I Shall Not Hate: A Gaza Doctor's Journey (14 page)

Even in those democratic, human rights–conscious classes at Harvard, though, the old Middle East issues still came up. When I was selecting a class for health economics, there were two professors who taught the course I needed; one of them was a Jew. A classmate from the United Arab Emirates told me to study with the other professor because he said the Jewish one hated Arabs. I signed up for the class with the Jewish professor anyway because he was known as an expert in the field of health economics and I wanted to learn from the best. But I did get the impression that he was ignoring me in class. Was that my own paranoia after being warned about him, or was he really isolating me from the other students?

I decided to ask for a private meeting. When I went in to see him, I was absolutely straightforward. I said, “You know I am a Palestinian. I know you are a Jew. I was told not to take this class
because you wouldn’t treat me fairly. It feels to me that you’re ignoring me in class. And I want to ask you if this is true.” He was flabbergasted. He said he had no idea I felt neglected in his class. We talked about it, and as I tried to offer examples that would justify my concerns, I realized they were petty and insignificant and that I had been influenced by my classmate who had advised against taking the course. I felt foolish after that, and wondered even then if he’d hold it against me. But he didn’t. In fact a few weeks after that meeting he stopped me after class to say there was a speaker coming from the World Bank and that he wanted me to meet her.

I graduated on June 10, 2004, and was back in Gaza by June 12. I wished my family could have been there at the commencement. I wished my mother and father could have risen from their graves to see me, their son, a boy of poverty, accepting my degree. I wanted all Palestinians to share the moment with me. But it wasn’t possible. The faculty raised the flag of the country of every graduating student in the commencement ceremony, and when I saw the flag of Palestine up there with the others, I was proud of who I am and who we are together.

My homecoming was bittersweet. I’d been away so long the children felt estranged from me. My son Abdullah, who was only a year old when I left, didn’t even know me. He heard his cousins calling me uncle and called me uncle as well. I had three suitcases full of gifts for the children, including a black wool coat for Bessan that cost more than I’d ever paid for anything before, and dresses for my other daughters and American toys for the younger children. But my three eldest daughters weren’t there. Bessan, Dalal and Shatha were away at the peace camp in Santa Fe, New Mexico. I had to wait another two weeks before seeing them. My brothers and their families were there, and so was
most of the neighbourhood. We talked and laughed and ate my favourite food that Nadia had prepared. There was noise and fun and celebrations for about two weeks. It felt awfully good to be home.

S
O MUCH OF WHAT HAPPENS
in my homeland results from decisions taken a long way from the streets of Jabalia City where I live. The Oslo Accords, signed in 1993, agreed that the Gaza Strip would be part of the Palestinian Authority, along with the West Bank; a potential corridor connecting the two would eventually form a Palestinian state. Yasser Arafat was the leader of both regions, and two main political parties, Hamas and Fatah, vied for the loyalties of Palestinians. Fatah was more dominant in the West Bank. Hamas, headquartered in Gaza and founded in 1987 by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin as an offshoot of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, preached an ideology based on Palestinian nationalism, Islamism and religious nationalism. Like Fatah, its name comes from an acronym of the Arabic words that make up the full name of the organization: “Islamic Resistance Movement.” Hamas got most of its support from Gazans, and it was Hamas that launched the suicide bombings in April 1993 (and only renounced them in April 2006).

In September 2005, Israeli settlers were withdrawn from Gaza, fulfilling a promise from the Israeli government that the
territory would be controlled by Palestinians. It wasn’t exactly a success story—Israel acted unilaterally and the border crossings were still controlled by Israelis—but it was an important step forward all the same. At least, that’s the way I saw it.

Such events made political headlines around the world, but on the ground there are other scenes acted out on an almost daily basis that are largely ignored by the international media yet play relentlessly on the hearts and minds of the Gazan and Israeli peoples. I’ve been involved with some of these, whether I wanted to be or not.

For example, a couple of months before the Israeli settlers withdrew, on June 21, 2005, a woman from my home in Jabalia tried to attack the hospital where I was working. Her name was Wafa Samir Ibrahim al-Biss, a twenty-one-year-old Palestinian woman, and she had actually been a patient at the hospital after she’d suffered burns in a cooking accident. After her release, she was issued an outpatient card and a special pass that allowed her to cross into Israel to receive the ongoing treatment she needed.

No one was more surprised than I was to learn what happened next. On her way to the hospital, she was stopped at the Erez Crossing because an alert security guard became suspicious. It turned out that she had ten pounds of explosives strapped to her hips. Her plan was to detonate herself in the hospital, and she later admitted that she had intended to take out as many people as she could, even children.

I was so outraged that I wrote an open letter to
The Jerusalem Post
, published on June 24, expressing my disgust with her actions and my solidarity with the hospital. After expressing my dismay, I wrote: “On the very day she planned to detonate her bomb, two Palestinians in critical condition were waiting in Gaza to be taken for urgent medical treatment to Soroka.” There are several militant factions that mastermind these atrocious acts; whoever it was
who sent Biss, they wanted her to kill the very people in Israel who are healing Palestinians from the Gaza Strip and West Bank. What if Israeli hospitals now decide to bar Palestinians seeking treatment? How would those who sent this young woman feel if their own relatives, in need of medical care in Israel, were refused treatment?

As I wrote in my open letter: “As for Biss herself, she should have been a messenger for peace among her people, and should have been bringing flowers and appreciation to the Soroka doctors for healing her burns … To plan an operation of this kind against a hospital is an act of evil. Children, women, patients, doctors and nurses were the target. Is this a reward for kindness? Is this an advertisement for Islam, a religion which respects and sanctifies human life? This is aggression and a violation of humanity.”

