“When it all started, there were alarms and missiles. One fell on our house and Amina was hit in the head,” al-Hassouni, 49, told the JC.
Amina al-Hassouni (Photo: Mohammed al-Hassouni)[Missing Credit]
The attack came in response to a strike on a building near the Iranian embassy in Damascus that killed Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps’ Quds Force’s top commander Brig. Gen. Mohammad Zahedi, responsible for Syria and Lebanon, on 1 April. The strike has been widely attributed to Israel, though the country has neither confirmed nor denied this.
Al-Hassouni said his house, located in the unrecognised Bedouin village of Al-Fura near the southern Israeli city of Arad, was not equipped with a shelter, and that his daughter was sleeping in her bedroom when the fragments hit.
“We rushed out, went to our car and drove to Arad. There, Magen David Adom [Israel's national emergency medical, disaster, ambulance and blood bank service] met us and took Amina to the emergency room in Soroka [Medical Centre in Beer-Sheva],” al-Hassouni said.
“She is in a very serious condition, she went through two surgeries. They told us to wait so that’s what we are doing. We wait and we pray all the time,” he added.
A spokesperson for Soroka Medical Centre said: "The seven-year-old girl who was evacuated to Soroka from the Bedouin town is in critical condition due to a severe head injury. Her life is still in danger."
Amina al-Hassouni loves to sing, dance and spend time with her siblings (Photo: Mohammed al-Hassouni)[Missing Credit]
Al-Hassouni explained that his family remains traumatised by the attack, which wounded another of his 14 children.
“I am scared - one of my sons fell and was hurt in the stomach. He was bleeding, we also had to take him to see doctors, they gave him medication. He is with us now, but he still suffers,” the distressed father said.
Al-Hassouni has moved his family out of their home because the children refuse to return: “They are afraid. We live on the street,” he said. “Nobody is helping me, people come to visit us but then they just leave.”
He also claimed that nobody from the government had met with him or called him: "The only person who spoke to us was the mayor of Arad, who said he would help us protect ourselves.”
Al-Hassouni described Amina as a healthy girl who loves school and her siblings: "They rely on their sister," he said.
“Amina loves to dance, to sing, she’s never complained about anything. She loves everything that her mother cooks for her. At school, she’s good at all the subjects. She’s just a regular little girl who loves life,” he continued.
“Amina is not connected to this chaos, she doesn’t know anything, she doesn’t understand politics and she should be left out of it,” he said.
“What I truly want is for every child to be able to live their lives. They are just children.”
On Sunday, Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Gilad Erdan, highlighted Amina’s plight at an Emergency UN Security Council session.
“Last night, Iran proved again that it cares nothing for Islam or Muslims,” Erdan said. “The Iranian attack seriously injured Amina al-Hassouni, a seven-year-old Bedouin girl in Israel.”
Erdan added: “Iran’s strategy has been crystal clear - arm, fund, and train terror proxies across the globe to carry out Iran’s murderous scheme of domination.”
Asked whether he had ever thought the Islamic Republic of Iran might put his Muslim daughter's life in jeopardy, al-Hassouni replied that "nobody really cares for us, not Iran and not Hamas and not our country”.
He continued: "Nobody protects us. Honestly, I am scared of everyone - Iran, Hamas. I am scared of what my country will do and from the response.”
Al-Hassouni believes firmly in co-existence, having frequented many Jewish-majority places, including Arad. But he noted that children of all religions everywhere are afraid.
"This has to stop," he said. “I want to say to Israel and the world: We [Bedouins] need to be able to protect ourselves. At least give us something to protect ourselves. We just want to live the way we did before, when everything was fine.”
