Israeli hospital tries to protect Palestinian girl

By Ari Rabinovitch

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - An Israeli rehabilitation centre is defying a government order to transfer a Palestinian girl paralysed in an Israeli attack on militants to a hospital in the occupied West Bank.

Maria Amin, who turns six on Thursday, cannot get the care she needs in the Palestinian facility -- "so she won't be going anywhere" until her well-being is assured, said Shirley Meyer of the Alyn Hospital Rehabilitation Centre in Jerusalem.

Maria was paralysed from the neck down when the car she was travelling in was caught in a missile attack on a leader of the Islamic Jihad militant group in Gaza in May last year. Her mother, grandmother and older brother were killed.

She was taken for treatment to Israel where the Defence Ministry covered her medical expenses and sponsored her father and younger brother to live with her at the hospital. She has now completed a rehabilitation programme.

Now the ministry says it is time for her to go. It has promised to pay for an apartment for the girl and her surviving family in the West Bank town of Ramallah, where she would be under the medical care of the Abu Raya Rehabilitation Centre.

But Meyer is not satisfied. "I spoke with staff from Abu Raya and they told me they are not trained or equipped to handle Maria's care," she told Reuters.

Hamdi Amin, Maria's father, has appealed against the ministry order and Israel's Supreme Court has said she cannot be transferred until a hearing is held next month.

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