Steadfast in Exile

A Palestinian lawyer returns to Ramallah only to become an 'internal exile'

- Raja Shehadeh

MARCH 31, 2003 A misty day of slow-moving low fog. At noon, as the sun attempted to penetrate this gossamer veil that had fallen over Ramallah, I circled around the building that had once housed the Israeli military court and prison to see what remained. Perched on one of the highest hills of Ramallah, this rectangular British Mandate-built police fortress of reinforced concrete was constructed around an open inner courtyard. Commencing in 1938, the British built some fifty such structures in various parts of Palestine. They were initiated by Sir Charles Tegart, a former commissioner of police in Calcutta, who was sent to Palestine as a counterterrorism expert in the midst of the 1936 Palestinian popular revolt against Mandate rule.

June 5, 2011

Unlike in previous years, this year the forty-fourth anniversary of the Occupation passed unmarked. Life went on as normally as possible under a prolonged Occupation.