An Israeli Sniper Shot Eman Hillis’ Six-Year-Old Sister At A Family Friend’s Wedding In Northern Gaza During The Ceasefire On November 3rd While She Was Playing With Other Kids.
In the Daraj quarter, far from the Israel-controlled yellow area, Sundus was playing on the first floor of a wedding hall with other kids, happy with her new clothes, while the wedding itself was taking place upstairs.
Suddenly, she collapsed.
Shouts filled the hall on the second floor. Bullets whistled loudly among the guests. One bullet hit the bridesmaid in the jaw, and another hit the groom’s cousin in her shoulder. The bride’s white dress turned red — the wedding stopped before anyone danced.
Maria, Hillis’ seven-year-old sister, came running. “Sundus is sleeping on the ground and won’t wake up.”
Her Mum ran to the first floor, searching everywhere for Sundus, but found only a pool of blood. Her phone rang, “We are in the Baptist Hospital [al-Ahli Arab Hospital]. Come quickly,” her brother Ali said.
“An Israeli sniper shot the child Sundus Hillis in the head,” the news circulated as we were on the way to the hospital. They knew nothing about their little one.
When they arrived, Sundus was lying in a hospital bed. Blood covered her beautiful face, staining the makeup and the colourful clothes she had been overjoyed to wear.
“Sundus, oh love. Wake up,” Mum begged her, but she only groaned weakly.
“Two bullets in her head,” a nurse inspecting Sundus’s injury told Mum.
Two holes, one bullet, and some parts of the brain lost, the medical report showed.
Sundus was moved to Al-Shifa Hospital.
Before she entered the Intensive Care Unit (ICU), the neurosurgeon tapped her right hand – she unconsciously moved it. But when he tapped her left hand and leg, nothing moved.
Sundus underwent a three-hour-long surgery and remained in the ICU. Her family members were permitted to visit for only 15 minutes. When Hillis first entered the room, the doctor guided her to a child with a swollen face and a bandaged head, tubes everywhere, who bore very little resemblance to her beautiful Sundus.
One day passed, and Sundus was still kept in the ICU until another patient in critical condition needed the bed, and she was moved to the inpatient ward.
She finally woke up after two days, unable to see or move the left side of her body. No matter how much people talked to her, the only response they got was loud cries.
She was rubbing her face, trying to look at anything but failing. “My eyes are crossed … I can’t see anything. Why have you made me like this?” she would shout.
The wedding she had been looking forward to for days had disappeared from her memory. In her mind, she is still sleeping in her cousins’ shelter, where she was before the wedding hall.
Sundus, who used to chatter all the time, could now only groan weakly. Hillis used to make her draw just for a moment of quiet, but now she tries to get her to speak, and she cries.
Her dad, too, who used to complain, begs her to make noise, but they get nothing except: “Stop talking. My head hurts.”
“Why have you buried me alive?” she once shouted at her Mum, after agonising, futile attempts to roll over in the hospital bed.
Shooting a six-year-old child is a war crime.
However, it didn’t even make the headlines.
It was nothing out of the ordinary in Gaza.
She was not lucky enough for the world to condemn her shooting or even to get proper medical care.
Hidden History -- In The Making 