I Shall Not Hate: A Gaza Doctor's Journey Read online

  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.

  I began my quest early to get the paperwork I needed for the trip. Two weeks before my planned departure date, I booked my ticket to fly from Amman, Jordan, to Nairobi via Cairo. Then I made the arrangements for the exit permits I would need: one from Gaza to go through the Erez Crossing, the other to exit Israel via the Allenby Bridge, which joins the east and west banks of the Jordan River. The bridge, built in 1918 by the British general Edmund Allenby, is the designated exit from Israel for Palestinians going to Jordan.

  But this is the Middle East, and in particular the Palestinian territory; the best-laid plans go awry. And that’s what happened to mine. I did my usual stint at the Sheba hospital in Tel Aviv but headed home a day earlier than usual, on August 13, to spend extra time with my wife and children before I left. At the Erez Crossing, I was informed that the border would be closed on Saturday, August 16, and that I wouldn’t be able to get out that day to make my flight. The official I spoke with suggested I leave Friday and stay in the West Bank, as the restrictions there are less severe than the ones at the Gaza crossings, but I didn’t want to lose time with my family. So I asked to see the officer in charge, who said, “Don’t worry. I will fix it. You will cross on Saturday.”

  On Thursday afternoon, though, I received a call from the security office in Tel Aviv saying I could not travel—at all! I only had forty-eight hours before I was to catch a plane in Amman to get to Nairobi, and I was being told I could not leave Gaza. I asked what on earth was going on and he said, “For security reasons you cannot travel.” I work in Israel, for heaven’s sake. How can this be? It must be a mistake.

  After I hung up, I called my friend Shlomi Eldar, a well-known Israeli television presenter who also writes for various Israeli publications. We’d met at the Erez Crossing a couple of years earlier when he was coming into Gaza with a cameraman to shoot a story. I’d read a book he’d just published on Gaza, and started a conversation with him on whether he’d understood the politics correctly. It was the beginning of many useful exchanges of information between Shlomi and me. When he heard my story on the phone that day, he said he was as perplexed as I was. “If you can’t travel, then no Palestinian can travel. What is going on? My only weapon is my pen. I’m going to write about this.” He called the officer at the Erez Crossing to interview him while I called another Israeli friend, who said he would check into it and call me back. A few minutes later the phone rang and it was my friend, who said, “They’re serious. They don’t want you to travel. You need to wait another week.” Why now? What about my plane ticket, my appointments, my job interview and training? What was I supposed to do about that? And how could I allow these security people to put a black mark against my name? Come to think of it, how could they allow me to continue to work in Israel if I was a security threat? None of it made sense.

  At seven p.m. that night, my phone rang. It was an employee from the office of the coordinator of security for the State of Israel, who asked me what was going on. When I explained the situation to him, he replied, “Every problem can be solved. You can travel on Saturday.” So I presumed the mix-up had been sorted out.

  There was no one but the guards at the crossing on Saturday. It felt eerie to walk alone through the long corridors and sidestep the rolls of barbed wire and find my way through the maze of X-ray machines, locked doorways and interrogators. When I got to the other side and handed my papers to the Israeli security officer—guess what? She said, “You can’t travel.”

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “For security reasons,” she replied. That’s bureaucrat-speak for, “We have no reason. We’ve just decided to pick on you.” But I wasn’t exactly holding any free-pass cards here; she had all the power. I had to bite my tongue. One wrong word or a misplaced gesture could derail my entire trip. So I politely asked her to check with her boss about my so-called security status. It took an hour for her to process that request. When she was done, she told me that I was allowed to proceed to the taxi that would take me to the Allenby Bridge.

