On January 16, 2009, a tumultuous explosion followed by a blinding flash rippled through Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish’s home in Gaza.

As he stumbled around struggling to breathe, it dawned on him what just happened. Two Israeli shells had just hit his daughters’ bedroom.

He ran towards the room to be faced with the greatest test of his life; his children were in parts. The room was a mixed mayhem of dolls, books, clothes, broken furniture and body parts.

His daughters Bessan, 20, Mayar, 15, Aya, 13, and niece Nour, 14, were now rubble of what a few minutes before had resembled human life.

But that wasn’t all. His other daughter Shatha, 17, was lying on the floor with one eye resting on her cheek bleeding profusely from her hand with a finger hanging by a yarn.

Three years later, Abuelaish is still living by and spreading his words “I shall not hate.”

According to Democracy Now!, up to 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed in the Gaza War, dubbed Operation Cast Lead, between December 27, 2008, and January 18, 2009. More than half of the Palestinians killed were civilians, with over 300 of them being children.

Abuelaish was a well-known Palestinian gynecologist who spent years working at the Sheba hospital in Tel Aviv. As the only Palestinian working in an Israeli hospital, he achieved notoriety, and was nicknamed ‘the Gaza doctor’. He was one of the few Palestinians who were allowed to daily cross into Israel through the Erez checkpoint from his home in Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza. Tragically, four months prior to losing his daughters, Abuelaish had lost his wife Nadia to leukemia.

Moments after Abuelaish’s home was shelled, he called his friend Shlomi Eldar, a journalist at Israel’s Channel 10 News, for help. The exchange between them was broadcasted live  on Israeli television.

A distraught and visibly emotional Eldar then used his connections as a renowned journalist, called on the Israeli Defense Forces to allow ambulances to reach Abuelaish’s family, and rushed off the set to help him.

Never fully explained, the strike on Abuelaish’s home ended the lives of his three daughters and niece just a day and a half before a ceasefire was called.

Yet despite this tragedy, he stubbornly refuses to submit to the anger that any father would understandably feel.

“How many should suffer or be killed, to be hungry and to be deprived in this world ‘til we wake up?” he said. “It’s our world and our responsibility, all seven billion of us to protect this world.

“Why to blame? Always blaming is not a way. Why not focus on the perpetrator? It’s the responsibility of both not to react in a negative way or in anger and to ask the perpetrator ‘Why did you do that?’ Hate and anger has reasons, has roots, and is a way of escaping responsibility.”

He thinks that people should stop generalizing and instead point the finger at the person directly responsible, so they can be solely accountable to their actions. It’s only through accountability and responsibility that true healing can begin.

Abuelaish has used the notoriety of his tragedy to promote peace to Jews, Arabs and anyone else that is willing to listen. He has published a book called I Shall Not Hate: A Gaza Doctor’s Journey, which talks about his experiences and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

He advocates a passionate message of peace as a solution to the conflict to his children, his students, his colleagues and his public speaking engagements.

“To endure we need two things; truth and justice,” Abuelaish explains. “Truth – we need to be honest with ourselves and others, because truth is the light which guides us in times of darkness to know our way, and justice –the notion that I like for others what I like for myself.

“Our enemies are our ignorance, arrogance and greed. It’s not shame to say I made a mistake and I want to learn. Life is a learning process.”

Abuelaish wants people to come together and fight their collective enemy – our ignorance of one another. He thinks that individuals should destroy the mental and physical barriers within themselves and between others. According to his book, people must stop the act of blaming and adopt the values of “ours, us and we.” Slowly, day-by-day, the smallest of actions to support justice for all would bring about world peace.

“We think of it as a word, the word peace. Peace is an action. You live it, you enjoy it, you act for it, you work hard for it, you need to believe in it and sometimes you sacrifice for it. So, peace personally is not the political,” he said. “Some people think it is the absence of war, conflict; please forget it. We are here in Canada. We don’t have war, we don’t have conflict, but I am sure many, many, many people don’t have that peace.

“It’s the peace of mind where people are safe, secure, healthy, free. Free which is important, and happy in their life – that’s peace. Even peace goes beyond the individual’s peace.”

