Peace in the Holy Land TERRY PHILPOT
n the late afternoon of 16 January 2009, an Israeli tank fired two shells into the home in Gaza of Izzeldin Abuelaish, a respected Palestinian doctor. Three of his six daughters – Bessan, Aya and Mayar – and his niece Noor were killed. Another daughter, Shatha, another niece, Ghaida, and two brothers, Shehab and Nasser, were gravely injured. Nasser and the girls were saved by swift transfer to an Israeli hospital. Shehab was treated in Gaza. Within minutes this terrible event, which was to hasten a ceasefire, was broadcast on Israeli television when, from his shattered home and wailing his distress, Dr Abuelaish telephoned a friend, an Israeli journalist, who took the call in the middle of a live broadcast. But Dr Abuelaish maintains there is accept- ance even amid such horror: “All of my life’s journey was a tragedy which told me how to prepare for the next step.” This tragedy, he explains, began when he was born in 1955 to a once-prosperous farm- ing family now immured in poverty in a
Hope out of horror I
While the prospect of accord between the state of Israel and a state of Palestine seems as remote as ever, a doctor from strife-torn Gaza says he has been inspired by a family tragedy to work for peace between the two peoples
refugee camp in then Egyptian-run Gaza. He and his five brothers and three sisters were the children of his father’s second wife, which occasioned ostracism by much of the large, extended family. And then there were the long years, after 1967, of Israeli occupation, during which time one brother, active in the Palestinian cause, disappeared. As a child, he saw education as an escape from poverty, even if he sometimes skipped lessons to do jobs to bring income for his family. With a scholarship, he trained as a doctor at Cairo University, then worked in Saudi Arabia, and later became the first Palestinian doctor to work in an Israeli hos- pital. He studied in Belgium, Milan and Harvard, and gained a further qualification from University College London. He worked for the United Nations Palestinian relief agency, UNWRA, and the World Health Organisation in Kabul. In Gaza, he set up a clinic to help the poor.
And then, in September 2008, Nadia, his wife of 21 years, died of acute leukaemia two
This week the UN Security Council began informal consultations on the Palestinian bid for admission to the United Nations as a full member state, writes Oliver McTernan. It is part of a formal process that requires the council’s recommendation before the request can be put to a vote in the General Assembly. Given that the US is so strongly opposed to the bid and has even threatened to use its veto within the council, a formal vote in the near future is highly unlikely. Few, I suspect, would disagree with
President Barack Obama when he declared to the General Assembly last week that “peace will not come through statements and resolutions at the United Nations”, and that ultimately it is the Israelis and the Palestinians who must reach agreement on the issues that divide them – on borders, security, refugees and Jerusalem. “The question”, he added, “isn’t the goal that we seek; the question is, how do we reach that goal?” What Obama failed to acknowledge is
the fact that the process the US has pursued for the past two decades has failed
4 | THE TABLET | 1 October 2011
weeks after diagnosis, leaving him to bring up their two sons and six daughters. Now he would like to know the identity of the soldier who fired the shells that killed his daughters and niece and for him to take responsibility for what he did. “I don’t blame him; I blame the system,”,
he says. “As a physician, I don’t blame doctors; I blame the medical system when something is wrong. The system gave the soldier the bul- lets, the shells, the tank, the orders. Guns and tanks will never serve freedom or safety and security. It is the weakest who use the gun. Forgiveness relieves you of hate, anger and leaves me stronger to seek justice for these innocent girls.” His new book, I Shall Not Hate, explains that justice is reconciliation not revenge. It is the story of his life but a reflection, too, on the events of January 2009 and his reaction to them. Most people of faith experiencing such an appalling happening might at least question God’s existence; for others it would only confirm the meaninglessness of the uni-
‘A durable peace is possible, but only if there is a real paradigm shift in attitudes’
to deliver a just and durable agreement. The Palestinian bid for UN recognition of statehood is a symptom of the failure of the 1993 Oslo Accords to meet their aspirations and the deep frustration that is felt throughout the Occupied Territories as a consequence. In his book, The Missing Peace: the
inside story of the fight for Middle East peace, Dennis Ross, the US chief negotiator under President Bill Clinton, provides a detailed account of US efforts to resolve this conflict and exposes, for me at least, the flaw in the current process. What he describes is a top-down approach based on the presupposition that by excluding all those who could be labelled “awkward” or “unwilling” a handpicked elite is capable of delivering an acceptable agreement. In practice this has meant that, on the
Palestinian side, independent political leaders like Dr Mustafa Barghouti and key movements like Hamas, have been
excluded, as have ideological and religious hardliners on the Israeli side, despite the fact that they all represent important constituencies. Based on my work with such groups, I
believe a durable peace is possible, but it can only be achieved if there is a real paradigm shift that recognises the necessity of working at multiple levels and engaging with such people who have a real constituency on both sides of the conflict. The fact that Ross is now Obama’s key regional troubleshooter, does not inspire confidence for a change in the US approach, at least in the near future. When the bid for UN recognition was
first proposed, I was strongly against it on the grounds that any formal recognition would be, in effect, a tacit endorsement of the present West Bank reality – a one-party securocrat state with an economy entirely dependent on the good will of donors and easy access to credit – and a Hamas-run
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