  So, with a handful of papers, a pocketful of coins to pay the various taxi and bus drivers, and my heart full of hope, I headed for the bridge. You’d assume that, having passed scrutiny at Erez, all I’d have to do was show my papers to the Israeli officials at the bridge and cross. You’d be wrong. Because of the extraordinary suspicion between our two sides, the procedure at Allenby resembles a spy movie. I got out of the taxi that brought me there, paying what the driver demanded, and deposited my luggage on a trolley being guarded by an official who looked at me as though I were personally responsible for every wound the two peoples have dealt each other over the past sixty years. Then I boarded a bus to the Palestinian passport section, where my papers were thoroughly inspected. After they were approved, I returned to the bus, which drove me about a kilometre to the luggage depository, where I picked out my screened bags from the heap on the ground. Then I reboarded the bus for the short drive to the Jordanian side.

  There I began again, this time with Jordanian officials. I presented my papers, including the visa for Jordan that I’d applied for weeks earlier, and was directed to a special window designated for Gazans. I waited there for what felt like an eternity, especially in light of the flight I needed to catch in Amman. A Palestinian designation on your papers is enough to warrant a very long wait wherever you are in this part of the world. At last my luggage was checked again and I was cleared to go. I had left at 7:30 a.m. for a journey that would be, in a normal world, a one-hour drive to the airport in Amman. I barely made it in time to catch the 6 p.m. flight. But I considered the day a success because I actually was able to board my plane.

  The training course in Nairobi lasted two weeks. My wife’s niece was married on August 26 and I was sorry I couldn’t be there. I knew that everyone had been looking forward to the celebration, and during a business trip to Yemen a few months earlier I had purchased beautiful silk dresses for my daughters and my wife to wear. I knew they would want to share the family gossip about the wedding and maybe boast a little about how they’d looked in their dresses, so I called home the next day. During our telephone conversation Nadia told me she was tired and not feeling very well. I teased her about having too good a time at the wedding, dancing late into the night, and she laughed and told me not to be concerned.

  When my training was finished, I carried on as planned to Kampala to meet with the PSI staff. After a few days there (and a quick shopping trip to buy colourful scarves for my wife and daughters), I left for Egypt on September 1. Since it was the first day of Ramadan, I called home to give my family my blessings for this new holy month. Mayar answered the phone, and I could tell something was amiss by the sound of her voice. I spoke to Bessan as well, and grew certain they were keeping something from me. Usually everyone in the house would rush to the phone to speak to me when I called from away, but this time it was only Mayar and Bessan who wanted to talk. But then again, I’d called at midnight and perhaps they were tired, or had just woken up for the first prayers of the day. I told Mayar to give everyone my love, but as I hung up, prickling concerns played on my mind as if to reinforce the notion that it was time to move my family to a place where we could all prosper together.

  It turned out that what Mayar and Bessan weren’t telling me was that the fatigue their mother had complained about only a few days before had increased to a debilitating level and she had been taken to Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza. She had instructed the children to keep the news from me so that I could finish my business trip without concern. That was so typical of Nadia; she always took care of everything and told others not to worry. So I flew from Cairo to Brussels on September 2 not kn
owing that my wife was gravely ill.

  The next morning, September 3, I received an email from Shatha: “Urgent. Call us. Mother is sick. The doctor at Shifa wants to transfer her to Israel.” I called home immediately. This was no ordinary illness. My Nadia had acute leukemia.

  As a physician, I knew this was an ominous diagnosis: most children with acute leukemia survive this cancer of the blood, but only about 50 percent of adults beat the odds. As Nadia’s husband, I could only think of what we needed to do to give her a fighting chance. The first step, certainly, was to get her transferred to an Israeli hospital. But even in a life-threatening crisis like this one, crossing the border isn’t easy. She would need a permit to travel. She would also need a commitment from the Palestinian Authority that they would pay for her medical treatment in Israel. And it all needed to happen quickly: if chemotherapy for acute leukemia begins immediately, the patient’s survival odds improve dramatically. So I got on the phone and called Ramallah to speak to my contacts in the Palestinian Authority. I also asked them to tell the doctors at Al-Shifa to send her to Sheba, the hospital where I work in Israel.

