Four-year-old Syrian girl gets life-saving surgery in Israel

Earlier this month, a 4-year-old Syrian girl suffering from a heart condition that make walking and talking difficult underwent life-saving surgery at the Wolfson Medical Center, south of Tel Aviv, Israel.

Her story, one of help "in the land of the enemy," is making headlines around the world.

Since the Yom Kippur War four decades ago, Israel has been in a state of cease-fire with Syria.

Since 1995, more than 3,200 children from 45 countries have received heart surgery at Wolfson Medical Center through the nonprofit organization Save a Child's Heart (SACH).

"She would have definitely died if she wouldn't have arrived here," Ilan Cohen, one of the doctors who treated her, told NBC News.

"A lot of patients arrive here from enemy countries and view Israelis as demons. They are surprised that we are human without horns on our heads," he added. "This is the first time they see Israelis without a uniform and I think it's a good surprise.”

The young girl was born with only one heart ventricle, instead of two. She was always tired, very weak, and suffered from breathing problems. The condition was life-threatening. When Syrian doctors couldn't help her, the girl's mother appealed to the American Christian Association, which suggested they seek help in Israel.

"At first I feared the Syrian regime's response to our coming here," said the girl's mother. "Naturally, I myself was also afraid to come to Israel. But the moment I arrived I felt at ease. The doctors treated me and my girl nicely."

"As complicated as the surgery was, just bringing the girl and her mother to Israel required a series of hurdles cloaked in secrecy, a process that SACH asked to be kept off the record, before handing over a non-disclosure agreement," reported the Jerusalem Post.

The child and her mother have not been named in the press because of a potentially hostile reaction should they return home to Syria, NBC News reports.

"You have a good story here, but at the end of the day if she can’t go back to where she came from, you’ve saved her life but you’ve torn her apart from her family, which if they’d known that would happen in the first place they probably wouldn’t have agreed to have her come to Israel," said Simon Fisher, executive director of SACH.

The Syrian girl will have to return to Israel in a year for a follow-up surgery, once again navigating the complicated process of crossing hostile borders.

For now, the young girl is recuperating in a hospital ward alongside other children from the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Sudan, Romania, China and Israel. She's already walking again.

"We all hope that the co-existence that we created here in the clinic is a sign to what really can be achieved in the future," said Alona Raucher-Shternfeld, a pediatric cardiologist with Save a Child's Heart who also helped treat the child.

"Thank God, thank God, my daughter has recovered. She is so much better than before," her mother told CNN.