Elogium Pax

Lament for Gaza...

Lament
Sorrow, not bittersweet. Acrid as a child’s howl
when, forever, father’s arm is torn away

Lament
Elegiac, not verse. Bitter as mother’s tear when,
childless, etched death scours ivory tomb

Lament
Plead, aver the cause. Shallow as the bier,
innocence, sunders the sky

Lament
Grace, endless hope. Plundered as nights of
gleaming arrow star the sky

And now,

Doctor's lament: 3 daughters killed in Gaza shelling

By Joel Greenberg | Tribune correspondent
12:58 PM CST, January 17, 2009

TEL HASHOMER, Israel - For days, Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish, a physician from the Gaza Strip, was a voice from the war zone, telling Israeli radio and television stations in fluent Hebrew about life under fire as Israeli troops pursued a ground offensive against Hamas.

On Friday the unspeakable happened. An Israeli shell hit a room where the doctor's daughters were gathered, killing three of them and a cousin. His broken voice brought the tragedy into Israeli living rooms.

"They killed my daughters," he sobbed over a cell phone after the strike, his agony broadcast live on Channel Ten television. Israeli medics were dispatched to evacuate the doctor along with a wounded brother, daughter and niece to the Sheba Medical Center near Tel Aviv.

Abuelaish, 53, a gynecologist, works three days a week at Sheba as a health policy researcher, and unlike most Gazans, is permitted to travel to Israel, where he has friends and acquaintances.

A father of eight and a widower, Abuelaish stayed with his children, his brothers and their families — 25 people in all — in a five-story building in the town of Jabalya, even as neighbors fled to escape the fighting.

"Where to leave?" he said in an interview at the hospital on Saturday. "No place is secure in Gaza, not mosques, not schools."

The family hunkered down in a virtual no-man's land. "No one could approach the place," he said. "We couldn't go outside because we were scared they would shoot at us. No water, no electricity, no gas, no phone. I charged my mobile phone from a radio battery."

"I tried to keep my children away from the windows, in the living room, sleeping on mattresses, dividing them up," he said, so they would not be a risk in the same place.

When an Israeli tank appeared in the area one day, Abuelaish called his Israeli media contacts and an Israeli liaison officer he knew, and the tank moved on.

On Friday afternoon the family gathered for lunch, cooked on a kerosene stove by the doctor's oldest daughter, Bisan, 20. She had become "a mother to my children after I lost my wife" to leukemia in September, Abuelaish said.

Bisan, a senior at Gaza's Islamic University, where she was studying business and finance, had met Israelis at the Creativity for Peace camp in New Mexico, which promotes reconciliation among Palestinian and Israeli teenage girls, the doctor said. He added that another of his daughters received calls during the Gaza fighting from concerned Israeli friends she had met at the camp.

After lunch, the doctor's daughters and two cousins went to the girls' bedroom. Abuelaish played with a son, hoisting him on his shoulders.

Then a blast hit the room where the girls were gathered.

"I found my daughters in pieces," he said. Bisan had been thrown from a bed to the floor. Mayar, 15, and Aya,, 14, were also dead, along with Noor, a 17-year-old cousin. Shatha, 17, who was wounded in the eye, was a straight-A student, and had plans to continue her studies abroad, her father said. "They killed their dreams," he added.

The Israeli army said it was investigating, and that an initial inquiry showed that "soldiers were apparently fired upon" from the doctor's building "or its vicinity."

Abuelaish insisted that there were no Hamas fighters in the area, and that he would not have allowed any militants near his home.

"Even if someone was firing, why did they shoot only at my daughters' room?" he asked.

"Military action will not lead to anything, and I have been saying loudly in Gaza that I am against firing rockets. They are a danger to the Palestinians," the doctor said, referring to Hamas attacks on Israel that triggered the Israeli offensive.

"I believe in saving lives, not killing," he added. "My children should be the last price, the victims of peace and a cease-fire."

Jogreenberg@tribune.com