Gaza City – An Israeli sniper shot my six-year-old sister at a family friend’s wedding in northern Gaza during the ceasefire on November 3.
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, my seven-year-old sister, came running. “Sundus is sleeping on the ground and won’t wake up.”
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. We knew nothing about our little one.
When we 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.
In the ICU
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. We were permitted to visit for only 15 minutes. When I first entered the room, the doctor guided me to a child with a swollen face and a bandaged head, tubes everywhere, who bore very little resemblance to my 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 I talked to her, the only response I 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 our cousins’ shelter, where she was before the wedding hall.
Sundus, who used to chatter all the time, could now only groan weakly. I used to make her draw just for a moment of quiet, but now I try to get her to speak, and she cries.
Dad, too, who used to complain, begs her to make noise, but we get nothing except: “Stop talking. My head hurts.”
“Why have you buried me alive?” she once shouted at Mum, after agonising, futile attempts to roll over in the hospital bed.
Hung by blockade
A few days after the surgery, Sundus was able to feel the brightness of light. She was able to see apparitions sometimes; at other times, she was unable to see at all.
When she sensed the disappointment in our voices, she started guessing. That the red butterfly was blue or that the pink doll was a pink rose.
I saw Sundus get angry at herself because she couldn’t move, then burst into tears – it’s a loop she suffers daily.
The neurosurgeon had no clear answers for us when we asked whether she would return to her normal self. A simple “inshallah” was his answer for all questions.
We had to face him several times with specific questions to get a clear answer.
“She needs physical therapy, and it’s up to God whether she will regain her mobility or not … her vision will improve to a certain extent, but it won’t go back to how it was,” he said.
Sundus didn’t stop moaning in pain, and the hospital did not have proper resources. We had to scour the streets for painkillers and other things for her.
One day, I needed to find a medical cap to cover her wound – but found nothing in four pharmacies, walking through destroyed streets. Another time, I needed surgical gauze and could only find another kind, but she needed anything, urgently, so I had to buy what I found.
I tried every international organisation to help get her out of Gaza. I sent her medical reports to anyone who might be able to help – all to no avail.
Sundus heard talk of evacuation and started to dream of being able to move and see again.
“The damage is done. Whatever the bullet damaged cannot be repaired by a surgeon,” a foreign doctor told us via messaging after he looked at Sundus’s records remotely, and our last bit of hope was shattered.
Her condition deteriorated as the medical care was limited in the destroyed hospital. Her injury became infected and needed another surgery, in which she lost a significant amount of blood.
It felt like Israel shot Sundus, then used the blockade to tighten a rope around her neck.
![Sundus in the wheelchair at Al-Shifa Hospital [Courtesy of Eman Hillis]](https://i0.wp.com/www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Sundus-in-the-wheelchair-at-Al-Shifa-Hospital-1765272805.jpg?w=696&ssl=1)
Evading death
For two years, we’ve been making impossible decisions to avoid injury to anyone in the family.
When Israel issued warnings to the north of Gaza, we evacuated to the south. When Israel warned of a ground operation in Khan Younis, we evacuated to Rafah.
When the ground operation in Rafah was announced, we rushed to Deir el-Balah. We only returned to northern Gaza as the truce took effect in January 2025.
We slept in the streets, sheltered from bombs under the thin fabric of tents. For months, we endured starvation, not approaching aid drops or the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).
Besieged Palestinians in Gaza know what harsh fate awaits them when injured.
We felt like we owned the land when the ceasefire took effect, feeling lucky to have lost only our home and suffered from malnutrition. Then an Israeli sniper took that relief from us.
What did little Sundus do for the Israeli soldier to shoot her in the head? We are supposedly in a ceasefire.
Ironically, my friends everywhere, instead of condemning the shooting, first asked me if Sundus had been in the “yellow area” that is held by Israel.
All the times we nearly died while trying to stay in the “safe zone” crossed my mind as I repeated that she was not, sharing the location of the wedding hall with tens of people.
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.