  Thankfully, everyone moved fast. Nadia’s sister-in-law, Aliah, went with her to the Erez Crossing. Of course, my wife stopped off at home on the way to reassure the children that she would be all right and would be back with them soon, and she got into Israel without incident. She could walk without assistance and felt confident that she’d be treated and recover quickly. I shared her confidence. She’d always been healthy. The doctors in Israel would know exactly what to do. Frankly, it was inconceivable to me that she could be seriously ill and I mentally blocked out any other possibility. I’m sure this is one of the reasons physicians are not suppose to treat members of their own family—they have trouble thinking clinically about the patient and let their emotions enter into their decision-making.

  My return flight was booked for September 25. Changing the booking would cause enormous complications since all of my travel was based on dated permits. As well, I had a meeting scheduled in Brussels with the European Union to discuss potential employment in the public health field, and had planned to stay on an extra week to visit with colleagues at the Erasme Hospital, where I had studied. But I was torn: should I try to get home immediately or should I go to the meeting and return after that? Since her treatment was going well, Nadia suggested I stay in Brussels. She kept saying, “Don’t worry.” Nonetheless I should have gone home immediately, and still feel deep anguish and regret over my decision to carry on. I was in part driven by my selfishness in wanting to avoid the paperwork hassle and even worse—by my personal career interests. I could try to justify my decision by blaming Nadia since she kept saying, “Don’t worry. Everything is going fine. I’ll see you in a few days.” But I know better. I’m the physician and should have done the right thing, which was to rush home to my wife.

  It was a horrible few days. It was still Ramadan and I was fasting. I couldn’t sleep for trying to figure out what to do. I kept in daily contact with the family and decided to change my flight to leave Brussels September 9, immediately after the meeting with the EU. Then I started the tedious and infuriating process of getting the tickets and the permits changed.

  I had to go through Amman, which limited my choices, but I managed to find a flight from Brussels to Amman via Munich and Istanbul. It wasn’t lost on me that if I wasn’t Palestinian I could have boarded a flight from Brussels to Tel Aviv and been home in a few hours. In the meantime, though, Nadia was responding well to the chemotherapy and I hoped the worst was behind us, that the terrifying diagnosis had put the wheels of medical intervention into motion and she was on the road to recovery. That was her status when I boarded the plane in Brussels on September 9. But by the time the plane landed in Munich later that day, Nadia’s condition had taken a sudden turn for the worse and she had been rushed to the intensive care unit. I paced the airport floor, wishing I could somehow transport myself to the Sheba hospital and be by her side. Every time I called, her condition had deteriorated further. I prayed, hoped, begged for her recovery.

  It was after midnight when I arrived at the airport in Amman. I found a taxi to take me to the Allenby Bridge, and got there at about two a.m. I’d been travelling since the early morning, sitting in planes, pacing in airports, suffering from that paralytic feeling of having my feet cemented to the floor and my mind in flight to my wife’s bedside. But rules are rules, and not even Nadia’s worsening condition in a hospital an hour’s drive away could alter the hard-hearted fact that the crossing at the bridge would not open until 7:30 a.m. I called to arrange for a driver to wait for me on the other side. I was first in the line waiting for the crossing to open. Mosquitoes buzzed around me, flies irritated me; I couldn’t sit down for five long hours as I waited through the night. At last the door to the building opened; I entered, had my papers processed and was out of there in a matter of minutes. I crossed from the Jordanian side to the Israeli side of the river and was one step closer to Nadia.

  That’s when my journey to hell intensified—a trip I relive in nightmares. I was first in line at the Israeli security checkpoint. I submitted my passport and identification and was told to wait. At nine I was still waiting. At one I was still waiting. Other people had arrived, been processed and left. I beseeched the staff to tell me what was causing the delay. I told them I was a doctor, employed in Israel, explained that my wife was acutely ill, maybe dying, that I’d been travelling for more than twenty-four hours and was desperate to get to the Sheba hospital. The reply? “You have to wait.”

