Israel / Palestine - This Needs To Be Heard

Sperm Smugglers

But the idea gradually took hold and grew into a form of political dissent.

"The prisoners realised it wasn't a matter of social values and traditions," says Tawfiq Abu Naim, another former prisoner. "It's become a war between them and their jailers. The prisoners understand the confrontation and challenge between them and the jailer. So they try to come up with every possible way to break the barrier, get their sperm samples out, to defeat the jailer and reproduce... even when they're in prison."

But by the time the birth of babies conceived with smuggled sperm peaked in 2015, the Israeli authorities clamped down, tightening visitation rights and making it more difficult for prisoners to smuggle their sperm.

To make matters more difficult, Israel has denied identification documents or legal status of any kind to babies born from smuggled sperm. Babies born this way are also denied visitation rights to their imprisoned fathers.

"We applied for baby Asaad to visit his father in prison," explains Asaad Abu Salah, the toddler's grandfather, himself a former prisoner. "We talked with the Red Cross. They said this child is illegitimate and unrecognised by the Israeli occupation and prisons authority... these children are illegitimate and will not have ID cards. If the occupation continues, these children will not be registered in Gaza's civil records and will be banned from travelling. They will remain without any documents to prove their identities. They're unrecognised by the authorities, as if they don't exist."

But despite the hurdles, Asaad remains a source of hope for his mother, May.

"Just as he managed to get his sperm sample smuggled out of prison, he will also be released," she says. "My dream has come true. Hopefully, it will become even better when my husband is released."

Link

Palestinian child prodigy becomes doctor at age 20

 

 Iqbal Al Assaad was not just a prodigy as a child, she was a prodigy with a dream - to become a doctor and help the Palestinian relatives she visited in refugee camps while she was growing up in Lebanon.

She graduated from high school, top of her class, at the age of 12. Already, she had mastered the biochemistry and mathematics she would need for medical school.

By the age of 13, Iqbal had not only learnt to drive, she had caught the eye of Lebanon's education minister, who helped her to secure a medical scholarship in Qatar.

And this year, at 20, she became not only the youngest ever medical graduate from Cornell University's Qatar branch, but possibly the youngest Arab doctor ever.

"Since day one, Iqbal stood out as a very mature and professional student despite her age and experience," says one of her professors at Cornell, Dr Imad Makki.

"The sky is the limit for Iqbal."

There is just one problem: Iqbal cannot work as a doctor in Lebanon, the country of her birth. "My dream is to come back to do something for the Palestinian refugees in the camps, even by opening a free clinic for them," she says.

"But if you're a Palestinian doctor, you're not allowed to work in public hospitals."

Medicine is among several dozen professions from which Palestinian refugees are still effectively barred.

Although Palestinians in Lebanon were given the right to take clerical and lower-level jobs in 2005 and allowed to work in further professions in 2010, skilled fields such as medicine and law are regulated by professional syndicates. These organisations impose strict restrictions on membership meant to guard jobs for Lebanese nationals.

The syndicates worry that a Palestinian "entrance to the labour market will be overwhelming - so they feel it's about job opportunities for Lebanese nationals", said Lina Hamdan, a spokeswoman for the Lebanese government's Lebanese-Palestinian Dialogue Committee. "Officially there is nothing preventing them from practising and working, but the professions are ruled by the syndicates."

Iqbal's story is unique, but her dilemma is increasingly common. The UN Relief Works Agency, UNRWA, estimates the Palestinian population in the country at roughly 450,000, with about 92,000 new Palestinian refugees arriving from Syria since that conflict began in 2011.

For the young Iqbal, it was a lack of health care for Palestinians that touched her most deeply.

She grew up in Bar Elias, a small village in the Bekaa valley, after her parents arrived in Lebanon. She visited relatives in the refugee camps and was struck from a young age by the poverty she found.

Although UNRWA provides primary medical care facilities, it cannot pay for more advanced medical cases, meaning refugees often "face a choice between forgoing essential medical treatment and falling deeply into debt," as the organisation explains on its website.

"It was seeing that refugees don't have any type of medical insurance," Iqbal says. "Only if this person has money and can afford things at the hospital, then he can get the medical care he needs."

