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With the images of the Israeli- Palestinian conflict so dominant in our minds, walking for leisure is the one activity probably least associated with the West Bank region. But Stefan Szepesi s book wanders well off the beaten track of Palestine as only a synonym for occupation and strife, exploring its inspiring natural and cultural landscape, its intriguing past and present, and the hospitality of its people. The book takes first-time walkers and experienced hikers, as well as armchair explorers, through Palestine's steep desert gorges, along its tiny herders trails and over its quiet dirt roads running past silver green olive groves. With side stories and anecdotes on heritage, history, culture and daily life in the West Bank, the book ventures into the traits and character of Palestine today. Beyond the 250 km of walking trails described and mapped in detail throughout the book, Walking Palestine offers a wealth of practical walking tips, including references to local guides, the West Bank s best leisure spots and countryside restaurants, and the most charming places to spend the night.
Over two decades of turmoil and change in the Middle East, steered via the history-soaked landscape of Palestine. This new edition includes a previously unpublished epigraph in the form of a walk. When Raja Shehadeh first started hill walking in Palestine, in the late 1970s, he was not aware that he was travelling through a vanishing landscape. These hills would have seemed familiar to Christ, until the day concrete was poured over the flora and irreversible changes were brought about by those who claim a superior love of the land. Six walks span a period of twenty-six years, in the hills around Ramallah, in the Jerusalem wilderness and through the ravines by the Dead Sea. Each walk takes place at a different stage of Palestinian history since 1982, the first in the empty pristine hills and the last amongst the settlements and the wall. The reader senses the changing political atmosphere as well as the physical transformation of the landscape. By recording how the land felt and looked before these calamities, Raja Shehadeh attempts to preserve, at least in words, the Palestinian natural treasures that many Palestinians will never know.
“A rare historical insight into the tragic changes taking place in Palestine.” —Jimmy Carter From one of Palestine’s leading writers, a lyrical, elegiac account of one man’s wanderings through the landscape he loves—once pristine, now forever changed by settlements and walls—updated with a new afterword by the author. “I often come to walk in these hills,” I said to the man who was doing all the talking and seemed to be the commander. “In fact I was once here with my wife, it was 1999, and some of your soldiers shot at us.” “It was over on that side,” the soldier pointed out. “I was there,” he said, smiling. When Raja Shehadeh first started hill walking in Palestine, in the late 1970s, he was not aware that he was traveling through a vanishing landscape. In recent years, his hikes have become less than bucolic and sometimes downright dangerous. That is because his home is Ramallah, on the Palestinian West Bank, and the landscape he traverses is now the site of a tense standoff between his fellow Palestinians and settlers newly arrived from Israel. In this original and evocative book, we accompany Raja on six walks taken between 1978 and 2006. The earlier forays are peaceful affairs, allowing our guide to meditate at length on the character of his native land, a terrain of olive trees on terraced hillsides, luxuriant valleys carved by sacred springs, carpets of wild iris and hyacinth and ancient monasteries built more than a thousand years ago. Shehadeh's love for this magical place saturates his renderings of its history and topography. But latterly, as seemingly endless concrete is poured to build settlements and their surrounding walls, he finds the old trails are now impassable and the countryside he once traversed freely has become contested ground. He is harassed by Israeli border patrols, watches in terror as a young hiking companion picks up an unexploded missile and even, on one occasion when accompanied by his wife, comes under prolonged gunfire. Amid the many and varied tragedies of the Middle East, the loss of a simple pleasure such as the ability to roam the countryside at will may seem a minor matter. But in Palestinian Walks, Raja Shehadeh's elegy for his lost footpaths becomes a heartbreaking metaphor for the deprivations of an entire people estranged from their land.
With the images of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict so dominant in our minds, walking for leisure is the one activity probably least associated with the West Bank region. But Stefan Szepesi’s book wanders well off the beaten track of Palestine as only a synonym for occupation and strife, exploring its inspiring natural and cultural landscape, its intriguing past and present, and the hospitality of its people. The book takes first-time walkers and experienced hikers, as well as armchair explorers, through Palestine’s steep desert gorges, along its tiny herders’ trails and over its quiet dirt roads running past silver green olive groves. With side stories and anecdotes on heritage, history, culture and daily life in the West Bank, the book ventures into the traits and character of Palestine today. Beyond the 250 km of walking trails described and mapped in detail throughout the book, Walking Palestine offers a wealth of practical walking tips, including references to local guides, the West Bank’s best leisure spots and countryside restaurants, and the most charming places to spend the night.
DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras" (Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond) by Harry Alverson Franck. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.
This book takes first-time walkers and experienced hikers, as well as armchair explorers, through Palestine's steep desert gorges, along its tiny herders' trails and over its quiet dirt roads running past silver green olive groves, venturing into the traits and character of Palestine today
Walking in the proverbial shoes of Arabs, Jews and misfits the world over, the author immerses himself in the “Holy Land” like no other walker/writer before him. Sailing to Israel with his wife, perennial innocents abroad, and broke, they become volunteers on various communes and kibbutzim in the Occupied Territories. “Kibbutz hopping” from the snows of Mt. Hermon on the Syrian border, to the troubled waters of Aqaba, they encounter every strata of scenery and society, discovering a certain unexpected and controversial reality as they go. Soon they evolve from being gung-ho volunteers to cautious travelers after the author’s near “hunting” accident while hiking in the Judean hills when he was shot at by a soldier. In the end, his passion for justice, what is natural and true, renders this book a spiritual journey. His underlying search for God and soul, finding his brother in the other, is a tour de force you can’t book with your travel agent.