What Is Life Like For Palestinians Under Occupation?

Empire: World History

Goalhanger

History

4.5 • 5.4K Ratings

🗓️ 9 April 2026

⏱️ 12 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

To listen to the full bonus episode, join the Empire Club at empirepoduk.com. William is joined by Raja Shehadeh, the leading Palestinian writer, lawyer and human rights activist, to discuss his experience of living under Israeli occupation in the West Bank. Raja describes how his daily life in Ramallah is shaped by segregation, travel restrictions and settler violence. He explains how segregated roads and settlements have physically reshaped the Palestinian landscape. And he discusses why he is hopeful that Palestinians and Israelis can co-exist peacefully in the future. Raja Shehadeh’s Forgotten: Searching for Palestine's Hidden Places and Lost Memorials is available to buy now. For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to www.goalhanger.com. Email: empire@goalhanger.com Instagram: @empirepoduk Blue Sky: @empirepoduk X: @empirepoduk Assistant Producer: Imogen Marriott Editor: Imogen Marriott Social Producer: Charlie Johnson Producer: Anouska Lewis Executive Producer: Dom Johnson Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community.
0:06.8	Discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast, add free listening and a weekly newsletter,
0:12.5	sign up to Empire Club at www.empirpoduk.com.
0:31.0	Hello, William Durimple here.
0:35.3	We've just recorded a brilliant bonus episode with my old friend, Roger Shahada.
0:39.0	Roger is one of the greatest living Palestinian writers.
0:44.3	Raja's family lost their family home in Jaffa at the Nakhpah in 1948.
0:52.2	Raja grew up in Ramallah, in their summer house, and saw Ramallah change from a kind of rural backwater under Jordanian rule to this kind of slowly throttled focus
0:57.5	of Palestinian life under Israeli occupation. He's seen the different Israeli incursions. He's
1:03.4	seen the settlements growing. He founded the very first Palestinian Human Rights Organization,
1:09.9	Al-Hak, to monitor the growing abuses of the IDF occupation
1:14.9	forces and the slow throttling of Ramallah by the settlers. He's an extraordinary writer.
1:21.3	He's a wonderful human being, an incredibly gentle, precise, unlearned man, whose walks through the West Bank have turned into a
1:30.4	series of wonderful books, one of which won the All-Wool Prize. And I really cannot
1:34.5	recommend this recording more. Here is an extract from the bonus. But if you want to watch
1:41.2	the whole episode, you can join up and become a member of the club,
1:45.9	get early access, add free main episodes, join Empire Club at Empirepoduk.com today.
1:54.2	For again people listening who have not been to the West Bank and perhaps are confused,
2:05.6	could you just in very basic terms explain to someone who's not been to the West Bank and perhaps are confused. Could you just, in very basic terms, explain to someone who's never been to the West Bank how your life would be different from, say, a Jewish author living a few miles away in Jerusalem?
2:11.6	Well, a Jewish person living next door to Ramallah, because Ramallah is surrounded by settlements,
2:16.6	and the settlements live
2:18.2	under the Israeli law and have all the rights under Israeli law and they can move from the West Bank
	...

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