With a dream in the back of her mind, Iqbal dedicated herself to education, diving into mathematics and biology.

After she graduated from high school, herconviction impressed Lebanon's education minister Khaled Qabbani, who promised to secure a scholarship. He turned to Qatar Foundation chairwoman Sheikha Mozah bint Nasser Al Missned.

Qatar welcomed Iqbal on a full scholarship at Weill Cornell Medical College, part of a group of elite branch American campuses in the country's Education City. She had never taken an entrance exam. Nor had she ever lived outside Lebanon. She was at least five years younger than all her peers.

Her voice still evokes the pressure she felt to succeed.

Ms Al Assaad is now on her way to the United States for a residency in paediatrics at the Children's Hospital in Cleveland, Ohio, one of the top residencies for her speciality.

She wants to come back to Qatar to work, since the country's education system gave her so much.

Then, she will follow her dream.

"I want to come back the Middle East between Qatar and Lebanon," she says. "I feel it would be the first step" if Lebanon could let refugees work as doctors.

But working in an independent Palestine would be an even better solution. "Palestine," she said, "is always a dream."

Source

Life In Gaza Explained

Why Doesn't the Media Care About Dead Palestinians?

Hebron Under Siege

Twenty years ago, on 25 February 1994, Baruch Goldstein, an American Jewish settler from Brooklyn, New York, walked into the Ibrahimi Mosque in the Palestinian city of Hebron, in the occupied West Bank.

It was during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.

He opened fire, killing 29 Palestinian men and boys and injuring dozens more, before his victims overwhelmed him and beat him to death.

Killer praised as hero

Mohammed Abu al-Halawa, now 53, a survivor who was left paralyzed by Goldstein, told Ma’an News Agency this week, “I remember the massacre at every moment and am physically still affected by it … I’m still in a lot of pain and need regular medical treatment.”

“It pains me whenever I see settlers dancing next to the grave of the criminal who left me disabled.”

For years afterwards, the mass murderer’s grave became “a pilgrimage site” for admirers.

Even recently, Israeli settlers have celebrated Goldstein as a hero, teaching their children to revere him for his murderous act, especially during the Jewish festival of Purim.

Goldstein had lived in the settlement of Kiryat Arba and had been a member of the violent extremist Jewish Defense League, founded by Meir Kahane.

On 6 April 1994, Palestinians carried out the first ever suicide bombing targeting Israeli civilians, killing eight people in the northern town of Afula. Hamas, which claimed responsibility for the bombing, said it was in retaliation for the Hebron massacre.

Punishing Palestinians

In the days immediately after the Hebron massacre, Israeli occupation forces took action not against the settlers but against Palestinians: Israeli forces killed and injured dozens more unarmed Palestinians protesting the massacre across the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

This set the pattern: instead of cracking down on the settlers, Israel escalated its persecution of Palestinians, especially in Hebron, gradually allowing the settlers to take over more of the city.

The Ibrahimi Mosque was forcibly partitioned with settlers being given most of the space – a precedent many Palestinians fear the Israeli occupation will one day try to repeat at Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa Mosque.

In 1997, settlers were rewarded even further for Goldstein’s massacre when the Palestinian Authority agreed to allow the occupation to partition Hebron itself into two zones: “H1” and “H2.”

H1 is nominally administered by the Palestinian Authority and is home to more than 120,000 Palestinians.

H2, under full Israeli military rule, includes Hebron’s historic Old City as well as the Ibrahimi Mosque.

Israeli occupation forces severely restrict the movement of more than 30,000 Palestinians in H2 while Israeli settlers move about freely under army protection.

Since then, settlers have aggressively seized Palestinian properties in the Old City, leaving much of the city center a ghost town.

A 2006 survey by the Israeli rights group B’Tselem found that at least 1,014 Palestinian homes in the Old City of Hebron had been vacated by their occupants and more than 1,800 businesses had shuttered due to the Israeli takeover.

This represented 42 percent of the housing units in the district and more than three-quarters of the businesses.

