As if it wasn’t enough for a 5-year-old Palestinian girl to lose her mother, grandmother and brother in a deadly Israeli missile attack, the Israeli Defense Military wants to add to Maria Amin’s misery and end her rehabilitation treatment at the Alyn Children's Hospital in Jerusalem.

May 2006 witnessed the beginning of a dramatic chapter in this little girl’s life, when an Israeli missile aimed at a leader of the Islamic Jihad resistance movement, who was instantly killed in the attack, struck the car Maria was in, killing her mother, grandmother and seven-year-old brother and blowing the little girl through the window, leaving her paralyzed from neck down.

Now Maria is confined to a wheelchair and is permanently attached to a ventilator.

Israel’s law denies any compensation to those injured in what it calls “acts of war”, but Maria’s story was so touching that the Israeli Defense Ministry was forced by local and foreign media to pay for the girl’s rehabilitation treatment at the specialist hospital in Jerusalem, where doctors are helping Maria to become as independent as she can be.

But the Israelis’ generosity did not last for long. Now the Defense Ministry wants to deport Maria to a Palestinian clinic called Abu Raya Rehabilitation Centre in the occupied West Bank.

Pleas by Maria’s father and the doctors helping her are falling on deaf ears.

The head of the hospital, Shirley Meyer, told BBC that she doesn’t want Maria to leave. “Without going into politics - that's not my role and not my business - my first priority is to make sure my patients receive the care they need. I don't care where that is, but as far as we know, this is the only hospital in the Middle East that can look after Maria properly”.

Meyer explained that a case as complicated as Maria’s shouldn’t be easily dismissed from the hospital and that she can’t authorize such discharge unless she is certain appropriate care will be provided for the child.

Maria's father, who is always by her side, says that he wants nothing but the right treatment for his daughter, who was deprived of her normal childhood. “It's a matter of life and death for Maria. She can only survive 50 seconds without the ventilator and there are often complications. Here they are experts. In Ramallah they are not," he told BBC.

"Israel's air strike killed my son and my wife. All I ask is that they look after my daughter."

Adi Lustigman, Maria’s lawyer, also rejects the Defense Ministry’s plan, saying that Maria has no family in Ramallah, and Abu Raya hospital lacks the equipment and the experience to deal with Maria’s case, explaining that other less severe cases are sent to the Alyn Hospital in Jerusalem.

However, the Israeli Defense Ministry claims that Maria would be better off in her natural environment. In an effort to improve its image, the ministry offered to train staff from the Abu Raya Center in the Jerusalem hospital and pay for some of Maria’s medical equipment and for her father’s rent in Ramallah for one year.

"But then what?" asks Maria’s lawyer. The girl's paralysis, her frequent infections and fevers, her need for new medical equipment as she gets bigger, are all ongoing.

The story gets even more heartbreaking as Maria, who celebrates her sixth birthday today, August 30th, says that all she wants is a normal life.

"I want them to give me a home for me and my father and my little brother where I can bathe by myself, get dressed by myself and everything," she told the BBC. "I want them to make a kitchen so I can cook for my father and my brother whatever they want. I would love to go to school. But first I would have to shower, get dressed and have a school bag."

Maria’s dreams might not come true, but at least she can be taught how to survive. In September, Israel’s Supreme Court would decide whether to keep Maria in the Jerusalem hospital or deport her to Ramallah where she could lose her life like most of her family members.

PHOTO CAPTION

Wreck of car attacked by Israeli Missiles (file pic)

Source: Aljazeera.com