Palestinian Athletes Told to Take 'Resistance' to the Olympics

Valerie Tarazi will compete in the swimming for the Palestine delegation at the Paris Olympics - AFP
Valerie Tarazi will compete in the swimming for the Palestine delegation at the Paris Olympics - AFP
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Palestinian Athletes Told to Take 'Resistance' to the Olympics

Valerie Tarazi will compete in the swimming for the Palestine delegation at the Paris Olympics - AFP
Valerie Tarazi will compete in the swimming for the Palestine delegation at the Paris Olympics - AFP

Eight Palestinian athletes taking part in the Paris Olympics will be symbols of "resistance" during the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, a Palestinian minister said Sunday as the official delegation left the occupied West Bank.

This will be the eighth time Palestinian athletes have taken part in the Olympics since 1996, but Olympic committee head Jibril Rajoub said the athletes had never felt so much attention.

The athletes are preparing for the start of the Paris Games on July 26 in a "very dark moment in our history", said Palestinian authority minister of state for foreign affairs Varsen Aghabekian Shahin, AFP reported.

"You are not just athletes, you are also ... symbols of Palestinian resistance," Aghabekian added.

French organizers have stepped up security in Paris because of the conflict. But Rajoub said: "We want this participation to be a message from the Palestinians to the world that it is time for them to be free in their homeland."

"Through this participation, we want to present the suffering of the Palestinian people and the unprecedented killing taking place in Gaza," he added.

Rajoub said 400 athletes, coaches and sporting officials in Gaza have been killed or wounded since the start of the war on October 7.

Majed Abu Marahil, a long distance runner who was the first Palestinian to compete in an Olympics in Atlanta in 1996, died in June. According to officials, he suffered kidney failure and could not get treatment as Gaza's hospitals have been devastated by the conflict.

Rajoub said getting athletes to Paris "is already a victory".

The eight will compete in athletics, swimming, archery, taekwondo, judo and boxing. One secured a place through regular qualifying and seven were given special invitations.

Swimmer Valerie Tarazi, 24, has US and Palestinian nationality and won titles at the Arab Games last year in Algeria.

"My heart aches for them," she said of the Gaza people. Tarazi said she has relatives in Gaza and speaks with them nearly every day.

"Being in Paris on behalf of Palestine is a very important thing, and taking part in a global swimming competition at a time when there are no places to train is surreal," she said.



‘We Need Everything’: Gazans Ponder Mammoth Task of Rebuilding

 An aerial photograph taken by a drone shows Palestinians walking through the destruction caused by the Israeli air and ground offensive, in Rafah, Gaza Strip, Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2025. (AP)
An aerial photograph taken by a drone shows Palestinians walking through the destruction caused by the Israeli air and ground offensive, in Rafah, Gaza Strip, Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2025. (AP)
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‘We Need Everything’: Gazans Ponder Mammoth Task of Rebuilding

 An aerial photograph taken by a drone shows Palestinians walking through the destruction caused by the Israeli air and ground offensive, in Rafah, Gaza Strip, Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2025. (AP)
An aerial photograph taken by a drone shows Palestinians walking through the destruction caused by the Israeli air and ground offensive, in Rafah, Gaza Strip, Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2025. (AP)

As bombs rained down and entire neighborhoods around her were pulverized, Shayma Abualatta found the only way to cope with the trauma of Gaza's 15-month-long war was to make sure she did all she could to get an education.

Now the 21-year-old, who is studying computer science and computer engineering, wants to use what she learned to help rebuild a land where the most basic lifelines have been severed and where everyone needs everything.

"I want to stay in my country, to stay where I am, to stay with my relatives and the people I love," she said.

As a fragile ceasefire takes hold in Gaza, Palestinians are beginning to think cautiously about rebuilding - a Herculean task when the entire 2.3 million population is homeless with many displaced multiple times.

During the conflict, Abualatta said the only way she could exercise some control over her life was to keep studying. But for the first three months of the war, she could not even bring herself to open her laptop. The first time she did, she cried.

"I felt like it was such a blessing to have the opportunity to achieve something," she said in a phone interview from central Gaza, where she had fled from air strikes in the north.

The Israeli military has laid to waste to much of Gaza in its campaign to eliminate Hamas in retaliation for the group's Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel.

Gaza health authorities say at least 47,000 people have been killed in the conflict, with the rubble likely holding the remains of thousands more.

As well as freeing 33 of the 98 Israeli and foreign hostages still held by Hamas, the ceasefire deal requires Israel to allow 600 truckloads of aid into Gaza every day for six weeks.

"We need the border crossings to open without restrictions," Abualatta said. "We need everything."

Electricity is one of her main concerns. Every day she walks from the tent where she now lives to a local charging point where she can get online. With peace, she hopes more solar panels can be brought into the territory.

"We just need to clear the rubble and set up tents over them," she said. "We will start off the with tents and develop them slowly."

That might prove easier said than done.

SCALE OF CRISIS ‘UNIMAGINABLE’

The scale of the humanitarian crisis is "almost unimaginable", Alexandra Saieh of charity Save the Children, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation, "multiple pressing crises are unfolding, and they are deeply interconnected".

Save the Children said it would prioritize sending food, water and medicine for children.

"The race is on to save children facing hunger and disease as the shadow of famine looms," Saieh said.

The United Nations says removing 42 million tons of rubble in Gaza could take more than a decade and cost $1.2 billion.

Fuel to power water desalination plants is also essential, said Vincent Stehli, head of operations at aid group Action Against Hunger. But repairing water networks would require items such as metal pipes that Israel currently bans entering Gaza.

Stehli said aid groups "cannot wait 10 or 15 years," until the rubble is cleared. "Reconstruction has to happen. Recovery has to happen to some of the key installations," he said.

Abualatta agrees. When her Gaza-based university suspended online classes, she sought out University of the People (UoPeople), a tuition-free, completely online university, and began taking computer science courses.

She expects to graduate next year.

UoPeople has raised $300,000 to pay for scholarships for students in Gaza, Shai Reshef, the university's president, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

"If we get more money, we will get even more of them, as many as we as we have money for," he said.

But he said students could not wait till their schools and universities were rebuilt to get an education.

"What do you do with the kids? With the students? Teach them online," Reshef said.