Hebron still under siege

In the beautifully shot 5-minute documentary above, Hebron Under Siege, Palestinian filmmaker Nizar Abu Zayyad visits some of the residents of old Hebron’s main thoroughfareShuhada Street, shut down by Israeli occupation forces since the massacre.

Zuleekha Mohtaseb’s tells us how the front door of her house, opening onto Shuhada Street, has been welded shut by order of the Israeli army

“We are barred from using the street in any way,” she says.

“To the right and to the left of us, we are surrounded by settlement outposts that harass us constantly.”

Settlers can go where they like and often throw things at Palestinians and curse them.

“You feel you are under house arrest, a prisoner in your own house,” Mohtaseb adds.

“By what right? What right grants him [the settler] freedom of movement and takes it away from me? Is it because I’m Palestinian and he’s Israeli? He is the one coming from the far end of the world and claiming ownership of the land. But I am the one born here.”

Bader Syoori, a businessowner, talks about the economic devastation caused by the closure of Shuhada Street

After the massacre, things changed totally, he explains. Israel closed the area to Palestinian vehicles before it became strictly off limits in 2002.

Samah Brewesh, 15, talked about the daily ordeal and harassment children like her face because of the settlers, while the settlers enjoy every advantage.

“Their children live in luxury, they have a place to play in. In my neighborhood, children have none.”

Abdul Halim Syoori, also a businessowner, says he wishes that things will return to how they once were, “that we live just like we used to in the old days. We work and earn a living for our children.”

Zuleekha Mohtaseb wants to use her front door. “We want the settlers gone,” she says.

Source

What really happened in Gaza 14-22 November 2012 by Owen Jones

Arab terrorists.....?

Palestinians protest murder of battered wife

The brutal killing of a battered wife in front of horrified witnesses in an open-air Bethlehem market has prompted angry accusations that Palestinian police and courts ignore violence against women.

Nancy Zaboun, a 27-year-old mother of three, had her throat slashed on Monday after seeking a divorce from her abusive husband of 10 years.

On Wednesday, several dozen women staged a memorial for Zaboun in the Bethlehem market alley where she was killed, holding signs and chanting, "No to violence against women." One sign read, "Shame on us Palestinians for killing our women."

The husband was arrested at the scene and is the prime suspect, West Bank officials said.

The case reverberated across Palestinian society because of the brutality of the attack.

However, violence against women continues to be overlooked, as in other parts of the Arab world, and women's rights activists say abusive husbands are rarely punished.

Zaboun was regularly beaten by her husband, 32-year-old Shadi Abedallah, at times so severely that she had to be hospitalised, said Khaula al-Azraq, who runs a West Bank counselling centre where Zaboun sought help.

Even so, Abedallah was never arrested. Police only made him sign pledges he would stop hitting his wife, said Azraq, adding that Abedallah himself is a former police officer.

'Family honour'

Zaboun was killed after attending a hearing in her divorce case. She was walking on the steep paths of an open-air market, not far from the Church of the Nativity, marking the traditional birthplace of Jesus, when she was fatally slashed.

Women have scored some breakthroughs in traditional Palestinian society in recent years, including gaining a greater role in public life.

However, tribal laws still remain strong, and violence against women is generally viewed by police as an internal family matter.

Azraq said violence against women appears to be on the rise because of a deteriorating economic situation and because abusers do not fear punishment.

Last year, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas signed a decree that ended a long-standing practice of treating killings within a family with leniency.

Justice Minister Ali Mohanna said such killings are now treated as any other slaying, and claims of assailants that they were protecting "family honour" are no longer taken into account.

Zaboun's husband could face life in prison if convicted, the minister said.

'Slaughtered like a sheep'

Thirteen women were killed by family members or in suspicious circumstances blamed on relatives in 2011, said Farid al-Attrash of the Palestinian Independent Commission for Human Rights.

In 2012, 12 women were killed by relatives, including three in "family honour" cases, he said. Those include suspected adultery and similar cases.

Zaboun was married at age 17, and the couple have three children, aged eight, six and three. Azraq said the beatings began immediately after the wedding.

Abdel Fattah Hemayel, the district governor of Bethlehem, said the authorities stepped in at some point, attempting to solve what he described as a family dispute.

