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Showing 1 - 20 from 33 entries
> Palestinian Women in Resistance
> Mary van Teeffelen-Morcos: Mary's anger
> Violette Lama, Rachel's Tomb area
> Talal Barham, Rachel's Tomb area
> Nicola, restaurant owner at Rachel's Tomb
> Michael and Linda Costa Halabi, Rachel's Tomb...
> Antoinette Knesevich
> Life in Beit Sahour : Jaela Andoni’s Story
> Alexandar Qamar, Aida Camp-Rachel's Tomb area
> Makram al Arja - Everest restaurant in Beit Jala
> Shliby, living at Rachel's Tomb area
> Interview with Claire, living in Rachel's Tomb area
> Marwan, living in the Rachel's Tomb area
> Melvina, on the history of the Rachel's Tomb area
> Dima, a young architect,, about the Rachel's Tomb area
> Antoinette Kinesivich about the Rachel's Tomb area
> Shafiq al-Hout's Story
> A Doctor in Galilee
> My Utopian Jaffa
> Some Personal Recollections: Sixty Years Since 1948
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The Life and Struggle of a Palestinian in Israel
By Hatim Kanaaneh
Pluto Press, London, 2008, 276 pages, $29.00
Hatim Kanaaneh is a Palestinian doctor who has struggled for over 35 years to bring medical care to Palestinians in the Galilee, against a culture of anti-Arab discrimination. This is the story of how he fought for the human rights of his patients and overcame the Israeli authorities cruel indifference to their suffering. Kanaaneh is a native of Galilee, born before the creation of the state of Israel. He left to study medicine and public health at Harvard, before returning in 1970 to work as a public health physician with the intention of helping his own people. In 1973 he became the Public Health Doctor of the sub-district of Acre. He discovered a shocking level of disease and malnutrition in his community and a shameful lack of support from the Israeli authorities. After doing all he could for his patients by working from inside the system, Kanaaneh set up the Galilee Society, an NGO working for equitable health, environmental and socio-economic conditions for Palestinian Arabs in Israel. This is a brilliant memoir that shows how grass roots organisations can loosen the Zionist grip upon Palestinian lives.
Kanaaneh sheds a unique light on the lives of the over one million Palestinians who hold Israeli citizenship in a beautifully readable and engrossing memoir of his years as a village doctor in the Galilee. His account of the rank racial discrimination, difficult social circumstances and pervasive poverty of most Palestinians in the Jewish state is leavened by Kanaanehs humour and his eye for striking detail. Scarcely any personal narratives of the lives of Israels Arab minority exist. Kanaanehs fascinating exposure of this little known subject is written with passion and authority.
The book blends the personal with the political, the past with the present and the emotional commitment with the rational analysis. It is a fascinating first hand account from the perspective of a Palestinian who defeats the imposed partition of the land and the fragmentation of its people: he belongs to Palestine on both sides of the Green line and is both a native of the land and a refugee in it.
The closing chapter of the book, entitled “A Little Piece of Palestine,” tells of an ancient olive tree that Kanaaneh transplanted to his garden. The passage encapsulates, conceptually and emotionally, the entire narrative of this book of memoirs. This olive tree serves as a metaphor for his community’s struggle for survival and its sense of belonging.
(Courtesy of the publisher)
This Week in Palestine
Jan 2009
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