An 8-year-old Palestinian Girl Was Helping Her Mom When an Israeli Soldier’s Bullet Left Her Blind

An IDF bullet was shot through a window of Palestinian family’s home near Hebron, wounding Jannat while she was folding laundry

Gideon Levy and Alex Levac for Haaretz

A living room of rugs, sofas of crimson-colored velvet along the walls and in the center a wood-burning stove. Sitting on a low seat facing the fireplace is a little girl, leaning on a pillow, her gaze riveted to the floor. She’s dressed in a sweatsuit decorated with images of Mickey Mouse. Her legs are crossed, her braids are neatly done, between her fingers she rolls an electronic misbaha – the newfangled form of the traditional Muslim chain of amber prayer beads.

She is sitting alone in the well-appointed living room. Her eyes are covered with transparent plastic shields. Her name is Jannat, which means gardens, paradisaical gardens. She’s 8. And she’s blind. More than a month has passed since she was deprived of her sight, after an Israel Defense Forces soldier fired into her parents’ bedroom while she was helping her mother fold laundry, and the shrapnel struck her in the eyes and brain.

Her parents can’t afford to send Jannat for advanced treatment to East Jerusalem, Jordan or Israel. And her physicians in the Hebron hospital where she is being treated – she has already undergone three operations and awaits further surgery, after Ramadan – say there’s little chance that her sight will return. In the meantime she’s been plunged into almost total darkness and her parents are helpless. Prior to October 7, her father worked in construction in the northern Negev city of Kiryat Gat. Since then, he, like all other Palestinians in the West Bank, has been barred from entering Israel, and the family has sunk into poverty. Jannat’s father, Faisal Matur, 36, and mother, Aaliyah, 30, also have two younger children: Salah, 6, and 3-year-old Mohammed.

‘I am 8,’ Jannat declares, in a reedy, muted voice. When we entered her home this week, Mohammed ran in a panic to the bedroom and didn’t emerge until almost the end of the visit. Even when the toddler agreed to join the conversation, he clung tightly to his mother’s hand and didn’t let go as long as we were there. He thought we were soldiers, and he went pale, a study in fear.

Jannat is in third grade. This year the Maturs transferred her to a school closer to home, because to get to the previous school she had to cross Highway 60, a busy and dangerous road. The day before she was shot, the school held a ceremony where the first-semester report cards were distributed. Jannat was the outstanding pupil in her class and received a coloring book and crayons as a prize. She hasn’t been able to use them.

The Matur family lives in Beit Anun, a small village northeast of Hebron. The entry gate to the village has of course been sealed by the Israel Defense Forces – like most West Bank towns, it’s been under siege since the war broke out – and getting there involves following a long and winding route through the town of Bani Na’im.

February 11, a Tuesday, started like every other day, Aaliyah says. Jannat went to school, came home for lunch and went to play with her cousins, who live nearby. At about 3 P.M., word spread that the army had invaded the village. Parents started to call their children to come inside. The army’s incursions here are an almost-daily affair. The soldiers have to be kept alert and active, after all.

According to Manal al-Jaabari, a field researcher for the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, that day, a few dozen troops arrived in eight military vehicles and headed to the area of the village’s stone-cutting mills, where they impounded a backhoe loader and a bulldozer. Along the way they killed Abdallah Farroukh, who was 19. His mother told B’Tselem that the soldiers left him lying on the road, bleeding, and that it took a long time to evacuate him because the entry road to the village has been blocked by the army.

Aaliyah didn’t know that someone had been killed. Nonetheless, she called her three children home. They closeted with her in the bedroom and helped her fold the laundry. From the bedroom window Aaliyah saw soldiers at a distance of less than 100 meters from the house. As her mother describes the events of that day to us, Jannat continues to fix her gaze on the floor and doesn’t respond to what is being said, pretending not to be listening. Only when she’s asked to recite for us what one says when playing with the prayer beads does the girl say, in a whisper, ‘Praise be to God, there is no God but Allah, Allah is great.’