He confirmed that the husband was asked to sign pledges to stop beating his wife.

Rabiha Diab, the women's affairs minister in the Palestinian self-rule government, said the killing of Zaboun, and the failure to prevent, it were troubling.

"Every once in a while, there is a case that makes us feel worried and afraid that we are going back to square one [as women]," she said, noting that law enforcement agencies need to look at what they can do to protect women.

She called for harsh punishment of Zaboun's killer. "We should set an example because... he slaughtered her like a sheep," she said.

Source 

UK ready to take on Israel over fate of children clapped in irons

The Foreign Office revealed last night that it would be challenging the Israelis over their treatment of Palestinian children after a report by a delegation of senior British lawyers revealed unconscionable practices, such as hooding and the use of leg irons.

In the first investigation of its kind, a team of nine senior legal figures examined how Palestinians as young as 12 were treated when arrested. Their shocking report Children in Military Custody details claims that youngsters are dragged from their beds in the middle of the night, have their wrists bound behind their backs, and are blindfolded and made to kneel or lie face down in military vehicles.

Children from the West Bank are held in conditions that could amount to torture, such as solitary confinement, with little or no access to their parents. They can be forced to stay awake before being verbally as well as physically abused and coerced into signing confessions they cannot read.

The team – led by Sir Stephen Sedley, a former Court of Appeal judge – heard that "every Palestinian child is treated like a potential terrorist". In a damning conclusion, the report points out repeated breaches of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which prohibits cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.

"We were sitting in court and saw a section of a preliminary hearing when a very young looking child, a boy, was brought in wearing a brown uniform with leg irons on. We were shocked by that. This was a situation where we had been invited into the military courts for briefings from senior judges," explained one of the report's authors, human rights barrister Greg Davies. "To hold children routinely and for substantial periods in solitary confinement would, if it occurred, be capable of amounting to torture," the report said. Last night the Foreign Office, which backed the report, said it would be taking up the claims with the Israeli authorities:

"The UK government has had long-standing concerns about the treatment of Palestinian children in Israeli detention, and as a result decided to fund this independent report. While recognising that some positive recent steps have been made by the Israeli authorities, we share many of the report's concerns, and will continue to lobby for further improvements."

While the legal team said it was in no position to prove the truth of the claims of cruelty made repeatedly by Palestinian children, but denied by the Israeli authorities – which offered unprecedented access to the delegation – it pointed to the disparity in the law.

Israeli children must have access to a lawyer within 48 hours and cannot be imprisoned under the age of 14. But Palestinian children as young as 12 are jailed and can be kept for three months without legal representation. Between 500 and 700 are jailed each year.

"The other shocking thing is they are incarcerated in breach of many conventions. The practical effect is parents can't get there because they can't get permits," said Marianna Hildyard QC.

While the investigating team welcomed improvements introduced by the Israeli authorities, both Palestinian and Israeli lawyers on the ground insisted much of it was "rhetoric ra ther than real change".

Last night, Israeli Embassy spokesperson Amir Ofek said the country appreciated the efforts of the delegation but blamed Palestinians who "glorify terrorism". He said: "As a result [children] are frequently involved in lethal acts. With the Palestinian Authority unable or unwilling to meet its obligation to investigate and prosecute these offences, Israel has no choice but to do so itself.

"Israel notes the detailed recommendations in the report and will study them closely as part of its ongoing efforts to find the most appropriate balance between preventing violence and treating perpetrators with humanity."  Source

The report details claims children are dragged from their beds, bound and blindfolded:

www.childreninmilitarycustody.org

Will Israel still exist in 2048?

The bigger and longer-term question relates not to the existence, or even the viability of a Palestinian state – which should be a given. The demographics, economics and politics all point the same way. It relates to the future, and long-term survival, of Israel. In short, will Israel, as the Jewish state, still be around to celebrate its centenary in 2048?

Let me make it absolutely clear: the question is not whether Israel should continue to exist. That is beyond doubt. It is a legally constituted state with full UN recognition. It is a stable, albeit fractious, democracy and has survived more than 60 years in a distinctly hostile neighbourhood. It has created a thriving economy, with intensive agriculture and advanced industry, from almost nothing. It has a rich cultural life. It is not alone in having borders that are not finally demarcated and are regarded by some as illegal. The fact that it has enemies who withhold recognition does not negate its legitimacy.

