As her father disconnects the plastic tube from her throat, six-year-old Maria Aman’s face contorts as though she has been pushed through an air-lock in space. Hamdi, her father, has 50 seconds to clean her breathing tube before she runs out of air.

Paralysed from the neck down, Maria cannot breathe without a special ventilator. She has gasped her way through this ritual every morning for more than a year since the tragedy that wiped out most of her family and left her quadriplegic.

Now her fate rests with the Israeli Supreme Court, which will decide next month whether she should be deported from Israel. Her struggle is a compelling case of how even the worst aspects of the conflict can bring people together - and how bureaucracy and politics can tear them apart.

It began in May last year, when her uncle invited the family out to test-drive his new car in their native Gaza. They did not know that the car ahead contained Muhammad Dahdouh, a senior Islamic Jihad leader visiting his wife, who had given birth in hospital.

Suddenly the family heard the roar of an Israeli aircraft, and a missile slammed into the wanted man’s car, killing him. Maria’s mother, seven-year-old brother, uncle and grandmother also died in the fireball. Maria’s spinal cord was severed and her lungs were punctured by shrapnel.

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