Reading this powerful autobiography, with its message of faith and healing amid destruction, personal loss and intense pain in the Gaza Strip, the reader is tempted to believe that, yes, there is hope for an end to one of the world's most intractable conflicts.

Throughout his moving narrative, the author of I Shall Not Hate does not waver. Where some who have suffered in the conflict have been consumed by fury and overtaken by a compulsion for revenge, obstetrician-gynecologist Izzeldin Abuelaish is steadfast in his rejection of violence and bloodshed.

This hard-to-put-down book relates how Abuelaish, now 55, and his family were shattered when, near the end of the Israeli Defence Force's Operation Cast Lead, an Israeli tank shelled their home in Gaza on Jan. 16 last year, killing three of his daughters and a niece. They lived in a small apartment building Abuelaish had built with his brothers in Jabalia city to house the extended family.

His daughter Bessan, 22, had almost completed her business degree; Mayar, 15, the top math student in her school, was hoping to be a doctor; Aya, 14, the family poet, hoped to be a journalist. Their cousin Noor was 17.

In spite of his personal suffering - and the obstacles he faced commuting to work as the first Palestinian to hold a staff position as a doctor in an Israeli hospital - Abuelaish retains a profound belief in building bridges. Now living with his family and working in a hospital in Toronto, he remains committed "to move forward into light."

Some of this optimism comes from his Muslim faith. Some of it is rooted in his experience working with Israelis in Israeli farms and hospitals where he has come to understand that the enemy can also be a friend and colleague sharing the same goal of preserving and enhancing life.

Abuelaish, who speaks fluent Hebrew and had been interviewed frequently by Israeli media after Operation Cast Lead began, first told his heartbreaking story live on Israeli television. A couple of hours after the shells hit, he called Israeli television host Shlomi Eldar, who took his call on air: "They shelled my house, they killed my daughters, what have I done?"

The IDF first said its tank fired because snipers were seen on the apartment roof. An IDF spokesman later said soldiers were returning fire from a nearby house, saw movement in the upper floors of Abouelaish's house, and believed they were spotters. The IDF said its troops had made a "reasonable" mistake and that screams from the shelled building led soldiers to stop firing. There was no apology. By Sunday, Israel had ended the Gaza operation.

The book covers more than this tragic episode, one of many acts of violence afflicting both Arab and Jew since political Zionism began to attract thousands of Jewish immigrants to Palestine beginning in the late 19th century.

Abuelaish also tells the story of his life. Born in 1955 in Jabalia refugee camp, he was the eldest of six brothers and three sisters. He recounts how he ended up among the Gaza Strip's 1.5 million residents: During the war that followed the creation of the state of Israel in May 1948, his family had heard rumours of massacres, and had decided to leave their home in the northern Negev until things cooled off. Like many of the 700,000 Arab Palestinians who left, fled or were forced out of their homes at that time, his family nurtured dreams of a return from exile. "We'll go back soon, maybe a little longer ... back to the land of our forefathers where we belong," became a family mantra.

Abuelaish identifies his grandfather's property as the site of Ariel Sharon's cattle ranch, said to be the largest privately held land holding in Israel.

He tells the reader he has the deed and tax papers to show it's his family's land, but stops short of demanding it back. His point is that "failing to acknowledge what went on when the land changed hands is like a missing piece of a puzzle that remains unfinished."

Abuelaish does not attempt to set out a political solution to the conflict. He simply tells his own story, with clarity and a humanity of vision.