No, the question is not whether Israel should survive, but whether it can and will survive. And here there must be room at the very least for doubt. A string of recent developments contains hints that the state of Israel, as currently constituted, may not be a permanent feature of the international scene.

One is the new porousness of its borders. Despite massive spending on security and recent, controversial, efforts to erect physical barriers along what Israel defines as its border with the Palestinian Authority, its other frontiers have become, or threaten to become, porous. On several weekends in May and June, Palestinians in Syria breached the border with Israel. They did not use overwhelming force. Numbers were enough, against Israeli troops – rightly – reluctant to mow down dozens of young people.

The incursions appeared to be encouraged, if not actually incited, by the Syrian authorities seeking a diversion from their own difficulties. They have since ceased; but the threat remains, and could soon escalate were the situation in Syria to deteriorate. If, in the worst case, Syria descended into civil war, chaos could present an even greater danger to Israel because there would be no one in Damascus with the authority to call the crowds of frustrated young Palestinians back.

Something similar, perhaps even less tractable, applies in the south, on Israel's border with Egypt. Sinai is a vast territory and hard to patrol. Security on the Egyptian side has already deteriorated as a by-product of the fall of the Mubarak regime, and there have been attacks on Israeli convoys in the Negev. If unrest in Syria and Egypt were to extend to Jordan and the Palestinian Authority, the consequences for Israel's security could be even worse.

Add to these growing security problems the demographics – very young and fast-increasing populations in the countries all around – and it is clear that present trends will not easily be reversed. It is just about possible to imagine Israel resorting to the sort of impenetrable fortifications that extend along stretches of the US frontier with Mexico, but the investment would be huge, the message one of isolation, and the effect on daily life in Israel almost entirely negative.

A second reason why Israelis might be justified in having qualms about their future relates to the political aftermath of the Arab Spring. For a long time the fear was that any change in Arab countries would bring Islamist regimes to power, with fiercely anti-Israel agendas. That still cannot be ruled out. But what has happened so far could have more insidious consequences for Israel. Not only is the Jewish state losing its kudos as the sole democracy in the region, but those Arab leaders who actively supported peace have lost, or are losing, power, and the US is giving up on intervention.

One hope was that the emergence of more democratic regimes around Israel might foster a climate of normalisation and mutual respect. That may yet happen. But another effect is that leaders will have to be more responsive to the wishes of their people. As can already be discerned with Egypt, this may not bode well for stability in Arab-Israel relations. With the Arab Spring also bolstering the self-confidence of the Palestinians – a factor in Mr Abbas's decision to take his case to the UN last week – the political balance in the region is shifting.

A third reason for doubt about Israel's future lies within the Jewish state itself. With the early pioneering spirit fading, and even the Holocaust – dare one hazard – less of a unifying force, Israel is not the same country it was 60, 30, even 10 years ago. And demography means that it will continue to change, with the Arab, Orthodox Jewish and second-generation Russian populations increasing much faster than other groups. The Israel of the next 30 years is likely to be more divided, less productive, more inward-looking and more hawkish than it is today – but without the financial means and unquestioning sense of duty that inspired young people to defend their homeland by force of arms.

Recent mass protests against inequality and the cost of middle-class living also suggest that the social solidarity that has prevailed hitherto could break down. In such circumstances, it must be asked how much longer Israel can maintain the unity it has always presented against what it terms the "existential threat".

An Israel whose borders are leaky, which is surrounded by states that are at once chaotic and assertive, and whose citizens are less able or willing than they were to fight, could face real serious questions about its viability. The choice then might be between a fortress state, explicitly protected by nuclear weapons, and a state so weak that association, or federation, with the burgeoning independent Palestine would become plausible: the so-called one-state solution by other means.

