# Raja Shehadeh

Raja Shehadeh (Arabic: رجا شحادة, born 6 July 1951) is a Palestinian lawyer, human rights activist and writer. He co-founded the award-winning Palestinian human rights organization Al-Haq in 1979. In 2008, he won the Orwell Prize, a British award for political writing, for his book Palestinian Walks.

## Early life

Shehadeh was born into a prominent Palestinian Christian family. His grandfather, Saleem, was a judge in the courts of Mandate 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, was one of the first Palestinians to publicly support a two-state solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict.
His family fled from Jaffa to Ramallah in 1948. In 1951, Shehadeh was born in Ramallah, West Bank, Jordan
where he grew up. He attended Birzeit College for two years before studying English literature in the American University of Beirut. After graduating from AUB Raja studied at the College of Law in London. Following his education, Shehadeh returned to Ramallah and went into legal practice with his father.
Shehadeh has been married to writer Penny Johnson, a researcher at the Institute of Women's Studies at Birzeit University in Palestine, since 1988.

## Legal and literary career

In 1979, Shehadeh co-founded the human rights organization Al-Haq, which is the Palestinian affiliate of the International Commission of Jurists. He has written several books on international law, human rights and the Middle East. Al-Haq was one of the first human rights organizations in the Arab world. It was a co-recipients of the Carter-Menil Human Rights Prize in 1989, and of the Geuzenpenning in 2009.
In addition to his legal work Shehadeh has written a number of books about Palestine through the lens of his life. He tells the story of his early life and his relationship with his father in Strangers in the House. This memoir was described by The Economist as "distinctive and truly impressive". In 2008, he won the Orwell Prize, Britain's pre-eminent award for political writing, for his book Palestinian Walks. In July 2018, his biographical Where the Line is Drawn: Crossing Boundaries in Occupied Palestine was chosen for BBC Radio 4's Book of the Week, and was narrated by actor Peter Polycarpou.
In 2016, Shehadeh took part in a project, initiated by the "Breaking the Silence" organization, to write an article for a book on the Israeli occupation, to mark the 50th anniversary of the Six-Day War. The book was edited by Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman, and was published under the title Kingdom of Olives and Ash: Writers Confront the Occupation, in June 2017.
London Review of Books editor Adam Shatz 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."
In 2022, he was elected a Royal Society of Literature International Writer.
He was a finalist for the 2023 National Book Award for Nonfiction for We Could Have Been Friends, My Father and I.