In the spring of 2008 during a walk in the countryside surrounding Ramallah, the veteran Palestinian lawyer, writer and inveterate hiker pointed out the semi-detached chalets of Dolev, the illegal Israeli settlement that loomed on the horizon: "Sometimes I get carried away 15 or "20 years ago to when I could walk around here without distress," he said. An armored vehicle of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) traveled along a new road exclusively for Jewish settlers. "Soon we won't be able to walk here."
Fifteen years later, Shehadeh's worst predictions - now 72 years old and with a dozen books published - have come true. "If you come now, you'll barely recognize her," she said in a telephone interview last Wednesday.
"There are many more settlements around Dolev and some of the settlers are very violent. It is almost impossible to walk in the area anymore," explains Shehadeh, whose latest book A Palestinian Memory (Profile, 2022) tells the story of the occupation and genocide. committed by Israel in Palestine since the first mass expulsion of more than 400,000 Palestinians, the so-called Nakba, in 1948
When Shehadeh agreed to take that walk for a report published then in La Vanguardia, there were about 60 homes in Dolev. Now there are almost 800. When a bomb attack occurred in the settlement in 2019, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that he would double the number of homes. 380 units were built in Dolev alone in 2022
It is just one example of a relentless expansion of illegal settlements that accelerated last year when more than 1,000 Palestinian families were expelled from their land to pave the way for settlers.
Since the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, expulsions have been almost daily, with a balance of more than 300 Palestinians murdered in four months.
There are real estate bets in the midst of ethnic cleansing. "Now when you drive along the road that connects Dolev to the coast, you find big billboards advertising real estate for sale in the settlement," says Shehadeh. "The settlers bought their homes earlier at lower prices; then they sell them and pocket a lot of money."
Historically, thousands of Jews from the US and Europe have settled in Palestinian territories, a process of illegal occupation that intensified after the so-called Oslo peace agreement in 1993 when the number of settlements multiplied by four. "The idea is to make them think they are in Israel and not Palestine," says Shehadeh. Some 700,000 Israelis live illegally in the West Bank and there are more every day.
Palestinian lands are currently distributed among settlers under supposed property rights endorsed by biblical mythology. The Israelites expelled 3,000 years ago are already represented by “Jewish individuals wherever they are,” according to Israeli law.
"Before, the rabbis said they shouldn't have settled because it violated the law," Shehadeh explains. "Then the floodgates opened; many more settlers, Orthodox, came to the West Bank."
Four decades ago, Shehadeh already sensed the disaster that was coming for the Palestinians. After viewing the Israeli army's Plan Number 50 maps from 1984, it became clear that the military "intended to build a superior network of water, electricity and road infrastructure that would connect the settlements."
This had an obvious goal: the complete dependence of Palestine on Israel. "I panicked because I realized that it would be a very dangerous situation. At any moment they could deprive us of everything without harming their own people; and that is exactly what has happened. We are in an apartheid state.
Since last October 7, the danger is even more immediate. "Now the Israeli military enters Ramallah at any time of the day or night to arrest people or demolish homes."
Despite this, Shehadeh - known internationally for his legal defense of human rights in Palestine - says he is not afraid for his own safety. "I'm not an activist anymore and because of my age I don't think he's a target."
To combat the impact of its denunciation literature, Israel has an extremely effective weapon: self-censorship that has been used in the Western publishing world since October 7.
A few months ago it was assumed that Palestinian Memory would win the National Book Award in the United Kingdom. "He was the strongest candidate, of course, but my editor in Britain explained to me that it was impossible for him to win under the circumstances of October 7, and he was right."
Interweaving the story of his difficult personal relationship with his father, the famous Palestinian lawyer Aziz Shehadeh, Shehadeh explains in the book the history of violence, betrayal and deception carried out by Palestinians for more than a century. Not only against Israel, but also against the post-colonial powers, above all, the United Kingdom, as well as the Arab states.
Aziz - who defended those who lost their land and savings after the Nakba of 1948 - had to leave his family home in Jaffa after the entry of Israeli troops and an ethnic cleansing that occurred just three years after the publication of the first images of Auschwitz.
Later, settling in Ramallah, where his son Raja was born, he led a series of lawsuits on behalf of hundreds of expelled Palestinians. But as has been repeatedly demonstrated, international law does not apply in the case of the Palestinians. Aziz had little success in his defense of the victims of the Nakba although he achieved, in a trial held in Jordan, the return of the savings of some displaced people after Israel's expropriation of their bank accounts.
Shortly after, Aziz was imprisoned by the Jordanian regime and in 1985 he was assassinated by an invader of Palestinian lands who, Shehadeh suspects, was a collaborator of the Israelis: "We are still trying to investigate but the Israeli government refuses to publish the documents about the case".
Although the current massacre in the Gaza Strip has been called a second Nakba, Shehadeh doubts that Israel will succeed in expelling the Palestinians. "Israelis have long been looking for a way to get rid of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza," he says. "But I think it is a false hope for them. Nakba cannot be repeated."
This means, as Shehadeh's father insists in the book, that if it does not seek a modus vivendi, Israel "will continue to live next to a time bomb."
Although the younger generation linked to the Palestine Liberation Organization demanded the return of all lands occupied by Israel after the Nakba, Aziz insisted in the 1960s and 1970s that only a two-state solution would guarantee peace.
"I didn't agree much with my father when he was alive. But now I think he was right. The Israelis will not win by crushing the Palestinians, and we Palestinians will never be able to expel the Israelis. The only way we will win is if both people win."
