Mohammed Abu-Hujair was booked on a flight to Spain last October. A scout from Real Madrid had visited Gaza in August and invited Mohammed, a 17-year-old who plays on the left wing, to join a football academy with the hope that, if he did well, he would stay in Spain. Mohammed also had the promise of a contract with Gaza Sport Club, making him one of the youngest players to sign with the team.
Then came the 7 October attacks on Israel, and the war in Gaza. Mohammed didn’t make that flight. “My life has turned upside down in a blink of an eye,” he says.
Mohammed, who had been living at the al-Buraij refugee camp, is now seeking refuge at a displacement camp on the site of the Al-Salah football club in Deir al-Balah. Holding back tears, he gets small comfort from a five-a-side football tournament in the camp. “I’ve been robbed of my dreams,” he says. “Instead of training every day, I am now living in a dilapidated tent where my biggest dream is to get back home.
“I get up every day crying at the loss this war has caused me. I am just dreaming of an end to this war … I yearn for the boy I was before 7 October.”
Many Palestinian sportsmen and women – football and basketball players, martial arts practitioners and swimmers – have been killed. A karate champion, Nagham Abu-Samra, 27, was injured in a missile strike on 17 December, had her leg amputated and later died of her wounds in al-Areesh hospital in Egypt. If the war had not happened, Nagham would be competing for a spot in this summer’s Olympics in Paris.
Mohammed Barakat, a Palestinian footballing legend who scored 114 goals in his career and played for clubs in Jordan and Saudi Arabia, was killed in March when his house was bombed. A young manager, Yousef al-Heela, was killed in an airstrike on al-Maghazi refugee camp’s open market.
Not so long ago in Gaza there were 10 stadiums where, on weekend afternoons, fans would gather to roar for their childhood clubs, the sidelines thrumming with local rivalries and players trying to imitate Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi. Sport, especially football, was a rare escape and outlet for most Palestinians in Gaza under a strictly imposed blockade for more than 16 years where entertainment was inaccessible. Gone are the surfers who, in the prewar days, would gather on the break in Gaza City’s port. Most of the judo, karate, swimming, volleyball, wrestling and gym clubs are shut down. But it is the clubs and facilities for football, once Gaza’s overarching passion, that have borne the brunt of the destruction.
The stadiums, along the shores of the Mediterranean or in the heart of refugee camps, hosted matches between 44 clubs in the four-division league in Gaza and the Gazan Local Cup. They were once filled with laughter and revelry but now, in their place, children cry out in hunger and mothers’ faces get pale and grey from wood fire.
Thirteen months ago Al-Ataa Football Club in Khan Younis clinched the third-tier championship over Al-Mosadar Club and earned promotion at Khan Younis Stadium. After the Israeli ground operations the venue is a pile of rubble. Eleven months ago Khadamat Rafah Club celebrated the Gazan Premier League title at Rafah Municipality and extended their record to seven league titles. Intensive airstrikes on the stadium’s neighbourhood have wrecked the surroundings.
Five days before 7 October, Ittihad Al-Shujayya rounded off the sixth match-week with a 3-1 win against Hilal Gaza at Al-Yarmouk Stadium; the stadium and both clubs have been levelled to the ground. Verified footage has shown Israeli forces inside the stadium dehumanising boys, men and elderly men as they hold them captive. Shortly after that footage emerged, the Palestinian Football Association (PFA) called on football’s international governing body, Fifa, to sanction Israeli teams over the war in Gaza and on 12 February football associations in the Middle East called for Israel to be banned from global sporting competition. Fifa has skirted the issue and Thomas Bach, president of the International Olympic Committee, said there was “no question” of banning Israel from Paris 2024.
Five clubs, distributed across the southern territories, have escaped Israeli bombing: Al-Salah, Khadamat Deir al-Balah and Ittihad Deir al-Balah football clubs in Deir al-Balah; and Rafah Youth and Khadamat Rafah football clubs in Rafah. Those clubs have been turned into shelters for thousands of people displaced from the north of Gaza since the first weeks of the war; al-Dorra Stadium is now home to more than 10,000 people, the only undamaged stadium in Gaza.
“Our players are being killed, our facilities have been destroyed and our clubs are being attacked,” Nader al-Jayooshi of the Palestinian Olympic Committee in Ramallah told the Guardian. “We have been trying to save our players’ careers but, unfortunately, we feel helpless. We just managed to evacuate only a few from Gaza; however, they’re mentally exhausted. Their families are trapped and suffering in Gaza. How can they perform well? It’s a huge dilemma. We really feel for them.”
Jayooshi added: “With the war on Gaza continuing, the sole standing sports facilities may be targeted, which means the entire collapse of sports. Given the current scale of destruction and murder of our athletes, we may not run any sports in Gaza for a decade.”
According to the PFA more than 243 athletes have been killed in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Of them 161 are footballers; 43 of those children. The PFA also claims Israeli forces have detained 11 athletes in the West Bank.
Sobhi Mabrook, the coach of Al-Salah, says: “We didn’t expect this war to last this long. If there were no war, we would be fighting for promotion to the first tier. However, everything and everyone is being attacked.
“At the club, we were running several sports and training hundreds of athletes of different ages in football, handball, karate and others. We also had a gym. Now, these players have lost their fitness, their families, and everything they’ve built for throughout their entire careers. It’s absolutely unbearable.”
