Girl hit in missile strike fights to stay in Israel

By Carolynne Wheeler in Jerusalem

Six-year-old Maria Amin races ahead of her father on the way to school. “Hurry up, papa. The bus will leave without us,” she calls, steering her electric wheelchair with a mouth-stick towards the specially-equipped van.

	Symbol of hope: Maria Amin’s case has captured the hearts of the Israeli public

It’s a journey that, 19 months ago, it was impossible to imagine her making. In May last year, the little Palestinian girl and other family members were in her uncle’s car in Gaza when it was torn apart by shrapnel from an Israeli missile.

Travelling just ahead of them had been Mohammad Dahdouh, a senior Islamic Jihad commander responsible for directing rocket attacks against Israeli towns.

The missile hit its target, but destroyed her uncle’s car as well, killing her mother, grandmother and older brother. She was thrown out of the window - alive, but paralysed from the neck down.

The fact that today she is able to pilot herself around, using her chin to steer, is a testament to the skill of Palestinian and Israeli doctors, to the care of the Jerusalem hospital where she now lives, and to her own indomitable spirit.

It also reflects the media attention her case has drawn in Israel, which added to pressure on the Israeli government to help her.

Transferred first to a Tel Aviv hospital and then to Jerusalem’s private Alyn rehabilitation centre, after Gaza’s hospitals were unable to care for her, Maria captured the hearts of the Israeli public.

Last week she was given the good news that she will be allowed to remain where she is for at least another year - providing a flicker of hope for reconciliation in a part of the world that sorely needs it.

Her endless rounds of medical care, tests and physiotherapy are broken up by lessons at Jerusalem’s only bilingual school, where Jewish and Arab students study together in classes taught jointly by Hebrew and Arabic-speaking teachers.

It is a fitting place for a little girl who began learning Hebrew almost from the moment she arrived at the Alyn centre, and who has drawn people from both sides of this conflict to her cause.

“She is very active and has the character of a leader,” said Dalia Peretz, the Jewish Israeli who heads the Max Rayne Hand-in-Hand School with an Arab colleague. “The children like to be around Maria and to play with her, and I know many of the parents care a lot about her.”

It is one of the many ironies that permeate this conflict that Ms Pertetz’s brother is Amir Peretz, who was the Israeli defence minister when the missile struck.

Teachers say they are astonished by Maria’s ability to compensate for her limitations. Her artwork adorns the classroom’s walls, painted with the help of a paintbrush or crayon attached to a wand which she grasps with her teeth. In music lessons, she sings as loudly as her softly whooshing respirator will allow her.

“She’s marvellous,” said her music teacher, Helen Sabella. “She’s really dominant - she proves herself.”

Maria’s father, Hamdi, who survived the air strike along with her younger brother, is now devoted to looking after the two children in a family suite next to the hospital.

Each morning, he combs Maria’s hair into a neat ponytail and polishes her fingernails before accompanying her to school.

“When I saw first Jews, Christians and Muslims together without any discrimination, I was fascinated. Look at the kids playing together,” marvelled the 30-year-old former driver as he watched in the school’s courtyard.

While Maria studies, a network of Israeli volunteers is fighting to keep her here.

In the summer, the Israeli defence ministry issued an order to move her from the Alyn centre, which has a specialist unit for patients with spinal injuries, to a Palestinian hospital in Ramallah, but her doctors opposed the move, saying it was tantamount to a death sentence.

They argued that no Ramallah hospital could provide the same care, and that the Israeli checkpoints through which travellers must pass on the way to Jerusalem would prevent her from getting prompt medical help in an ­emergency.

Last week, the ministry backed down, agreeing to a one-year freeze on the deportation order while another solution was sought. Meanwhile, it is paying Maria’s tuition fees and other expenses.

However, despite the freeze, it also seems unlikely that she will stay where she is.

“She has finished the treatment in Alyn hospital, so every day that she is staying there is a waste of time and money,” said Shlomo Dror, a defence ministry spokesman.

Maria’s Israeli legal team is preparing to pursue her case in the Supreme Court. A hearing is scheduled for February.

“I’m optimistic,” said Adi Lustigman, a Jerusalem lawyer who is leading the team.

“I don’t see how the court can send Maria to Gaza or the West Bank where it’s clear she could not survive. In order to salvage what’s left, Maria needs stability.”

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