Opinion | An Israeli Shot Me. An Israeli Healed Me.

"I was born and raised in the Gaza Strip. For years, my “neighbors” were Israeli soldiers based in the Kfar Darom settlement across the road from my house. Although the settlement was illegally established, my father taught me never to feel hostility toward the soldiers. They were the children of Abraham, as were we Palestinians.

But in September 2000, when I was 11 years old, all that changed. One night after dinner, the soldiers started shooting at our kitchen windows. As we crawled to the center of the house, I could see the bullets ricocheting around me.

Soon after, the soldiers told my father that it was time for him to leave. They wanted to use our house as a command center. My father politely but firmly refused: “I am a peaceful man. I am not your enemy. There is no need for me to leave. If it is not safe for us in our own home, then it will not be safe for us anywhere.”

As punishment for refusing to go, the soldiers made us their virtual prisoners. They took over the second and third floors, and the rooftop. My family — my grandmother, my parents and eight of us children — were no longer allowed to go upstairs or into our backyard. We were told that anyone who broke the rules would be shot. At night we were often locked in the living room; sometimes we were kept there for a week or two at a time. When we needed to use the bathroom, we had to be accompanied by a soldier.

This lasted for years. My house was no longer my home. It was a base for the Israeli Army, and I was filled with resentment. And yet, my father continued to live as though nothing had changed. He believed that sooner or later, the soldiers would leave and he would once again have his home and his land back. Determined to treat everyone politely, he referred to the soldiers as “our guests.” This drove everyone crazy, both our family and the soldiers.

The soldiers tried everything to get my father to leave. One smashed his head against the wall; others shot up his bedroom; they bulldozed the fields where he grew dates and olives and demolished the greenhouses where he planted tomatoes and eggplants; they shot his donkey, and set fire to the shed where he kept ducks and chickens.

“Why don’t you leave this house?” I remember a soldier demanding. My father, in his beautiful voice, responded, “Why don’t you leave my house?”

Then, on Feb. 18, 2004, a soldier shot me in the back. It happened in front of my father and three United Nations officers who had come to investigate our situation. We were standing in front of the house, and for no apparent reason, an Israeli soldier shot me. (The army said he claimed to be aiming at a suspicious car, but there was no suspicious car.) I was 15. For the first time I saw tears in my father’s eyes. I could not believe it: They had finally gotten to him".