Raja Shehadeh: Language of War, Language of Peace

The Mosaic Rooms and Profile Books are delighted to present the launch of Raja Shehadeh’s new publication ‘Language of War, Language of Peace’.

Award-winning author Raja Shehadeh explores the politics of language and the language of politics in the Israeli Palestine conflict, reflecting on the walls that they create – legal and cultural – that confine today’s Palestinians just like the physical borders, checkpoints and the so called ‘Separation Barrier’.

The peace process has been ground to a halt by twists of language and linguistic chicanery that has degraded the word ‘peace’ itself. No one even knows what the word might now mean for the Middle East. So to give one example of many, Israel argued that the omission of the word ‘the’ in the UN Security Council’s resolutions meant that it was not mandated to withdraw from all of the territories occupied in 1967.

‘Language of War, Language of Peace’ is another important book from Raja Shehadeh on the world’s greatest political fault line.

Raja Shehadeh is Palestine’s leading writer. He is also a lawyer and the founder of the pioneering Palestinian human rights organisation Al-Haq. Shehadeh is the author of several acclaimed books including Strangers in the House and Occupation Diaries and winner of the 2008 Orwell Prize for Palestinian Walks (all Profile). He lives in Ramallah in Palestine.