Language of War, Language of Peace

When conflicts become entrenched over generations, the language of war infiltrates everyday life, concealing destruction and hardening positions. Nowhere is this truer than in the Middle East.
Award-winning author Raja Shehadeh explores the politics of language and the language of politics in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, reflecting on the walls that they create – legal and cultural – that confine today’s Palestinians just like the borders, checkpoints and so-called ‘Separation Barrier’. He shows how the peace process has been ground to a halt by twists of language and linguistic chicanery that have degraded the word ‘peace’ itself.
The situation at the world’s greatest political fault-line has never looked bleaker, but still Shehadeh finds reason to hope and explains why.