I Shall Not Hate: A Gaza Doctor's Journey on the Road to Peace and Human Dignity
Heart-breaking, hopeful and horrifying, I Shall Not Hate is a Palestinian doctor's inspiring account of his extraordinary life, growing up in poverty but determined to treat his patients in Gaza and Israel regardless of their ethnic origin.
This is an extraordinary story of a Palestinian doctor who, despite witnessing the death of three of his daughters in the Israeli incursion into Gaza in January 2009, continued his medical and humanitarian work aimed at bringing the people of the region together in peace.
A London University- and Harvard-trained Palestinian doctor who was born and raised in the Jabalia refugee camp in the Gaza Strip and 'who has devoted his life to medicine and reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians' (New York Times), Abuelaish is an infertility specialist who lives in Gaza but works in Israel. On the strip of land he calls home (where 1.5 million Gazan refugees are crammed into a few square miles) the Gaza doctor has been crossing the lines in the sand that divide Israelis and Palestinians for most of his life - as a physician who treats patients on both sides of the line, as a humanitarian who sees the need for improved health and education for women as the way forward in the Middle East. And, most recently, as the father whose three daughters were killed by Israeli shells on 16 January 2009, during Israel's incursion into the Gaza Strip. It was his response to this tragedy that made news and won him humanitarian awards around the world. Instead of seeking revenge or sinking into hatred, Izzeldin Abuelaish called for the people in the region to start talking to each other. His deepest hope is that his daughters will be 'the last sacrifice on the road to peace between Palestinians and Israelis'.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
Search for Common Ground Award
Middle East Institute Award
Finalist, Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought
Stavros Niarchos Prize for Survivorship
Nobel Peace Prize nominee
'In this book, Doctor Abuelaish has expressed a remarkable commitment to forgiveness and reconciliation that describes the foundation for a permanent peace in the Holy Land.' ― President Jimmy Carter
'A remarkable study of compassion, and of daily life in the Gaza Strip' ― Sunday Times
If there is to be peace in the Middle East, it will come through men and women of his giant moral stature and epic capacity for forgiveness. I urge everybody to read this wonderful book.' ― Peter Oborne, Daily Telegraph