Language of War, Language of Peace

"Few Palestinians have opened their minds and hearts with such frankness." —New York Times "Shehadeh writes beautifully, his language infused with a lyrical, melancholic sense of loss." —Sunday TelegraphIndependent Award-winning author Raja Shehadeh here explores the politics of language and the language of politics in the Israeli-Palestine conflict, reflecting on the walls they create-legal and cultural-that confine today's Palestinians just as much as 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 have degraded the word "peace" itself. Today, in relation to the Middle East, no one knows what the word even means. As one example of many available, Israel has argued that the omission of the word "the" in one of the UN Security Council's resolutions means it is not mandated to withdraw from all the territories it occupied in 1967.Language of War, Language of Peace is another fascinating investigation by one of Palestine's most important and fluent writers.