A moment before the shot was fired into the bedroom, Jannat helped Mohammed down from the bed. She sat down on the floor, between the bed and a chest of drawers. Suddenly her mother heard a gunshot. She felt an explosion in the room, she says. The bullet hurtled through the window and slammed into a wall – we saw the hole it made.

Aaliyah immediately looked to see if her children were safe. To her horror she saw that Jannat’s face, head and blouse were drenched in blood, which was spurting from her eyes and head. Panic-stricken, Aaliyah shouted for help. The two younger boys, Mohammed and Salah, also cried and shouted, but no help arrived.

‘I’m bleeding! I’m bleeding!’ Jannat cried out. She says that at first she didn’t feel any pain, only the blood streaming down her face.

Faisal, the father, wasn’t in the village at the time. Aaliyah called her brother, who arrived in his car within minutes. A gruesome photograph of the little girl shows her sitting on the floor, her head, face and blouse red with blood. It was taken as she sat in the stairwell, waiting for her uncle to arrive with his car.

The two younger children were left alone in the house, crying.

The adults and Jannat now had to get to the hospital by way of dirt roads, because the army was still in the village. The steel gate that suffocates Beit Anun was shut, and they had to summon an ambulance to meet them at the other side of town. It took 10 to 15 minutes for the Palestinian ambulance from Hebron to arrive and collect Jannat and her mother. Until then Aaliyah tried to slow the bleeding with a handkerchief.

When the paramedic in the vehicle bandaged Jannat, she felt for the first time the pain that has accompanied her ever since. Her mother didn’t see whether the soldiers were still close by. ‘Even if they were, I wouldn’t have seen them. I was totally preoccupied with Jannat,’ she says. Aaliyah is a smiling, optimistic woman who exudes charm and tries to calm her daughter, to encourage her as much as possible, and to project hope and optimism for the future.

The IDF Spokesperson’s Unit gave the following statement to Haaretz this week:

‘In the course of operational activity by IDF forces in the Beit Anun region of the Judea Division, a violent public disturbance occurred. IDF forces responded by firing at the suspects who participated in the disturbance; the claim that a child was wounded is known. In the wake of the incident, the Criminal Investigation Division opened an investigation. For obvious reasons, we can’t elaborate on an ongoing investigation.’

When it comes to taking responsibility, moving the child to Israel for treatment or assistance and compensation, the IDF Spokesperson has nothing to say. The IDF doesn’t engage in those things. Its troops just shoot and ‘do the job.’

At Princess Alia Governmental Hospital in Hebron, internal bleeding of the brain was diagnosed, so Jannat had to be transferred to Al-Meezan Hospital, also in Hebron, where more advanced treatment is available. Over the next eight days Jannat underwent surgery to stop the bleeding and to remove the many fragments that had penetrated her brain and both eyes. The latest operation took place on Sunday of last week, and at least two more operations are planned.

At first the physicians told her parents that Jannat would never see again, but later they left an opening for hope, especially with regard to the right eye. Jannat says she can distinguish between light and dark – ‘I feel the light,’ she says – and even sees shadows with her right eye. She walks about the house carefully and sometimes trips over objects or furniture. Her left eye still hurts. There’s a specialized institution in East Jerusalem – St. John of Jerusalem Eye Hospital – that could treat her but there’s no one to pay for it, her parents say.

In the Hebron hospital, Jannat is also receiving psychological care in the wake of her experience, once a week. The trauma is evident in her subdued, hesitant speech. At night she refuses to sleep alone and insists on being next to her mother in her bed. Every noise in the street makes her jump, fearing that the soldiers are back. What do you miss most? ‘My eyesight,’ Jannat replies quietly. ‘I want to see Mom and Dad and my two brothers.’

No one knows for sure when she’ll be able to return to school. Her father recalls what a good student she was, outstanding in her class.