Collateral Damage. Israel to end Care of Paralyzed Palestinian Girl

Joanna Chen, Newsweek, 23/08/07. Gravely injured in an Israeli missile attack, a 5-year-old Palestinian girl is at the center of a fight over whether Israel should continue to provide treatment.

Sebastian Scheiner / AP

Mariya Aman's family and some doctors say Palestinian hospitals are unable to care for her. Confined to a wheelchair and paralyzed from the neck down, the Palestinian girl is at the center of a legal fight over whether Israel should continue to take care of her treatment. Back in May 2006, an Israeli missile attack on an Islamic Jihad activist's car in war-torn Gaza left the Aman family, traveling close behind, in ruins. Mariya's mother, brother, grandmother and uncle were killed, and Mariya, thrown out of the car into a ditch, sustained serious injuries. Today Mariya is kept alive by an artificial respirator at the Alyn Children's Rehabilitation Hospital in Jerusalem.

Although it has never formally accepted responsibility, the Israeli government has largely sponsored her complicated medical rehabilitation for the past 15 months. But now her father has been told by the Israeli Ministry of Defense that his daughter must leave Israel and return to the territory of the Palestinian Authority. "Sending her away from this hospital, out of Israel, is like sending her to hell," says Aman, 30.

A court decision in favor of Mariya Aman could set a precedent and trigger other court appeals from Palestinians injured by similar acts of the Israeli military. Sarit Michaeli of the human-rights organization B'Tselem says there are hundreds of other families who may seek compensation from Israel in the future, something that clearly Israel is not interested in confronting.

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