Raja Shehadeh studied law in London. His grandfather, Saleem, was a judge in the courts of the British Mandate of Palestine. His great-great-uncle, the journalist Najib Nassar, founded the Haifa-based newspaper Al-Karmil in the last years of the Ottoman Empire, before World War I. His father, Aziz, also a lawyer, was one of the first Palestinians to publicly support a two-state solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict.[2] Shehadeh is from a Palestinian Christian family.[3] Adam Shatz has cited Shehadeh as one of two people who have provided a formative influence of his understanding of the Middle East conflict, writing that 'Anguished and somewhat fragile, he is a man who, in spite of his understandable bitterness, has continued to dream of a future beyond the occupation, a kind of neo-Ottoman federation where Arabs and Jews would live as equals.'[4]