2024 film directed by Sarah Friedland

In what has become a classic of Middle Eastern literature, Raja Shehadeh, in Palestinian Walks, wrote of his treks through the hills surrounding Ramallah over a period of three decades under Israel’s occupation.
In Where the Line Is Drawn, Shehadeh explores how occupation has affected him personally, chronicling the various crossings that he undertook into Israel over a period of forty years to visit friends and family, to enjoy the sea, to argue before the Israeli courts, and to negotiate failed peace agreements.
Those forty years also saw him develop a close friendship with Henry, a Canadian Jew who immigrated to Israel at around the same time Shehadeh returned to Palestine from studying in London. While offering an unforgettably poignant exploration of Palestinian-Israeli relationships, Where the Line Is Drawn also provides an anatomy of friendship and an exploration of whether, in the bleakest of circumstances, it is possible for bonds to transcend political divisions.

“I often come to walk in these hills,” I said to the soldier…he was compact and short, not much taller than me, with dark black, intense eyes, and wearing soldier fatigues. “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, smiling. “I was there.”

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.

In 1948 the history of Palestine changed forever. In the land where Christianity was born, little is ever said about the Christian minority. Tracing their roots back to the early Christians they have lived side by side with Muslims and Jews for almost two thousand years. An integral part of Palestinian society, they have shared in the events of recent history, yet their voices are seldom heard and worse: their existence often ignored.

A meditation on the separation fence in Israel-Palestine that imprisons one people while enclosing the other.

While interest in Middle Eastern cuisines has blossomed, the nuances and subtleties of Palestinian food are still relatively unexplored. In The Palestinian Table , Reem Kassis weaves together a tapestry of personal anecdotes, local traditions, and historical context, sharing with home cooks her collection of delicious, easy-to-follow recipes that range from simple breakfasts and speedy salads to celebratory dishes fit for a feast - giving rare insight into the heart and hearth of the Palestinian family kitchen.

Born in Brooklyn to Palestinian refugee parents, Soraya (Suheir Hammad) decides to journey to the country of her ancestry when she discovers that her grandfather's savings have been frozen in a Jaffa bank account since his 1948 exile. However, she soon finds that her simple plan is a complicated undertaking — one that takes her further from her comfort zone than she'd imagined.

Aziz Shehadeh was many things: lawyer, activist, and political detainee, he was also the father of bestselling author and activist Raja. In this new and searingly personal memoir, Raja Shehadeh unpicks the snags and complexities of their relationship.

A vocal and fearless opponent, Aziz resists under the British mandatory period, then under Jordan, and, finally, under Israel. As a young man, Raja fails to recognise his father's courage and, in turn, his father does not appreciate Raja's own efforts in campaigning for Palestinian human rights. When Aziz is murdered in 1985, it changes Raja irrevocably.

This is not only the story of the battle against the various oppressors of the Palestinians, but a moving portrait of a particular father and son relationship.

2021 film by Darin J. Sallam

In a dazzling mix of reportage, analysis, and memoir, the leading Palestinian writer of our time reflects on aging, failure, the occupation, and the changing face of Ramallah

"Few Palestinians have opened their minds and their hearts with such frankness."
—The New York Times

In Going Home, Raja Shehadeh, the Orwell Prize–winning author of Palestinian Walks, takes us on a series of journeys around his hometown of Ramallah. Set in a single day—the day that happens to be the fiftieth anniversary of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank—the book is a powerful and moving record and chronicle of the changing face of his city.

Here is a city whose green spaces—gardens and hills crowned with olive trees— have been replaced by tower blocks and concrete lots; where the Israeli occupation has further entrenched itself in every aspect of movement, from the roads that can and cannot be used to the bureaucratic barriers that prevent people leaving the West Bank. Here also is a city that is culturally shifting, where Islam is taking a more prominent role in people’s everyday and political lives and in the geography of the city.

A penetrating evocation of memory, pain, and place that is lightened by everyday joys such as delightful accounts of shared meals and gardening, Going Home is perhaps Raja Shehadeh’s most moving and painfully visceral addition to his series of personal histories of the occupation, confirming Rachel Kushner’s judgment that “Shehadeh is a buoy in a sea of bleakness.”

A bold call for the American Left to extend their politics to the issues of Israel-Palestine, from a New York Times bestselling author and an expert on U.S. policy in the region

In this major work of daring criticism and analysis, scholar and political commentator Marc Lamont Hill and Israel-Palestine expert Mitchell Plitnick spotlight how holding fast to one-sided and unwaveringly pro-Israel policies reflects the truth-bending grip of authoritarianism on both Israel and the United States. Except for Palestine deftly argues that progressives and liberals who oppose regressive policies on immigration, racial justice, gender equality, LGBTQ rights, and other issues must extend these core principles to the oppression of Palestinians. In doing so, the authors take seriously the political concerns and well-being of both Israelis and Palestinians, demonstrating the extent to which U.S. policy has made peace harder to attain. They also unravel the conflation of advocacy for Palestinian rights with anti-Semitism and hatred of Israel.

Hill and Plitnick provide a timely and essential intervention by examining multiple dimensions of the Israeli-Palestinian conversation, including Israel's growing disdain for democracy, the effects of occupation on Palestine, the siege of Gaza, diminishing American funding for Palestinian relief, and the campaign to stigmatize any critique of Israeli occupation. Except for Palestine is a searing polemic and a cri de coeur for elected officials, activists, and everyday citizens alike to align their beliefs and politics with their values.

以色列的巴勒斯坦同性戀地下社群一瞥。在巴勒斯坦受到保守社會環境的迫害，或被認為是”以色列“收買的間諜；在”以色列“又被指控為非法居留的罪犯，或者以強制出櫃為要挾，被強迫為”以色列“情報部門”服務“，巴勒斯坦的同性戀者是這場衝突中的默默受害者。Louie 險被父親親手殺死，出逃後已經在Jaffa (被”以色列“佔領的巴勒斯坦海港城市，且被更名為”Tel Aviv“) 躲藏了十年，Abdu 也曾遭受親人暴力並因與”以色列“同性戀者的關係被巴勒斯坦政府指控從事間諜活動。無論他們走到哪裡，他們都生活在害怕被發現的恐懼中。只有在同性戀地下社群中，他們才能找到一點家的溫暖。而為了取得更多一點的自由，像普通人一樣的生活，他們必須離開生長的故土。

Tarek and his mother Ghaydaa number among the tens of thousands of refugees crossing the border from Palestine, having been separated from Tarek's father amidst the chaos of the Six Day War. They ultimately settle at the Harir refugee camp, a makeshift home for a new generation displaced by conflict. Tarek dreams of being reunited with his father, and struggles to adapt to a new life far away from all he previously knew.