In either event, those with other options – the younger, more educated, more cosmopolitan sections of the population – might well seek their future elsewhere, leaving the homeland of their ancestors' dreams a husk of its former self. The emotive call, "Next year in Jerusalem" would be the wistful vestige of a noble ambition overtaken by cruel demographic and geopolitical reality.

source

East Jerusalem: Witnessing the truth (Arabic) – video

Zuheir set up CCTV cameras around his home to document clashes between settlers, residents and security forces. Footage captured on his camera contradicts the official line on the killing of a local Silwan resident by an Israeli settler guard

Bat Yam rally: 'Arabs dating our sisters'

Organizer of demonstration to take place Monday says 'public sick of Arabs hitting on Jewish girls.' Participants include right-wing activist Baruch Marzel

After a rabbis' letter instructing Jews to not sell or rent apartments to Arabs, racist behavior reaches new low: An organization called Jews for a Jewish Bat Yam is expected to protest on Monday against the "assimilation of young Jewish women with Arabs living in the city or in nearby Jaffa."

The protest will be held around 7:30 pm near the Bat Yam mall, not far from the police station. The organizers are also expected to show support for the controversial rabbis' letter.

"It's a local organization of Bat Yam residents, because the public is tired of so many Arabs going out with Jewish girls," explained one of the organizers, Bentzi Gufstein. "In addition to the protest, we will hand out pamphlets explain the situation."

The organization behind this local protest is actually the Lehava organization, which works to prevent intermarriage in Israel. The right-wing activist Baruch Marzel and a few local rabbis will participate in the demonstration, and the organizers are expecting hundreds more.

During the past week, posters have been hung around the city calling residents to come out and protest. Some of the posters explain: "I will not allow them to hit on my sister! What would you do if an Arab hit on your sister? Put an end to it! Recently we have learned of a grave phenomenon: Hundreds of girls from Bat Yam and the center get together with Arabs, they are integrated amongst us, their confidence rising. Put an end to it! Lower their confidence!"

Another poster reads: "Keeping Bat Yam Jewish. Arabs are taking over Bat Yam, buying and renting apartments from Jews, taking and ruining Bat Yam girls! Around 15,000 Jewish girls have been taken to villages! Jews, come on, let's win!"

'Racists think anything is allowed'
Coincidently, the demonstration on Monday is supposed to take place on the street where former Knesset Member Tamar Gozansky (Hadash) lives. She told Ynet she intended to file a complaint with police against the organizers claiming they are inciting violence.

"What they are saying is racist, another ugly stain on the Israeli conscience. I'm planning on complaining to the police on account that this is incitement according to clause 144 of the penal code, since such a demonstration can cause physical and emotional damage."

Gozansky noted the October 2000 riots, in which Jews destroyed Arab businesses in the city.

"It might happen again. It's part of a racist wave overflowing the country. The organizers received encouragement from the attorney general, who has yet to decide whether to do anything about the rabbis who signed the petition objecting to renting apartments to Arabs. The law authorities today are helpless, but the racist today act as if they are allowed to do anything."

source

Disabled man victim of police brutality empathises with Palestinians.

Jody McIntyre shows his compassion and prinicipled stance amongst despicable line of questioning by stupid BBC interviewer. Well done Jody!

Settler drives into Palestinian boys (Shocking Video)

Gaza doctor writes book of hope despite death of three daughters

On a cool but sunny December day in Gaza, Dr Izzeldin Abuelaish took his eight children to the beach for the simple pleasures of paddling in the Mediterranean and playing in the sand.

Two months earlier, the children's mother had died from acute leukaemia, and Abuelaish was comforted to see his older daughters laughing and chatting as they wrote their names in the damp grains close to the water's edge: Bessan, Maya, Aya. "It was as close to heaven and as far from hell as I could get that day," he later wrote.

But within five weeks the Abuelaishs were to suffer a second tragedy: those three girls, aged 13, 15 and 21, were killed, and another daughter, Noor, 17, seriously injured, when an Israeli shell was fired at the family home during the brief but bloody war in Gaza in 2008-9. One of Abuelaish's nieces also died; a fifth girl, another niece, suffered terrible injuries.

Many in his situation would have descended into a dark, lonely pit of grief and bitterness. But Abuelaish not only rebuilt a life for himself and his surviving five children, he has written a moving and powerful book about his experiences with a central message of hope and reconciliation.

