Birth: NULL/NULL/1912 Death:NULL/NULL/1985
Born in Bethlehem in 1912 to a Palestinian Anglican family; son of Boulos Shehadeh; moved with his family to Jerusalem when he was still a child; was educated at the Bishop Gobat School in Jerusalem and the Jerusalem Men’s College; studied Law at the Jerusalem Law School; worked as a journalist from 1933-36 in Jerusalem; then was admitted to the Palestine Bar Association and began practicing law in Jaffa; was one of the legal defenders of the activists in the 1936 Revolt; was forced out of Jaffa and moved to Ramallah in the course of the Nakba of 1948; resumed his legal practice; was elected to the General Refugee Congress in Ramallah in 1949, representing it during the peace talks in Lausanne; established himself as one of the leading lawyers in the West Bank (opening with his brother Fuad Shehadeh the Shehadeh Law firm); took up the case of Palestinian blocked bank accounts and was able to secure their release from Israel after 1948; was one of the defenders of the men accused with the 1951 assassination of Jordan’s King Abdullah I; after the 1967 occupation, advocated the creation of a Palestinian entity through negotiations with Israel; met together with Nablus Mayor Hamdi Kana’an Israeli DM Moshe Dayan at the latter’s request in April 1968, discussing various post-war possibilities; in 1974, served as defense counsel at the trial of Greek Catholic Archbishop Hilarion Capucci, whom Israel accused of arms smuggling; advocated Palestinian self-determination; was assassinated in Ramallah on 2 Dec. 1985 (the murderer was never apprehended).
