I Shall Not Hate: A Gaza Doctor's Journey (18 page)

I am to the left of my father. Behind us are my brothers Shehab and Nasser, and on the other side of my father is my older half-brother, Ahmad.

From left, my brother Noor, who went missing in 1983 after a stint in an Israeli jail, and my siblings Rezek, Etimad, Atta and Shehab.

My mother, Dalal, was a lioness when it came to protecting us, but she was demanding as well.

With Nadia at our wedding.

Nadia with our first-born, Bessan, in our home in Saudi Arabia.

Happier times at the beach in 2004, after I got back from Harvard. Five of our children, from left, Mohammed, Aya, Dalal, Bessan and Abdullah in the arms of his mother, Nadia.

From left, Mayar, my niece Etimad, Bessan, Shatha, Abdullah, Aya, Raffah and Dalal.

With Israeli colleagues who worked with me in the IVF unit at Soroka hospital.

In 2001, meeting with the Israeli minister of health, Yeshoua Matza, who was surprised to encounter a Palestinian doctor in an Israeli hospital.

Meeting Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak (far left) with his first wife, Nava, in 2001.

One of my earlier attempts to bridge the distance between Israel and the Gaza Strip. I arranged for Yaakov Terner (right), the mayor of Beersheba and former police chief, to come to police headquarters in Gaza to meet the Palestinian police chief Ghazi al-Jabali. After Hamas won the election in 2006, all such efforts had to stop.

I
F LIFE WERE NORMAL IN GAZA
, my flight out of the region on August 16, 2008, would have been simple: drive to the checkpoint, exit Gaza, enter Israel, continue by car to the Ben-Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv and fly any place in the world. But life is not normal, and that airport is off limits to Palestinians. The only way to travel abroad is by way of Jordan; the routes through Israel and Egypt, our closest neighbours, are not open to us unless we have a very special permit, which is almost impossible to obtain. I didn’t know it at the time, but that awkward, problem-filled journey I took out of Gaza in the summer of 2008—not much different from the experience of any Palestinian who needs to travel—was the beginning of the end in more ways than I could possibly have imagined.

A project being operated by Population Services International (PSI) in Kenya and Uganda was looking to hire a consultant in reproductive health. If I could get the position, maybe this was finally the time to move my family out of Gaza to a place where we wouldn’t be oppressed and where we would have access to the rest of the world. I’d spent my adult life determined to improve
health and education in the Gaza Strip and to be one of the architects of coexistence with Israel. But I also worried about my children: if I had the opportunity to move them someplace safe, someplace where it was easier for them to fulfill their potential, shouldn’t I listen to my heart?

As a first step, I agreed to fly to Nairobi to participate in a two-week training course for HIV/AIDS and reproductive health programs. The plan was that I’d then fly on to Kampala, Uganda, to meet the staff I would be working with if I chose to take the position and then to Brussels for another potential employment opportunity with the European Union.