Exactly three years ago, Israel attacked the Gaza Strip. It is of course quite impossible to write anything about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict without being accused of bias by someone, and the Gaza war is no exception. But here are what I believe to be agreed facts.
Israel stated the attack was to stop rockets being fired from Gaza into Israel. Since 2001, thousands had been launched resulting in 28 Israeli deaths and hundreds of casualties. The Gazans responsible said they were justified in attacking Israel as an occupying power.
During the three-week operation, 1,200 to 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed. Of the 13, three were civilians and ten soldiers. Of the Palestinians, about 700 were civilians, 250 of them younger than 16. All fighting occurred on Gaza soil. Four thousand homes were destroyed by the Israeli Defence Forces. Tens of thousands were left homeless. Many observers, including Israeli human rights groups and a UN commission, found the Israelis guilty of using seriously disproportionate force.
Despite these findings, Stephen Harper’s government offered its usual unconditional support for Israel and showed its usual indifference to the plight of the Palestinian people of Gaza.
Among the Palestinian civilian dead were three daughters, aged 21, 15 and 14, and a 17-year old niece, of Izzeldin Abuelaish. Dr. Abuelaish was born and raised in a refugee camp in the tiny, squalid Gaza strip and Gaza remained his home until last year. He now holds a position at the University of Toronto’s school of public health.
“Thick, unrelenting oppression touches every single aspect of life in Gaza,” he writes in his remarkable little book, I Shall Not Hate: A Gaza Doctor’s Journey. It is “a human time bomb in the process of imploding. … Gazans are trapped. ... The frustration and humiliation were a constant burden.” As in any description of Israel-Palestine relations, always that key word reappears: humiliation, the relentless humiliation of powerless Palestinians by Israelis, utterly disconnected to any legitimate Israeli security concerns.
Yet despite all the obvious obstacles, Dr. Abuelaish became a medical doctor specializing in obstetrics and gynecology and infertility. He also became the rare Palestinian doctor who worked in both Israel and the Gaza Strip and who had many good friends in Israel, mostly doctors. Nevertheless, even for him every single trip between Gaza and Israel was another protracted experience in humiliation at the hands of Israeli soldiers.
On Sept. 16, 2008, Dr. Abuelaish’s wife, mother of his eight children, died from acute leukemia after a very brief illness. He was on a working trip in Europe and the story of his frantic attempt to return is one long Israeli-imposed logistical nightmare. At last he arrived at her bedside, in an Israeli hospital, in time to be with her when she died. The children were not allowed to leave Gaza to be with their mother at the end.
On Dec. 27, the Gaza war began with an air strike by Israel. Dr. Abuelaish and his family were all in Gaza. What followed, he writes, was Israel’s “scorched earth policy” and the “wanton destruction” of the Gaza Strip. He derides “the blind stupidity of attacking the citizens of Gaza and claiming the rampage was aimed at stopping the rockets being fired into Israel.”
On Jan. 16, exactly four months after his wife died, two Israeli rockets were fired into his daughters’ bedroom in the home where his extended family were attempting to hide from the Israeli bombardment:
There was a monstrous explosion.… Suddenly it was pitch dark, something was sucking the air out of me, I was suffocating. … I realized the explosion had come from my daughters’ bedroom. … The sight in front of me was something I hope no other person ever has to witness – the body parts of my daughters and niece.
