Personal Info
- Country of residence: Palestine
Information
Raja Shehadeh (born 1951) is a Palestinian lawyer and writer, who was born in Jaffa, and who currently lives in Ramallah, West Bank.
Raja Shehadeh studied law in London. His grandfather, Saleem, was a judge in the courts of the British Mandate of Palestine. His great-great-uncle, the journalist Najib Nassar, founded the Haifa-based newspaper Al-Karmil in the last years of the Ottoman Empire, before World War I. His father, Aziz, also a lawyer, was one of the first Palestinians to publicly support a two-state solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Shehadeh is from a Palestinian Christian family.Adam Shatz has cited Shehadeh as one of two people who have provided a formative influence of his understanding of the Middle East conflict, writing that 'Anguished and somewhat fragile, he is a man who, in spite of his understandable bitterness, has continued to dream of a future beyond the occupation, a kind of neo-Ottoman federation where Arabs and Jews would live as equals.
Source
Achievements and Awards
Shehadeh is a founder of the human rights organization Al-Haq
He has written several books on international law, human rights and the Middle East.
In 2008, he won the Orwell Prize, Britain's pre-eminent award for political writing, for his book Palestinian Walks.
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