A Palestinian Israeli Doctor

Dr Abuelaish was no ordinary doctor. He was a rare Palestinian who had trained and worked in an Israeli hospital.

January 2009. One more chapter in the Israel Gaza conflict was ending. The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) were withdrawing their ground invasion. Dr Izzedin Abuelaish, a doctor from Gaza, had witnessed the barrage of bombs over previous weeks. He thought the worst had passed. Two days prior, he watched from his window as a tank moved in his direction. In panic, he phoned an Israeli TV anchor friend, who pulled strings to get the tank to back off. Dr Abuelaish was no ordinary doctor. He was a rare Palestinian who had trained and worked in an Israeli hospital. He gave interviews to Israeli TV about the situation in Gaza and had friends there.

A Palestinian Israeli Doctor

Two days later, he was about to be interviewed again. Dr Abuelaish described the events as follows, ‘We are standing in the scene of the tragedy, in the place where four lovely girls were sitting, building their dreams and their hopes, and in seconds, these dreams were killed. These flowers were dead. Three of my daughters and one niece were killed in one second. Just a few seconds after I left them in the room. The first shell came from the tank to shell two daughters who were sitting on chairs. When I heard this shell, I came inside the room to look. I couldn’t recognize my daughters. They were separated from their bodies. They were drowning in a pool of blood. Even look here. This is their brain. Aya was lying on the ground. Shatha was injured, and her eye is coming out. Her fingers were torn, just attached by a tag of skin. I ran screaming, “What can I do?” They were not satisfied by the first shell and to leave my eldest daughter. But the second shell soon came to kill Aya, to injure my niece, who came down from the third floor, and to kill my eldest daughter Bessan, who was in the kitchen and came at that moment, screaming and jumping, “Dad! Dad! Aya is injured!”’

This moment was caught live on Israel’s Channel 10 News as the anchor Shlomi Eldar had called Abuelaish on his phone. You can see Shlomi excusing himself as he cannot control his tears. He is heard saying that he hopes that someone from the IDF hears the broadcast as they can then stop shelling Dr Abuelaish’s home. The video is on YouTube. Watch it if you can.

Abuelaish was born in Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza. He received his education in camp schools and then received a scholarship to study medicine in Egypt. After completing his medical studies, he earned a diploma in gynaecology from London. From 1997 to 2002, he completed a residency in gynaecology at the Soroka Medical Center in Israel, followed by a subspecialty in foetal medicine in Italy and master’s in public health from Harvard. He was the first Palestinian doctor to receive a staff position at an Israeli hospital, where he treated Israeli and Palestinian patients. He worked both in Gaza and at Soroka and Sheba Medical Centers in Israel.

Abuelaish tried unsuccessfully to sue Israel over the 2009 shelling all the way up to Israel’s Supreme Court but his case was rejected. The IDF admitted the deaths were “collateral damage”, but he still hasn’t received the apology he has asked for. The death of his daughters increased his resolve to promote reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians. He founded ‘Daughters for Life Foundation’ in memory of his daughters, which provides scholarships to young women from the region to pursue studies in Canada, US and Belgium. He wrote a 2011 memoir entitled ‘I Shall Not Hate: A Gaza Doctor’s Journey on the Road to Peace and Human Dignity’. Every year, he visits Gaza. He says he goes to his daughters’ graves. His family members have perished in the last two weeks. His response “When I deliver babies, I don’t discriminate between Muslim, Jewish and Christian.” Hamas must hate him.

Israel has one of the world’s most advanced healthcare systems. Last week, at a dinner with a renowned Israel-trained nephrologist, who now heads the department at a large American university, I asked him what he felt thought about the ongoing war. “It is sad,” he said. He knew of people who had been killed by Hamas. “Gaza is such a beautiful place. Netanyahu is making a mess of it,” he added. Many Israeli doctors oppose Netanyahu’s policies. They work towards peace and in support of a two-state solution. Doctors from all over the world have travelled to Gaza on humanitarian missions. A charity called Palestine Children’s Relief Fund organises these visits. Indian paediatric heart surgeons have also been a part of this.

This conflict has complex chronological roots depending on where you start. We have the luxury of watching on TV from the comfort of our homes. And a faux sense of participation through forwarded WhatsApp messages with little sense of history. Try we can, but the stories of innocent Palestinians and now Israelis are difficult to understand. Only they would know the vacuousness of ‘collateral damage’.