Doctor offers lesson for leaders

Then he went right back to doing what he has done for decades. He pleaded to Palestinians and Israelis alike to heal their differences and live in peace.

Abuelaish, who spent what he called a life-changing year earning a master’s degree at Harvard School of Public Health in 2004, was back in Boston last week, bringing his message of reconciliation to community groups and synagogues. He stresses that he is not willing to become a full-time victim, and makes few such visits.

After 20 years working as a gynecologist and obstetrician at top Israeli hospitals, Abuelaish has just moved to Toronto with his five surviving children to begin a five-year stint at a university hospital, even as he pushes ahead with health projects in Gaza.

He also is creating a foundation, Daughters for Life, in his daughters’ honor, to provide better health care for women and girls in Gaza. The web page declares: “This site is a symbol of the struggle for those who have a dream.’’

Abuelaish, 54, drew hundreds of people to several forums last week in Boston organized by the Jewish-American peace group, Brit Tzedek v’Shalom (Jewish Alliance for Justice and Peace). After one forum at Temple Beth Abraham in Canton, Rabbi David Paskin posted several photos on his blog of the event, and wrote: “A wonderful night of sharing, learning, and challenging.’’

The deaths of Abuelaish’s three daughters instantly became nationwide news in Israel at the moment of the tank attack on Jan. 16, in part because Abuelaish was already well known to TV and radio audiences in Israel as a Hebrew-speaking Palestinian with one foot in Israel and one foot in Palestine.

The impact was visceral.

Abuelaish phoned an Israeli TV journalist moments after the attack to plead for help in evacuating and treating other youngsters in the house who had been wounded. For four long minutes, his anguished sobs were broadcast live on a national Israeli TV station and around the world.

A few weeks later, Israel acknowledged that its forces had fired two shells at Abuelaish’s house, after its soldiers were fired on from an adjacent building. The army said the tanks fired at suspicious figures high up in the multistory building housing the extended family. Abuelaish says no such activity occurred in his house at any point.

Israel then staged a three-week assault into Gaza to halt continual rocket attacks by Palestinian militants against civilians in nearby Israeli towns. The incursion claimed more than 1,000 lives in Gaza. In the tank attack, sisters Bessan, 20, Mayar, 15, and Aya, 13, were killed instantly. Abuelaish got his wounded 17-year-old daughter, Shada, and a 12-year-old niece to an Israeli hospital that night.

Without hesitation, Abuelaish spoke out for peace, pleading at a news conference: “I want them to know, I am Palestinian, and we can live together.’’

Then and now, Abuelaish resolutely refuses to be drawn into the accusations and counter-accusations between Israelis and Palestinians in their decades-old conflict. His said his theme at a luncheon meeting with members of Boston’s Hadassah chapter Thursday was: “Can leaders learn from doctors?’’

“Leaders must learn how to heal. They must learn from doctors, who are healers,’’ he said in an interview Thursday. “We cannot deny anyone healing. The purposes of obstetrics and gynecology is to give life, to give hope, and to relieve the pain, to give a smile.’’

He says that when his daughters were killed, “I started to realize from the first moment that this was from God, and it will be for good.’’

And indeed, two days later came the Israeli cease-fire. “So I was blessed - and I think I was selected for that message. Why was I saved? I think God selected me to be saved, and my children to be killed, so that other children could continue to live. You need someone to carry the message.’’

Asked what practical steps he advocates, Abuelaish avoids specifics and focuses on the need to get Palestinians and Israelis “to look inside ourselves, see ourselves in the mirror first. . . . That both sides open their eyes, their minds, their hearts, and their arms to each other.’’

At Harvard’s School of Public Health, professor Donna Spiegelman, who is also the chairwoman of Brit Tzedek in Boston, said Abuelaish met with several faculty members and brainstormed about potential cooperative projects in Gaza involving Israeli and Palestinian doctors. Abuelaish said his year at Harvard had reshaped his medical thinking, from that of treating one patient to thinking about how health systems affect an entire community’s well-being.

Abuelaish, a widower (his wife died of cancer last year), said he felt welcome in his new Toronto home. He said on the first day there, his daughter Rafa met a child next door, and they were instant friends. Soon the neighbor’s father suggested that they take down part of the wooden fence between their homes so the children could play more easily. And the other neighbor opened a gate, connecting all three backyards.

“That’s what we need to smash, the mental and physical barriers and obstacles - among us and within us,’’ Abuelaish said. “This is what we can learn from our children.’’

David Green, a member of Temple Isaiah in Lexington, said in a phone interview that 500 people turned out to hear Abuelaish at a public forum Wednesday evening, including people of other faiths.

While some were concerned about how such sentiments translate into action, Green said, “the fact that people came together like that, with the intention of learning more about reconciliation, means that his talk achieved its purpose before he even opened his mouth.’’

“For me, the most important thing was that when you’re with him, you understand that the Mideast situation has a personal face, and that Palestinians have faces, and he was one of them,’’ he said. “And for many in the audience this was the first Palestinian they had heard from personally.’’