Bedridden, equipped with a respiratory assistance system, 12-year-old Zahra's face has been deformed and her gaze sad. Anxious to reassure her, her mother, Ghalia (like most of the people interviewed, she asked that her surname not be mentioned), whispered affectionately, "My darling, everything will work out and you'll be even more beautiful than before." The child remained impassive, as if she didn't believe it, in the studio apartment where the family is living temporarily, in Hamra, a district of west Beirut.

Zahra was disfigured and wounded in the arm when a missile hit her hometown of Deir Al-Zahrani, in southern Lebanon, on the first day of Israel's war against Hezbollah. She has years of surgery ahead of her. According to the health ministry, civilians make up the majority of the more than 2,700 people killed in the bombing campaign that began on September 23.

Transported to a private hospital nearby in Nabatieh, which was overwhelmed by the influx of patients and lacked reconstructive surgery specialists, the young girl "bled for two days. One more and she would have died," her mother recalled with horror. She was then transferred to the American University of Beirut Medical Center (AUBMC), thanks to British-Palestinian doctor Ghassan Abu Sittah. The doctor set up a fund, financed by members of the Palestinian diaspora and Westerners, to cover the accommodation costs of the family – Zahra, her parents, her younger brother and sister – and the operations the young girl has to undergo. She will have to have an artificial lower jaw implanted.

Launched in December 2023, two months after the start of Israel's war in Gaza on October 7, 2023, in retaliation for the Hamas attack in the south of Israel, which killed 1,200 people, the fund was originally intended to provide reconstructive surgery and support for young Palestinian survivors of the enclave who arrive in Beirut. Lebanese children are now also benefiting. A specialist in facial reconstruction, Abu Sittah "repaired" dozens of broken faces from the wars in Syria and Iraq during the 2010s.

In the autumn, after rushing to Gaza as he does for every Israeli offensive, he didn't leave the emergency ward for 40 days, operating non-stop on victims of Israeli bombardments. Over 44,000 Palestinians died in 13 months, and the Gaza Strip was transformed into a vast field of ruins. When the first beneficiary of the fund, a young Gazan named Adam, his left arm in shreds, arrived in Beirut in May, Lebanon was unstable but few believed there would be an all-out war. Western diplomats felt that Hezbollah was satisfied with the low-intensity conflict it had opened up against Israel, in support of Hamas, and was careful to ensure that the confrontation did not spill over the border.

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