DIARIES from a Palestinian writer and lawyer which were at risk of destruction from Israeli raids in the West Bank have been preserved in Scotland.
Raja Shehadeh has been writing daily about his experiences for more than half a century, but his extraordinary personal archive has faced a major threat of being confiscated or destroyed in the last couple of years amid constant Israeli incursions into the occupied territory.
But thanks to experts at the University of Edinburgh, this unparalleled record has now been saved.
Working with teams from the University of Exeter and the Alwaleed Centre and Centre for Research Collections at the University of Edinburgh, staff from Jerusalem's Educational Bookshop have carefully digitised every page of Shehadeh's diaries, together with the papers of his late father, Aziz Shehadeh, before transporting the whole archive to Scotland’s capital.
It is now preserved at the University's Centre for Research Collections.
Shehadeh said: “I am happy and relieved that my and my father’s archives are now safe and will be published in the interests of truth and justice.
"I have long been aware of Israel’s destruction of Palestinian archives in Beirut, Jerusalem and elsewhere, and of the importance of preserving Palestine’s cultural heritage.
“I consider Edinburgh my second home, and I am profoundly grateful to the universities of Edinburgh and Exeter, where these papers are now safely deposited.”
Tom Lea, general manager at the University of Edinburgh's Alwaleed Centre, told The National the archive will give people insight into Palestinian life they cannot get from a history book.
He said: “It is a genuinely unique archive in that it is this daily insight [into Palestinian life].
“Throughout those 50 years, [there are so many] seminal events that Raja has witnessed and played a role in.
“I remember Raja was here [at the university] when one of the boxes arrived and he opened the box and at random pulled a sheet of paper out and was reading a page form 1997 and we were just dropped into the scene.
“He’s a literary writer and so he writes with a real emotion and flair, so we were taken into that space, and it gives you this insight you can’t get from a history book.”
Shehadeh began recording his thoughts and observations aged just 15 in 1967, the year of the Six-Day War when Israel captured and occupied the West Bank from Jordan – including East Jerusalem – the Gaza Strip from Egypt, and the Golan Heights from Syria.
“Raja is a writer as well as a lawyer and activist and he’s been involved in some extremely important conversations across the last four or five decades and takes this diary every day. He’s meticulous about it,” said Lea.
“We have a daily snapshot of his life but by extension a snapshot of all the events that have happened in Palestine across half a century.”
Shehadeh – who has a home in Edinburgh and has spoken at the city’s festivals – was able to connect with the university through journalist and friend Matthew Teller, who has been the project director.
"Cultural heritage matters, but it is not more important than people, and the death and trauma caused by Israel in Palestine since we began this task is appalling," Teller said.
"It is an honour for me, in this context of heartbreaking loss and bereavement, to be able to stand alongside Raja as he preserves his literary legacy for the benefit of the Palestinian people, survivors of genocide, and the world.”
The project to transport the diaries from the West Bank has required careful planning and work over 18 months to ensure they arrived in Scotland safely and were not intercepted or tampered with.
Lea said: “The situation was so unpredictable, particularly over the last two or three years. It’s been impossible to know day to day what’s going to happen to anything. They [Israel] would raid homes, and this kind of material could potentially be confiscated and removed.
“There was a real sense of threat and that’s why the project has been done in this quite secretive way.”
But that is just stage one, as work will now begin over the coming couple of years to catalogue every page of his diaries to make them publicly accessible.
“They are safe and secure, but ultimately they are inaccessible because they haven’t been catalogued,” Lea added.
“We’re trying to find funding to bring in an archivist to work with these papers and make them accessible to scholars, students and the general public.”
The university will, however, be hosting an event with Raja on September 3 where he will read from his diaries discussing their significance for literature, history and the study of Palestine, alongside members of the team who helped preserve, digitise and transport the archive safely to Scotland.
Lea says around 5000 pages of the diaries will be made available for people to read on this day too.
Dr Kholoud Al-Ajarma, deputy director of the Alwaleed Centre, said: “'Raja Shehadeh's archive is a testament to Palestinian history, memory and intellectual life, and we recognise the great responsibility academia has in safeguarding this body of knowledge.
“By preserving and making the archive accessible to students, researchers and the wider public, we seek to support a richer and more inclusive understanding of Palestine, while advancing our commitment to decolonising knowledge and ensuring that marginalised voices, histories and lived experiences are represented within the global academic record.”
