Gazan who worked for peace loses his 3 daughters in war

TEL HASHOMER, Israel — Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish is a Gazan and a doctor who has devoted his life to medicine and reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians.

But on Saturday, the day after three of his daughters and a niece were killed by Israeli fire in Gaza, Abuelaish, 53, struggled to hold on to the humane philosophy that has guided his life and work. As he sat in a waiting room of the Israeli hospital where he works part time, he asked over and over, "Why did they do this?"

Elsewhere in the hospital another daughter and a niece were being treated for their wounds.

"I dedicated my life really for peace, for medicine," said Abuelaish, who does joint research projects with Israeli physicians and for years has worked as something of a one-man force to bring injured and ailing Gazans for treatment in Israel.

"This is the path I believed in and what I raised and educated my children to believe."

Killed Friday were daughter Bisan, 20; Mayar, 15; and Aya, 13. The doctor's niece who died, Nur Abuelaish, was 17.

Abuelaish said he wanted the Israeli army to tell him why his home, which he said harbored no militants, had been fired upon. He said if a mistake had been made and an errant tank shell had hit his home, he expected an apology, not excuses.

The doctor, whose wife recently died of leukemia, had not left Gaza since the Israeli assault began last month and was at home in the Jabaliya refugee camp with his eight children and other family members during the attack.

An army spokesman said that a preliminary investigation had shown that soldiers were returning fire toward the direction of areas from which they had been fired upon.

"The Israeli Defense Forces does not target innocents or civilians, and during the operation the army has been fighting an enemy that does not hesitate to fire from within civilian targets," said the spokesman.

The Israeli public became witness to the Abuelaish family's tragedy on Friday night when a conversation that a television journalist was having with Abuelaish was broadcast live.

In a video now available on YouTube, the doctor implored the journalist, whom he had called, to help send assistance, wailing, "My daughters have been killed."

Journalists had come to know him because he has been providing eyewitness accounts of the Israeli incursion for TV stations. After the broadcast, an ambulance was sent to a border crossing to pick up the doctor and the two wounded girls. His four other children remain in Gaza, and are expected to join him in Israel soon.