Renowned Palestinian author Raja Shehadeh has completed a mission to safeguard his extensive personal diaries, which span decades of documentation starting from the 1967 onset of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank. At 75, Shehadeh feared his archives, stored in his Ramallah garage, faced destruction due to military operations. Consequently, he undertook a two-year covert effort to transfer the documents to the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, while the University of Exeter published thousands of pages online. The archive includes his first entry from May 11, 1967, his accounts as a human rights lawyer, and reflections on peace talks, the 2002 Ramallah invasion, and his frustration with Palestinian leadership over settlement expansion. Shehadeh also detailed his four-decade quest regarding the 1985 killing of his father, a prominent lawyer, and how obtaining Israeli police files in 2025 provided closure regarding his suspicions of a protected collaborator. Emphasizing the concept of sumud, or steadfastness, Shehadeh hopes his preserved writings will offer an authentic historical record of Palestinian life and resilience.
Source: npr.org
