the young manhood that had been interrupted by the start of Israeli Occupation in 1967. I did not anyone telling me, stopping in my tracks or causing the crack or casting doubt on the work was so enthusiastically engaged then i. I was forging ahead, breaking what i believed then was new ground in the kind of resistance i was involved with against israeli action. I had no idea that my father had done the same years earlier, nor did i know that was from him that i got public spirit and the sense responsibility that made me regard the failures of my people as a person and flaw for which i must bear the blame it was this that motivated so many of my Legal Investigations into how israel was pursuing the policies of the occupied and that pushed me write all those articles and books to explain the document to educate. After 1967, my changed. He had he after his experience. He had decided that he would stay away from politics. He had another child. My, my young brother, and he stayed away from politics. But after 1967, he decided it was not time anymore for. Passive stance. And he. Visited jaffa and so that the jaffa not changed very much since. He left it and he decided that it was time to negotiate peace with. Israel so he drafted a memorandum which he got 50 prominent people from the west bank and gaza to sign and it to the israeli proposing a state next to israel and negotiations with jerusalem its capital with the negotiations for the other pending issues. And he never, of course, got an answer. The uh, from the israelis at that time there were no settlements yet at all in the occupied territories and it would have been possible to do something that which now seems to be highly unlikely. It was in 1988 only that the b and c that the Palestine National council of plo finally agreed to make a settlement based on the 66 borders of 1967, and it and it was bye bye now and. Then in the end, the oslo accords they didnt base this proposal on the uh on, the partition scheme and in the left they left the issues open the borders and in the oslo we saw that the compromises were so big that we have lost a lot. Yeah. So the transformation of the land that my father had witnessed after 1948 from the changes from the palestine, from being palestine into being jordan, mirrored the changes that i had witnessed of the west bank being turned into israel and. Yet with all this we did not have with not share, we did not discuss this and realize we had similar experiences. As i was finishing the book an imaginary and imaginary dialog happened. My father, which i would like to read to you and finish with this. Now or that a century i want to tell my father that history might may have proven him wrong, that perhaps his was but an empty threat, and israel must have done the fact that he was telling them that if you dont make peace, the palestinians, what, a million in the west bank and gaza would be impossible, difficult to control. The occupier has seemingly won the word occupation has been dropped from israel. Vocabulary. The curriculum taught in the schools tells the students the whole of greater israel is dead and that the palestinians have no rights that land. I want to to him, you underestimated israels power, resourcefulness and long term planning and the answers. You say theyve won. And you you cite the fact that they deny the palestinians have any rights over the land and theyve dropped you from their consciousness. This means this only means that if the succeeded in deceiving you as well, you would think that because theyve made you invisible, theyve won it. Pains me to hear you put it like that. Like that. This is a recipe for eventual war. Dont you realize that the only victory is of peace between our two peoples. How its said in me to see that the only relations between you are those of master and slave one of exploitation, hatred, seizing every to destroy each other. And yet you call that denial of palestinians, that victory. Just think how much time israel has wasted learning the tricks of interrogation and repression and other coercive ways to control the palestinian population under that rule of course, they have had the best masters to teach them. The english is the british who left them with their perpetual the brutal methods of torture, house demolitions and deportation. All enshrined in laws such as the defense regulations which israel found ready and used extensively the years through theyve managed to control the palestinian and in the process incarcerated many thousands ended up despising israel more than ever and determined keep fighting it. But then the two nations are now further than ever had as any of this brought peace, any closer and i reply, of course not. Yet still the is that they won to them. Its rewarded destroy the palestinians to deny their existence then end the rights to the land. And they did it. They won. And thats all that matters to them. As to the course, it was much, much higher for us than for them. Nothing to compare. They lost thousands of soldiers. We lost many more. And still they mean stateless. Then he tells me, because go they bought goods five beyond the number of that in the course of numerous wars they waged loss life was only part of it how much Better Things would have been, would have turned out had they used the resource superior skills and resources to help develop the region rather than continually destroying it. Thats their choice. I see it choice they make could make because they and these is the only reason is when we both won. Thank you. I to the questions. You have a question if you could please come to the microphone for recording this is the cant hear you can you please come to the microphone through a recording so. Thank you so much mr. She had the we really appreciate that youve told us about your experience. You know, studied a lot of international law. Well and i was wondering what your personal reasons were for you know referring to the military Security Apparatus currently as an occupation as opposed apartheid, giving the de jure and de facto, you know, elements of whats in palestine right now now. Why i refer to why dont you refer to it an apartheid . Well, apartheid is a description, but the the actual the changes in the law which are illegal, which have to be reversed in order to return to the way things are, is a legal question that has to be and you one doesnt address it by a slogan like apartheid. Sorry. So youre saying that the question of occupation has to be addressed or the occupation has to end. Okay. So you dont believe that occupation can exist within apartheid, the de jure and de facto the occupation has resulted in. Apartheid. Oh, thats true. I see, youre saying like its the its transformed into. Yeah, okay. I understand. Thank. Thank you very much. I was wondering, you could talk more about your fathers struggles with the plo and others when he was trying to come up with that early version of a two state solution. And my father, when he i my father when he proposed the palestinian state was attacked very much. And the attacks were that this is treason and this is acceptable and wrote in 1970 an article in the paper called history repeats history. In 1970, he wrote a paper in the local paper and article which he called history repeats itself, and in it he that the military its its struggle was not going to bring any results because the most that can can bring because it it cannot destroy israel. The soviet union and the american americans are going to not allow israel to be destroyed. And so whats the use of the most that can be done is to get a. Two to give permission or excuse for the world to draw them themselves on the question and see. Well, as long as the palestinians are fighting for themselves then then we not use politics. And he thought that politics is the only way. And by negotiations that we could get anywhere. And he also thought that israel had in 1940, after 1948 changed the country that the palestinians left and made it into a israel and they would do the same in the occupied territories. And time is not in that favor because in time they would create facts. And then they would say, these are the facts and you have to by them. So he was exactly saying what has happened after all these years. Uh, legend, i remember you had a little picture on the wall. I know if it was a picture of yourself or, your father, and then which you wrote, uh the father is that son is the child of the father. The parallels that you have drawn in your book between the approach of, uh, ahmed aziz hadi and yourself, his approach and approach and parallels and the contrast between are telling obviously, my question is we are now approaching yet another generation my fathers generation usually innovation in mind and. Now theres a new generation thats coming in palestine. How you see that generation responding to the same challenges to the same issues, to the same oppression to the same injustices and to the same struggle that doesnt seem to be moving at all forward. They have a hard time because its already very complicated and very much advanced. The colonial colonial aspects of the thing, of course, that means for fighting are different. They have now the International Criminal court, which is a possibility and. They are doing that and doing their best to get the case heard before the criminal court and as you know, is very involved with this. And they have also great means with the social media and with new possibilities for informing people to expose and and change the public, which i think is beginning happen certainly in this country and certainly in europe. And would make a big difference, such as explaining that the israelis apartheid state and therefore it should not be tolerated as such and so on and that is a new way of struggle which the young people, the younger people than us are involved in have done some tremendously good work, i think, so far. But its a long battle and and none the none of these tactics are going to bring immediate results. Theyre going to take a long time. I think. Its. Questions. I give or other of applause that