I Shall Not Hate – published in Canada in April, and out in Britain in January – has had an extraordinary impact. Sitting in the home of his extended family in Jabalia, northern Gaza, Abuelaish – back on a month-long visit from Canada where he now lives and works – reads out emails on his BlackBerry from strangers expressing their sympathy, gratitude and support.

The book has been translated in 13 languages, from Finnish to Turkish – but most importantly copies will soon be available in Hebrew or Arabic. A book tour in the US is scheduled for January; proceeds from sales and appearances will go to Daughters for Life, the charitable foundation Abuelaish set up.

He explains his choice of title. "I'm against any violence. Violence and the military approach proved its failings decades ago and that will never, ever change. No one evaluates; we just continue blindly.

"As Palestinians and Israelis we have failed to change course. We just continue with the same approach which aggravates, escalates and widens the gap of hatred and bloodshed. It's easy to destroy life but very difficult to build it."

Would it not be understandable to feel hate after what has happened to him? "There is a difference between anger and hate. Anger is acute but transient; hate is a poison, a fire which burns you from the inside. We need to be angry, but direct it in a positive way."

Abuelaish, an obstetrician and gynaecologist specialising in infertility, spent years working in Israeli hospitals where, he says, patients were surprised to find a Palestinian doctor delivering Jewish babies. After his wife, Nadia, died in September 2008 he went back to work following encouragement from his elder daughters, returning to his family in Gaza at weekends.

He was at home when the onslaught on Gaza began on 27 December that year. There was a "symphony of weapons, shelling" around the extended family's home in northern Gaza, where much of the action was concentrated. Everyone's nerves and emotions were constantly on edge, he says.

Throughout the conflict, Abuelaish was in regular contact by phone with Israeli friends, including journalists. His accounts, in fluent Hebrew, of what was happening inside Gaza – closed at the time to foreign journalists – were broadcast in Israel and beyond.

On 16 January 2009, at 4.30pm, a shell struck the house. He ran to the room that had been hit. "I saw my girls drowning in a pool of blood," he says, tears in his eyes. "I saw their body parts, a decapitated head, brains on the ceiling." A second shell followed.

Desperate for medical assistance, he called his friend Shlomi Eldar, a presenter on Channel 10 in Israel. His cries for help in a mixture of Hebrew and Arabic were broadcast live. Within an hour, with the help of his Israeli friends, Abuelaish's injured daughter and niece were evacuated from Gaza.

At the time, he could only think of the catastrophe that had befallen his family. Later he realised the impact of that live phone call. "It opened the eyes of the Israeli public. The secret about the war in Gaza was disclosed," he says.

The then Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, watched the broadcast. "I read that he said: 'Who can see Izzeldin and not cry?'" says Abuelaish. "Two days later he announced the ceasefire. I hope that at least the blood of my daughters was not in vain, that it saved others."

The doctor was already considering a job offer in Toronto and within six months he had begun a new life as a professor in global health at the city's university. Back home for the summer holidays, Abuelaish says Gaza is "getting worse and worse".

"People are frustrated and hopeless. Wellbeing is not just dependent on having food. We are hungry for freedom, a brighter future, a secure life, for feeling our humanity."

But, he says, Gazans must not simply blame others, but take responsibility themselves. "Everything is possible in life, even peace. The only thing that is impossible is to bring my wife and daughters back. You have to keep moving. Tragedy does not define my life, but these tragedies have made me move faster."

Abuelaish's book and the foundation are his monument to his dead daughters. "I swore to God that one day I will meet my daughters and tell them their blood was not wasted," he says.

The foundation is dedicated to promoting health and education among girls and women in the Middle East. "My life is in debt to my mother, my wife, my daughters," he says. "All change starts first with the mother. If we want to change, we must start with women."

Abuelaish thinks back to the day on the beach, a picture from which graces the cover of his book. "Two weeks before the war came, [the girls] wrote their names in the sand. Where are their names now? Written in stone on their tombs. But I tell you one day their names will be written in metal and stone at schools and medical institutions dedicated to their memory. Words are stronger than bullets. We have to offer a message of hope to those who believe in hate and revenge."

source