We Could Have Been Friends, My Father and I: A Palestinian Memoir by Raja Shehadeh is published by Profile Books. Available in Brisbane’s City Council libraries. A review.
This is a book about a Palestinian father and his son. The father is Aziz Shehadeh, a Palestinian lawyer who was born in 1912. The son is Raja, the author. This is a eulogy of a son for his father, thanking Aziz for his efforts to create a Palestinian state, a project that failed, but not for want of trying.
The key to Aziz attempt was the right of self-determination of the Palestinians contained in Resolution 181 of the UN in 1947: ‘the establishment of two states for two peoples – Jewish and Arab – between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River, each fulfilling the national aspirations of its respective populations.‘
The first president of Israel, Ben Gurion, accepted UN resolution 181 as a tactical manoeuvre for later expansion, an ambitious plan to take all of Palestine and parts of Transjordan, Lebanon Syria and Egypt.
For the lawyer, Aziz Shehadeh, it was the only pathway to peace. Unfortunately, the opportunist King Abdullah of Jordan would not permit 181 because he wanted to expand his existing territory at the expense of the Palestinians. Abdullah ws in league with his old foe, the Israelis.
In 1948, Israeli terrorist militias rejected the UN partition plan. This included the ancient port city of Jaffa where Aziz Shehadeh practiced law, a city famous for it’s resistance against Richard the Lionheart during the Crusades, its opposition to Napoleon who sacked the city and for the riots against British occupation forces after the first world war.
Jaffa was also home of Falestin, an influential Arab publication between the wars, in opposition to the British Mandate over Palestine 🇵🇸 .
Early in the book, Rajah outlines to his father how Israel was planning a system of roads (shown) that would severely affect the freedom of the Palestinian population. His father was not interested even though he put his name to a legal challenge. Instead Aziz was focused on the formation of a Palestinian state. He wanted a political objective rather than legal action associated with the pursuit of human rights, which more interested his son.
Raja Shehadeh was a founding member of Palestinian human rights group, al Haq.
The father mistrusted the Jordanian King from the outset, seeking statehood in the UN. This mistrust was mutual, and hence, when Aziz successfully defended those charged with King Abdullah’a murder in 1951, he became an enemy of the Hasemite regime. Raja discovered how his father was jailed in the desert along with other Nationalists, and well organised Communists innmates who ran the prison and even managed to grow tomatoes in the desert.
Shehadeh the elder was a clever lawyer who successfully challenged the theft of Palestinian bank deposits against a British silk. Here is part of the judgement he won in the Jordan’s District court.
Raja tells the story of his belated discovery of the courageous and clever prosecution of a case by his father that had been previously lost in the British high court.
The author discovers how Jordan was a puppet of the British even after its mandate over Palestine was ended.
Sir John Bagot Glubb exercised great power in Jordan after the 1948 war, where a four thousand five hundred strong Arab legion fought a fierce battle for Jerusalem, which ended with them in control of the old city. Disappointment, though, was soon to follow. During the four week truce from the 11th of June till the 9th of July 1948 that was arranged by Count Folke Burnadotte, the UN envoy, Israel rearmed with weapons from the United States and the Eastern bloc.
‘Going to Abdullah’ – the forced exodus of Palestinians from their homeland
Meanwhile, under strong US pressure, Britain stopped supplying arms to Jordan . Then, in the next round of fighting between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, Glubb decided to withdraw his forces from the area that had been designated part of the Palestinian state under the UN partition plan . This left the cities of Lydda and Ramle undefended and allowed Israelis to force the inhabitants to leave at gunpoint. Mass demonstrations were held in Jordan to protest about Glubb’s decision. The fall of Lydda and Ramle forced the Shehadeh family to flee Jaffa. Is israeli soldiers told them to walk east saying ‘Go to Abdullah’.
The Nakba resulted in three refugee camps established around Ramallah: Amari, Jalazone and Qaddura. The property that the destitute residents of these camps had left in what became Israel was declared absentee property and taken over by the state of Israel.
After years of resistance , Aziz Shehadeh was murdered.
In December 2021, Raja Shehadeh appointed the Israeli human rights lawyer Michael Sfrad to represent him in obtaining access to the Israeli police investigation file into his father’s murder. He thought that a long time had passed and that the Israeli police might be willing to divulge what they knew.
Months went by with various reasons given for the delay, and then the police asked the lawyer whether he wanted a personal review of the file or for the file to be made public. He opted for the latter, and on the 8 May 2022, just before this book went to press, Sfrad told Raja that the police were still reviewing the case for redaction and did not give in an estimate for the length of this process.
The prevarication by the police and the excuses offered for the delay brought back painful memories of the agony that his family had endured in the course of the original investigation, His father’s murder was the subject of a book, Stranger is in the House.
This is a story of resistance against oppression and a moving and subtle psychological portrait of a complicated and challenging father-son relationship.
I recommend this book to those trying to understand the Israeli genocide that currently rages in Palestine. This memoir was written prior to October 7. Many of the nostrums proposed by.
Aziz and his son have come back into the vogue … The idea of a Palestinian state being one of them.
In the West, still heavily influenced by Israel, the politics of deception reigns supreme. The colony that is, Israel was established long before 2023 before 1967. An even before 1948. This book give some insight into the process that affected the Palestinians in general and the Shehadeh family in particular. Since Aziz Shehadeh’s murder the United States has taken over where Britain left off. The difference now is the palestinians , a more united and more determined to make their own destiny.
Free free palestine, free free palestine!
Ian Curr, 27 June 2024.