  I was on the phone every hour with my wife’s sister-in-law, who kept saying, “Where are you? Why aren’t you here? Hurry, hurry.” At two p.m. I’d had all I could handle and started calling friends to ask if they could help. At last I was called up to the counter, where I was told that I had to meet with an officer of the National Israeli Security Agency, known in Hebrew as Shabak. He asked me what felt like a hundred questions, and he even asked about my wife. Then he too told me to wait.

  At six—ten and a half hours after I arrived at this desk—he handed me my passport and told me I could go. The Arab-Israeli taxi driver had waited for me all that time and I asked him to take me as fast as possible to the Sheba Medical Center. He chose the route with the fewest checkpoints. At the first checkpoint we reached, on the outskirts of Jerusalem, the guard said, “What are you doing here? This is only for Israelis.” I explained that I had a permit, that I was a doctor who worked at the Sheba Medical Center in Tel Aviv, that my wife was a patient there and gravely ill, that I was rushing to her side. He behaved as though I were a suicide bomber trying to sneak into the city. He demanded that I turn off my cellphone, then he called the police and told them he’d caught a Palestinian from Gaza trying to cross and that they should arrest me. He insisted I sign a form that said I understood why I was being arrested. Finally a call from Israeli security instructed him to let me go and suggested he should have examined my permit more carefully before sounding the alarm.

  You’d think the reprimand would have meant something to this man. But all it meant was another delay for me, as he tore up the arrest form he’d filled out and demanded that I sign another paper saying that no one at his checkpoint had harmed me physically. And to prove that he held the trump card, he announced that I had to go to Jericho—fifty kilometres back from the checkpoint we were at—and start my return journey all over again. What’s more, he instructed me to check in with the Director of Coordination for Israel in Jericho to get a new permit: mine had now expired.

  And so we drove with haste to Jericho. Once there, I got the new permit and was instructed to go to the checkpoint in Bethlehem, another detour in my voyage through hell. I was incredulous—but what choice did I have? When we got to Bethlehem, the female soldier in charge entered my name into her computer—and guess what came up on the screen? The same message that had appeared at the Erez Crossing when I’d left Gaza on August 16, the same message that had al
most cancelled my departure, banning me from travelling for security reasons. Since the information had found its way onto my file in error, I had presumed it had been removed. Presumption is a wild card where I live.

  I was sent to a room one metre by one and a half metres, only enough room to stand up or sit down in, and told to wait. When I heard the key turn in the lock, I could barely contain my rage. It was now seven-thirty in the evening. They had taken away my cellphone; I could not check on my wife. I sat there powerless while precious minutes of her life ticked by. Each hour felt like a day. The humiliation of being treated as a nobody, a dispensable person, someone who didn’t deserve common decency or even the respect of the law, read like a palimpsest of my entire life, the barely erased past being rewritten yet again here in an airless cubicle on the West Bank.

  Then one of the officers beckoned to me through the glass wall that separated his desk from where I was being held. Someone unlocked the door and I proceeded toward this man, who was leaning back in his chair, feet on his desk, finger crooked toward me as if he were calling a dog to sit. He didn’t even make eye contact when he thrust the permit toward me and said, “Take it and go.”

  I was exhausted, hungry, thirsty and frantic. It took an hour to get to the hospital, and when I finally arrived I went straight to the ICU. Nadia was unconscious. I called her name, telling her, “I am here with you.” I have no idea whether she heard me. Exhausted, I slept on a desk in the hall that night so I wouldn’t have to leave her.

  The hospital gave me an office space with a bed so I could work and rest. Over the next few days she seemed to improve. Nadia said all along that she would walk on her own feet back to the family. She was absolutely certain that the treatment would make her well. So although it was hard on her and on the children that they couldn’t be together, it never occurred to her or to the kids that she wouldn’t get back home. As for bringing the children to the hospital, it simply was not allowed: only the patient and one other person were allowed to cross at Erez, and Nadia had come with her sister-in-law. Her doctor even thought she’d be moved out of the intensive care unit soon.