New review: Raja Shehadeh's 'Occupation Diaries'

Electronic Intifada, 31st August 2012

Occupation Diaries spans a two-year period, from December 2009 to December 2011. As such, it touches on major events that will be familiar to most readers of The Electronic Intifada, such as the uprising in Yemen, the Nakba Day march of thousands of Palestinian and Syrian youth to the border of the occupied Syrian Golan Heights, and the killing by Israeli commandos of nine solidarity activists on board the Mavi Marmara, as well as lesser-known stories and the everyday concerns of a Palestinian living in Ramallah.
Typical of Shehadeh’s style, though, is his use of personal anecdote to discuss significant but less headline-grabbing issues. A journey from Ramallah to Bethlehem provides an opportunity to talk about Jewish extremism and terrorism as his driver recounts how, 11 years earlier, his brother was murdered by an American-Israeli settler, Jack Teitel, who had smuggled a gun in his luggage from the US and set off into East Jerusalem looking for a Palestinian to kill.

The full article is here.