Dima suffers from dysfunction in different organs, such as liver, kidney, heart, brain damage and muscle stiffness

By Adel Zaarab, IOL Correspondent

RAFAH, August 13 (IslamOnline.net) - Dima is a three-year-old Palestinian girl child, who can no longer move her arms or legs for inhaling tear gas used by Israeli occupation troops while storming her house when she was only 40 days of age.

Dima, who was born in December 2000 to a Palestinian refugee family living southwestern Rafah in the Gaza Strip, suffers now from intermittent convulsions due to a chronic illness diagnosed by doctors as quadriplegia.

Now the mother, who survived the Israeli raid, is alive to tell how bullets and tear gas canisters penetrated the room of this innocent child.

"I had given a natural birth to my daughter Dima in the Gaza-based al-Shifaa and doctors reassured me that she was in good physical shape," the mother, Om Walid, told IslamOnline.net, showing Dima's medical reports.

"When we moved to our new house in southwestern Rafah, Dima was only 40-day-old and clashes between Israeli troops and Palestinian freedom fighters were raging on," she added as tears rolled down her cheeks.

"One day, Israeli tanks indiscriminately opened fire on the houses in the area with six stray bullets and tear gas canisters penetrated Dima's room…We rushed to the room to find a pall of blue gas shrouding the entire room," she said.

"Shortly afterwards we were transferred to the nearby hospital of Abu Youssef Al-Naggar as Dima was in critical condition…She paled and went into spasm and was in her death throes," she said, slamming the hospital's administration for rebuffing to register Dima's case as an occupation crime for not being wounded by bullets.

She said that the testimonies of her neighbors fell on deaf ears. Dima was then hospitalized in the European hospital and spent 15 days in the intensive care unit (ICU).

Quadriplegia

Dima's father, Abu Walid, said that doctors diagnosed the case as quadriplegia and mental handicap due to brain damage, which was caused by sporadic convulsions and heart and breathing problems.

Medical tests showed that Dima suffered from dysfunction in different organs, such as liver, kidney, heart and brain. X-rays also showed a brain damage and muscle stiffness due to oxygen shortage and low blood pressure.  

She also suffers from swallowing difficulty and is in a dire need for special medical care.

"Dima is now handicapped; she cannot sit properly or play with her brothers and sisters," Om Walid said. "Her illness forced her to lie supine…She cannot move or eat except through a special tube as her food is nothing but liquids; she also needs a weekly operation to pump out the phlegm."

Abu Walid also said that the Israeli occupation troops further bulldozed flat their house, which took him years of suffering and austerity to build it.

"Only after eight months of buying the house, the Zionists demolished it with a number of houses under the pretext that it lies 15 meters from the border line (between Egypt and Israel) and claiming that there was an agreement with the Palestinian side banning building any houses along 70 meters of the line," he said.

"Now everything is gone and we live in a humble rented apartment and I lost my job inside the (U.N.-demarcated) Green Line. Adding insult to injury, charities do not help Dima because she is not registered among those who have been injured during the Intifada," he added.

Om Walid said Dima desperately needs a surgery, which will cost them dearly, noting that the surgery would only improve her appalling conditions.

"At least, she would depend on herself and restore her senses," she said.