A Tale of Palestinian–Israeli Friends and Foes

Where the Line Is Drawn: A Tale of Crossings, Friendships, and Fifty Years of Occupation in Israel-Palestine By Raja Shehadeh

London, UK: The New Press; 2017 Hardcover: 288 pp; $26.95 ISBN-10: 1620972913 ISBN-13: 978-1620972915

Where the Line Is Drawn is a memoir tracking the arc of a 40-year friendship between Palestinian human rights lawyer Raja Shehadeh and Henry Abramovitch, an Israeli physician originally from Canada.

They met when they were young men. Shehadeh was “searching for an identity” (p. 9) and “looking for a friend who would share my interests in literature, writing, self-analysis and walking, and who would help me understand the last eight years of my life” (p. 19). Over the next months they “walked and talked endlessly, filling the hills with our chatter and laughter” (p. 19). The friendship deepened to a relationship more profound than Shehadeh had been able to forge with any Palestinians his age.

The second chapter, introducing Abramovitch, is preceded by a first, in which Shehadeh presents a scene from when he is 8 years old. Lying on the family’s bed, he is examining his uncle’s stamp collection. He is fascinated by a particular stamp with a picture of “an extended arm with strong fingers gripping an orange and white flower” (p. 2). He wonders to himself: “What sort of body produces such a grip?” (p. 2). The stamp, his uncle says, is from Israel.

The first two chapters set up the narrative of the book, which alternates a description of the friendship with a description of the tightening grip of the Israeli occupation on Palestinian life. As the book progresses, the two narratives merge:

Inevitably, politics began to cast a dark shadow over my relationship with Henry. Unlike Henry, I did not have the luxury of ignoring politics. Henry might express his objection to what was taking place, but he never had to follow through with any concrete political action. He could go on with his life as if nothing was happening. Meanwhile, we Palestinians were subjected to harsh treatment by the Israeli forces—long curfews, house demolitions, censorship, and restrictions on academic freedom and travel (p. 25).

Shehadeh’s trip to Jaffa, Israel, to visit his historical family home conveys the pain of erasure for Palestinians. He had secured a permit to travel overnight from Ramallah, Palestine, in the occupied West Bank to Israel. He left with great anticipation. In Jaffa, he found a derelict Palestinian enclave instead of the thriving cultural hub his family had left. Nonetheless, “all the money I had amassed could not buy me the feeling of being home” (p. 42). On his way back to Ramallah, he stopped at an Israeli nursery occupying the ruins of a Palestinian village. He went to the proprietor to demand that she explain how she could “establish her nursery on land expropriated from villagers who were now forced to live in crowded refugee camps with no land to cultivate for themselves” (p.55). But, instead, he bought some plants and accepted a free seedling, swallowing his rage.

He imagines confronting Abramovitch with this same question, but does not. Abramovitch lives in West Jerusalem in a home formerly belonging to a Palestinian family. His medical office is “in a house that had been taken by force, with no compensation paid to its original owners” (p. 158).

The distance in the friendship increases after the outbreak of the first intifada in 1987. It becomes nearly impossible to travel the few kilometers between West Jerusalem and Ramallah. But the deeper obstacles are the political realities of occupation and oppression that inexorably seep into the relationship. Shehadeh struggles with how his friend can say he is committed to peace yet fail to act. “I was not sure he really understood the full impact of Israel’s policies and the suffering they were causing us. Words were not enough. Tears were not enough” (p. 108). A few times, Shehadeh tries to explain this to Abramovitch. Abramovitch provides his own interpretation for their strained relationship: “You were angry” (p. 146).

As a reader, one feels the anguish of oppression, the anguish of loss after loss after loss. Each loss Shehadeh confronts not with anger but with sumud, or steadfastness, and with a continued search for beauty in music, poetry, his beloved hills outside Ramallah, and in friendships. One senses that anger is too dangerous, both in its consequences at the hands of Israelis and in its consequences to his own identity.

After a 10-year hiatus in the friendship, they met again by chance. The friendship resumed. When they were together, “it was if in meeting we transcended our identities: he one of the oppressors and I one of the oppressed” (p. 225). Shehadeh’s commitment to the friendship is a commitment to his own humanity, a commitment to not lose the capacity to love and to forgive. Speaking of the friendship, he concludes: “I will not make its existence contingent on the elusive peace between Israelis and Palestinians. . . . Despite what separates us, I am proud to have a friend called Henry” (p. 227). Although not stated, it seems clear that the friendship itself is an act of steadfast resistance.

Reading Where the Line Is Drawn can be grueling. The author’s understated and self-doubting responses to one violation and humiliation after another make the reader feel them even more poignantly. Yet, the book is also inspiring because the author never loses hope or optimism and forgives, again and again. Would we all be so generous.