He compares the idea of peace going beyond an individual’s sole peace to a human body, and it is here that his medical analysis can be seen to influence his philosophy. “If one cell in that person suffers, the whole body starts to complain and suffer. We need to adopt that as individuals and as people in general. We feel divided; so we need to understand, to learn, to communicate, and to start by approaching the other.

“First of all, you take responsibility, you start the change by yourself. In the Quran, it says God will never change what is in people until they change what is in their hearts, minds and souls. Start the change! That’s the essence of peace. But people start by finding a hanger to hang their failures and mistakes on others, instead of having the courage to admit the truth and to be honest with themselves.”

Abuelaish thinks his message of peace has been spreading since the loss of his daughters because it’s not his message; it’s a human message.

Faith has been a vital anchor in Abuelaish’s personal journey towards achieving peace. He has attained peace of mind and sees the positive effects of it in the lives of his five living children, as well as the peaceful path he has chosen. To him, he is doing his part, as it is a moral obligation towards his daughters and himself as a person trying to make a difference in this world.

“I am accountable to my daughters to send them prayers, blessings, good deeds; to say to them I did every possible thing for you to keep you alive, to make a difference, and to encourage people [to do] what they can do.”

As part of his mission to honour his daughters and spread the message of peace, Abuelaish founded the Daughters for Life foundation in 2010. This registered Canadian charity is dedicated to providing young women in the Middle East access to higher education, giving them the opportunity to have a stronger voice and a more influential role.

The charity provides women who have succeeded hardships in Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan, Syria, Egypt and Israel, without discrimination, with awards, grants and scholarships.

“We want to show that we can make a difference in this world by giving girls and women the right role and enabling them with the biggest weapon which is education,” he said. “I fully believe in the role of girls and women without any limitations. The foundation is growing quickly and it will become, what I see for it in two years, the hub of education of girls and women in the Middle East.”

Education and hardship are subjects close to Abuelaish’s heart. Coming from a background of poverty and growing up as a refugee in Jabalia refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, the idea of being a doctor seemed impossible. But Abuelaish made it. Starting with a scholarship to study medicine in Cairo, Abuelaish has gone all the way to getting a masters degree in public health at Harvard University.

“It’s not where are you, it’s who are you,” Abuelaish said. “I was at Harvard to challenge and to succeed and to prove that we all can make it. That from Jabalia camp to Harvard. Why not?”

As for his admiration and respect for women, it comes from his mother. “My mother was my weakest point. I was weak in front of her, I can’t say no to her, even if it is wrong, because she is my mother and I know how much did she suffer to raise us.”

Abuelaish believes that the Palestinian mother is the hero for all Palestinians because she is the one that has kept the Palestinian cause alive. “The Palestinian mother is the one who doesn’t know the word impossible,” he said.

The foundation he started has not only been a way for him to keep his daughters alive, it has also been a method to start the peace process and achieve lasting peace. He believes that in order to reach a peaceful solution to the conflict, the voices and full participation of women must be included, and a realization that all decisions and actions must be based on advancing the lives of both genders for the coming generations.

Continuing on the path of education, Abuelaish came to Toronto with his remaining children on July 22, 2009, to be an associate professor at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto.

He is currently coordinating and teaching three courses in public health on the intertwined themes of peace and health: Women’s Health in Countries of Conflict, Health as an Engine for the Journey to Peace, and International Perspectives on Health Services Management.

He lectures graduate students on understanding the foundation of social and political conflict, and offers tangible and practical ways to promote health as a strategy to building peace.

“Students are the new leaders and the new blood. So we need to invest in them and give them as much as we can because they still are not spoiled, they are not poisoned with individual interests,” Abuelaish said.

Despite attempts by the mainstream Canadian media and major political parties to paint Palestinians as terrorists, Abuelaish remains determinedly proud, resilient and peaceful.

“I am proud of being Palestinian, I will continue to be proud and I will continue to work for this cause, that we [Palestinians] are people who deserve the rights and the freedoms,” Abuelaish said. “At the end I say, tyranny has limits, it has an end.”

Abuelaish will continue to spread the message of peace and the need for people to overcome their ignorance by reaching out to others and getting in touch with the world’s underlying interconnectedness.

“If I could know that my daughters were the last sacrifice on the road to peace between Palestinians and Israelis, then I would accept their loss. What we need is respect, and the inner strength to refuse to hate. Then we will achieve peace. And my daughters will have been the last price anyone in this region has to pay.”