Finding courage to hope in the agony of grief

I Shall Not Hate: A Gaza Doctor’s Journey on the Road to Peace and Dignity

THE doctor pushes his phone across the table, pointing to the text message just received. It is praise for a talk he gave the day before in England, the texter clearly moved by the experience.

The doctor isn’t bragging — he is simply pleased he has gained another listener, made another connection, spread some more understanding. His delight has an almost innocent quality.

That delight or innocence could ever exist in the life of Dr Izzeldin Abuelaish, let alone survive in his 56th year, is nothing short of miraculous.

Born and reared in poverty in a refugee camp in Palestine’s Gaza Strip, he beat almost impossible odds to become a doctor. He beat them further to become the first Palestinian doctor to work across the border in an Israeli hospital, each day enduring hours of tedium and humiliation as he passed through the military checkpoints that separated the two parts of his life.

Moving between the two worlds, speaking his native Arabic in one and Hebrew in the other, delivering babies to Palestinian and Jewish parents alike, gave him a unique perspective on life in a divided region and he became a peace activist, known and respected by the Israeli media.

Using the mantra he repeats today, he would say time and again: “We are all equal within the borders of the hospital so why not outside too?”

During the Israeli bombardment of Gaza in December 2008 and January 2009, he provided commentary for Israeli television, describing for viewers life under siege by the tanks and shells of the Israeli army.

On the afternoon of January 16, 2009, his regular reporter contact was in studio, about to interview an Israeli politician, when he saw Dr Abuelaish’s number pop up. He ignored it the first time but instinct told him not to let the second call pass. When he answered, he and the viewers heard the anguished cries of a distraught father, telling how his home had just been shelled, how the dismembered bodies of three of his daughters and a niece lay scattered around the room where they were doing their homework, how he couldn’t save them and how he desperately needed ambulances for other critically injured family members.

Dr Abuelaish neither knew nor cared that his agony was being played out live on air but as the unwitting star of a terrifying and terrible reality TV show, life would never be the same again. Cameras followed the ambulances that met him at the border — no medical team ever made it to his home — and they waited at the hospital where the next day he gave a remarkable press conference, pleading despite his anger and grief for an end to the bloodshed and the hatred that fuelled it.

I Shall Not Hate — A Gaza Doctor’s Journey is his account of those terrible days, his life before them and his hopes for the future. He dedicates it and his peace campaign to the memory of his daughters, Bessan, 20; Mayar, 15; and Aya, 13, and their 17-year-old cousin, Noor.

The five surviving Abuelaish children, who tragically lost their mother, Nadia, to leukaemia just three months before the attack on their home, now live with their father in Canada where he is Professor of Global Health at the University of Toronto. But in his mind Dr Abuelaish has never left Gaza and the thought of being exiled forever is too painful to contemplate.

“It’s my home. It’s my roots. It’s my good and bad times. It’s where my daughters’, my wife’s, my mother’s graves are. Everything in my body speaks of, radiates, Palestine.”

It is not the only time that Dr Abuelaish’s voice weakens almost to a whisper with emotion. Although he has told his story countless times in the past two years, his grief is raw and on several occasions he talks through tears.

“I suffered in life before but now I am burned with the suffering of craziness,” he says of the force that drives him. “I feel that my daughters are calling me, talking to me. I am seeing them on a daily basis. That’s why I swear to God and to my daughters not to relax or to rest until I meet them one day with justice and the knowledge that their souls and lives were not wasted.”

His pursuit of justice has led him to file a lawsuit against the Israeli government, seeking the truth about why his home was targeted and who authorised a clumsy cover-up aimed at blaming Palestinian fighters, as well as an apology and compensation.

Any compensation will go to the Daughters for Life foundation he set up in memory of his girls to provide funding to educate other young women trapped by poverty and conflict. “It is to see the plans of my daughters fulfilled by other girls,” he explains.

‘I shall not hate’ may be Dr Abuelaish’s watchword but the last thing he wants is for it be interpreted as ‘I shall be impassive’.

“Of course you feel anger. But you must invest it in the right way, a positive way. You must ask yourself what can you do to turn the feelings into actions to change the situation.”

Change, he believes, will come about through people rather than politics, his theory being that if people of opposing sides can connect and communicate, they will lose the misperceptions that make them distrust one another and eventually their leaders will follow. But although his message is directed at ordinary people, it is not an apolitical one and he is clear about his wish for his homeland. “There must be recognition of the Palestinian state and the two states (Palestine and Israel) must live side by side.”

Given the renewed heightening of tensions in the region in recent weeks, his dream would appear as distant as ever but Dr Abuelaish is encouraged by the uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East.

“It’s a message for every leader in this world — not just in the Middle East — to open your eyes to the people, to be accountable, to be honest. If you don’t, the people will stand up to you. It can take time but the people will not delay forever.”

He also has a particular message for the West. “Mubarak and Gaddafi were praised by leaders in developed countries. If they had planned to visit a month ago, they would have spread the red carpet. But now because Gaddafi is weak, they speak badly of him. It is like the patient comes in sick and close to death and I knew he was sick 40 years ago but I only tell him at the end when he is going to die. We need to give the diagnosis early and start the treatment immediately.”

For his own ailment — a grieving heart — he prescribes hope. “If I was not hopeful, I would never come here. I know it will make a difference, even if it is not for Palestine. It will make a difference some place to some person.

“I don’t believe in impossible things. The only impossible thing is to return a beloved back to life. Any other thing in life, I can achieve it if I put it in my mind.”