Raja Shehadeh’s Decades-Long Diary Archive Finds Safety in Scotland

Raja Shehadeh, a 75-year-old Palestinian writer and human-rights lawyer, orchestrated a two-year, low-profile operation to move his personal diaries and related documents from his garage in Ramallah to the University of Edinburgh. The effort involved digitizing the material page-by-page, then mailing the physical files in ordinary parcels to avoid attracting attention from Israeli security forces. The University of Edinburgh now stores the original archive, while the University of Exeter has posted thousands of pages online.

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Shehadeh began keeping a diary at age fifteen, just before the 1967 Israeli occupation of the West Bank. Over more than five decades he documented meetings with world leaders, his legal work on Palestinian peace talks, and daily life under occupation. Past incidents in which Israeli forces destroyed Palestinian papers—such as the 1948 Nakba, the 1982 raid on the Palestine Research Center in Beirut, the 2002 re-invasion of Ramallah, and the 2023 Gaza war—prompted him to act before his own collection could be lost.

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• 1967 – Diary entries begin as the occupation starts.

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• April 2, 2002 – He records bomb blasts, curfew lifts, and Israeli tanks in Ramallah.

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• 2023 – Gaza war heightens his concern over archive loss.

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• 2024-2025 – Covert project digitizes the diaries and ships them to Scotland.

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• 2025 – Shehadeh obtains Israeli police files on the 1985 killing of his father.

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• 2026 – In an NPR interview, he confirms the archives are housed at Edinburgh and that Exeter has made thousands of pages publicly accessible.

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• Shehadeh has authored more than 20 books.

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• The digitization team comprised three people who worked day and night to scan the collection.

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• The University of Exeter’s online portal contains thousands of pages from the archive.

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• The original documents were stored in a garage in Ramallah before removal.

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• The Israeli foreign ministry did not respond to requests for comment.

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• The University of Edinburgh confirmed receipt of the physical archive and collaboration on digitization.

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• The University of Exeter confirmed publication of thousands of pages on its website.

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Shehadeh’s entry for April 2, 2002 describes bomb blasts, repeated awakenings, a lifted curfew, and two massive Israeli tanks blocking a street near his office.

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The preservation of Shehadeh’s diaries provides scholars, journalists, and human-rights advocates with a primary source that chronicles Israeli settlement activity, the lived experience of occupation, and internal Palestinian political dynamics. He hopes the diaries will enable future generations to understand how events unfolded and offer a form of accountability beyond his books and public speeches.

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The digitized archive remains accessible online, and the University of Edinburgh plans to support further scholarly research on the material. No additional future actions were detailed beyond the ongoing availability of the documents.

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