Court delays ruling on paralysed girl

By Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem Maria Amin, a six-year-old Palestinian girl from Gaza who was paralysed from the neck down in an Israeli missile attack, was left in legal limbo yesterday after Israel's Supreme Court put off a decision on her long-term future. Maria, who controls her wheelchair with a joystick that she operates with her chin, and her father, Hamdi, are fighting a Defence Ministry decision that she should be transferred from the Israeli Alyn rehabilitation centre in Jerusalem to the less comprehensively equipped Abu Raya centre in Ramallah. Maria's mother, grandmother and older brother were killed in their car as it drove past the Islamic Jihad militant targeted in the attack in May 2006. Under Israeli law, the state does not have to compensate innocent Palestinian victims of military attacks but the Defence... [read full story]