Starred review from January 9, 2023
Palestinian attorney and human rights activist Shehadeh (Where the Line Is Drawn) movingly blends the personal and political in this heartfelt take on his complex relationship with his lawyer father, Aziz. The latter, born in 1912, was a fearless advocate for his clients, including the men who assassinated Jordan’s King Abdullah in 1951, and an early supporter of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict despite having fled his home in Jaffa after the modern Jewish state was declared. He was murdered in 1985 by a former client, a crime for which Shehadeh still seeks answers. As Shehadeh writes, their interactions were often fraught with a hostility Shehadeh attributes to his father’s unpopular political positions, and his sense of regret after his father’s murder, over missed chances at healing their relationship is palpably and eloquently conveyed: “Not being aware of the extent and the sheer number of battles he had fought during his life,” Shehadeh writes, “I could not understand the measure of his anger, disappointment, and unhappiness.” This poignant memoir will resonate with many, whatever their positions on the political conflict at its center. George Lucas, InkWell Management.
February 1, 2023
A Palestinian human rights lawyer and writer reflects on the legacy of his father, who fought tirelessly for refugees in Israel. As a young lawyer in the mid-1980s working side by side with his father, the late Aziz Shehadeh, the author did not realize at the time how much Aziz's early work in securing Palestinian refugee rights mirrored his own. His father had been a lawyer in Jaffa, but in 1948, he was forced to relocate his law office to Ramallah, which was then under Jordanian control. In 1985, Shehadeh, author of Occupation Diaries and Palestinian Walks, and his father were working on stopping an Israeli road plan through the West Bank when Aziz was murdered. As the author recounts, it wasn't until recently, when he was about the same age as his father when he died, that Shehadeh turned his attention to the "carefully arranged" documents and letters his father left behind. He learned about Aziz's brave political opposition to Jordanian coercion, which led to several incarcerations in the 1950s, and how the Arab states ultimately used the Palestinians for political gain. "With Palestine lost," he writes, "my father and others were now reduced by the regime to the status of common criminals." Shehadeh shows how his father was a visionary for his insistence on a two-state solution, a stance that put him at odds with the Palestinian Liberation Organization. As Aziz always insisted, "the only real victory is when we've both won." The author's tribute to his father continues with his ongoing effort to find justice for his murder. "The prevarication by the police and the excuses offered for the delay bring back painful memories of the agony my family endured in the course of the original investigation," he writes. Though brief, the text is poignant and engaging. A well-established Palestinian voice fashions a loving portrayal of the unsung achievements of his activist father.
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February 1, 2023
Aziz Shehadeh was a Palestinian lawyer who represented Palestinians unjustly deprived of their homes and livelihoods by collusion between Israel, the UK, and Jordan. In 1953, he won a landmark case against Barclays Bank, which had frozen the assets of thousands of Palestinian refugees and handed the money over to Israel. This case convinced him that without a state of their own, Palestinians would forever be vulnerable. His two-state peace proposal was anathema to Jordan, Israel, and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), and his fierce denunciations of Jordan's occupation of the West Bank landed him in prison, then in exile for years. After Shehadeh was murdered by a disgruntled loser in a legal suit, his death was exploited by Israeli authorities to frame the PLO despite a complete lack of evidence. Years later, his son Raja, also a Palestinian human rights lawyer, muses on the misunderstandings between father and son and how his coming of age after the Oslo Accords clouded his ability to recognize his father's heroism. A powerful family memoir and devastating work of history.
COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.