Israel’s air defenses held off Iran, but do not cover where a seven-year-old boy was hit.

Al-Fur’ah, Israel: The hospital waiting room was quiet Monday: no crowd of family members or a rush of patients. Israel’s air defenses had just fended off a large-scale Iranian attack and only one serious casualty was recorded.

There was no sense that a crisis had been averted outside the pediatric intensive care unit at Soroka Medical Center in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba. Instead, tension filled the air until the living room doors opened and a gasping mother stumbled out, her face contorted. Then raw emotion quickly took its place as she collapsed into a chair, crying.

While Israel suffered little significant damage on Sunday (AEST), this family was dealt a devastating blow. Amina al-Hasoni, 7, was clinging to life: the only serious victim of the Iranian bombing. And if it weren’t for systemic inequalities in Israel, her relatives said, perhaps she too could have been saved.

There are approximately 300,000 Arab Bedouins in the Negev Desert. About a quarter of them live in villages that are not recognized by Israeli officials. Without state recognition, these communities have long suffered from a lack of planning and basic services, including running water, sewage and electricity. And few have access to bomb shelters, despite repeated requests to the State.