What Does Israel Fear from Palestine? by Raja Shehadeh review – in pursuit of peace

The lawyer, activist and author’s latest book divides into two halves – first an edited speech from Kyoto in 2016 and then an anguished exploration of the current conflict

Can books help at times like these? In the immediate aftermath of the Hamas attacks on 7 October, many of us reached for the works of Edward Said and David Grossman, Ghada Karmi and Amos Oz. This is how we have been taught to approach the unimaginable – by turning to great minds operating closer to the heart of the catastrophe. Eight months on and it’s hard not to feel that all the words written about this endless war mean nothing when weighed against the unspeakable horror, the cruelty, the intransigence of the politicians who claim to represent their people.

Raja Shehadeh, the 72-year-old lawyer, peace activist and author of 12 elegant and nuanced meditations of life in Palestine, has written his first book since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war and it feels like even he, whose writing is usually so generous, so optimistic, so even-handed, might be losing hope.