I assumed she’d been brainwashed; otherwise how could she turn on the people who had helped her? The Gazans I know were pleased that I wrote the letter; they said it spoke for them. Even some politicians, who felt they couldn’t get involved publicly, told me that I’d said what they were unable to say. As for Wafa al-Biss, she’s in an Israeli prison and I doubt she’ll be getting out any time soon.

During my time at Harvard University, the thought of entering politics began to poke its way into my conscience. I had always rejected the political arena, had felt certain it wasn’t the way I could make a contribution to my people. But as I studied health policy and realized how much a well-thought-out plan with carefully created policies could move the Palestinian people out of their chaos and deprivation, I was drawn like the proverbial moth to the flame. There was an upcoming political election in Gaza, and when I got home I began immediately to test the waters for a possible run for office. For months I went to every
single community event in the northern part of the Gaza Strip. My message was: “I am here for you. I am going to make changes that will affect health and education in Gaza.”

Since the election was still months off, I took a job working as the reproductive health consultant at the Maram Project, a small program the Palestinian Authority was running with a donation from USAID. Since the work took me all over the Gaza Strip, I was also able to continue to talk about my plan to run in the upcoming election. I believed that I was received very well; people on the streets were saying, “He’s back. He’s going to be in the government.” I was also giving lectures at Soroka hospital and doing medical referrals from my own home. So I was in a good position to develop community relationships and to let people know that I had a plan.

I told my neighbours that I knew what was wrong and I knew how to fix it. The health culture, the managerial and performance culture weren’t good enough. Progress was determined only by who had the power to hand out jobs rather than by the needs of the people. By now I had international experience in London, Belgium and Italy, as well as at Harvard University. I’d worked for the United Nations and been on the staff at a variety of hospitals in Gaza, Israel and Saudi Arabia. I’d seen the way good health systems operate and I knew how to bring them to Gaza. Furthermore, I had established relationships with doctors and administrators in all these international centres and I knew I could count on them to help me.

Conditions in Gaza had deteriorated sharply while I’d been at Harvard, and I knew that we needed new blood very badly on the political front. Although I’d been abroad for two years and needed to re-establish myself, I believed that the people wanted the changes I was proposing.

Basically, I campaigned for the rest of 2005. My brothers helped me, and friends did too. We all thought my chances for
success were good. Some asked how I could forgo the money I would make as a doctor to campaign for election. But I didn’t care about the money. I was making enough as a consultant to pay our bills; the thing I really wanted was to help the Palestinian people.

When the election was announced for January 25, 2006, the Fatah party asked me to run for them in the October primaries: “We need you with us because we’re looking for professional, highly educated, well-trained candidates.” At the time Hamas were not considered to be contenders; they were popular in Gaza, but Fatah still seemed to be in charge. I wanted to run as an independent. Politics in Gaza are tribal, party-based and entirely dependent on who’s paying your salary; I argued that we needed to challenge all that and cultivate a people-based form of politics where ordinary voters truly choose. But Fatah assumed I was on their ticket, and weighing all the costs and the consequences, I felt I’d better go along with them.

I was a neophyte in the ways of electioneering. I thought I knew the score and could hold my own, but soon I was being told what to say, which policy to promote, how to respond to questions. Suddenly, being elected wasn’t about who I was and what I stood for, it was about who I was connected to and what I would do for them. As I campaigned all over the northern part of Gaza, the region I hoped to represent, nonetheless I was seen as a new voice, a man with common sense. But on the day of the primaries, some militants from the Fatah party burst into one of the polling rooms in my district with machine guns. They destroyed the ballot boxes, scared the people nearly to death and ruined any chance of a fair election. The results in northern Gaza were voided.

An older man I know and respect a lot took me to one side and said, “Don’t get involved in these dirty games. Run as an independent. I will support you.” And I took his advice: no matter
the consequences, I was going to run in the upcoming January election as an independent. When Fatah realized I was serious about being an independent, they offered me incentives to stay with them: they’d make me deputy prime minister, for example, and they’d pay for my campaign. But I didn’t accept. Instead, I borrowed $35,000 from my brothers and friends to pay my campaign expenses.

As the election date approached, we began to realize the situation was unpredictable. I was campaigning to eradicate poverty, unemployment and disease, to improve health care and education, and to raise the status of women in Gaza. Hamas was seriously challenging Fatah by running on a platform similar to mine, though they certainly did not campaign on women’s issues. Their election slogan was “Repair and Change.” What they were vowing to repair was what had been damaged not only by Israeli rocket attacks but also by the Palestinian Authority. Everyone was accusing the PA of mismanagement, corruption, a bad attitude and of attracting donors who only gave money so they could call the shots. Most Palestinians were upset with the malfeasance of the government. That was what Hamas was vowing to change.

They were exceptionally well organized. On the day of the vote, they sent cars to pick up constituents, using computers to figure out who was voting and where they lived. In comparison, Fatah was asleep at the switch. I was still confident that I would win in northern Gaza because of the numbers of Gazans who told me they were going to vote for me. Hundreds of people, huge groups, came to support me. On the last day, my children and Nadia came out to campaign for me, urging people to vote for Izzeldin. But on election day itself, 79 percent of the voters cast their ballots for Hamas instead. No independent candidate won anywhere in Gaza. Hamas took 76 of 132 seats in the West Bank and Gaza and became the government.