Inside Gaza with the para-cycling team distributing bread under siege

On March 30, 2018, Gazan cyclist Alaa al-Dali was stand­ing 250 metres away from the tall, barbed-wire laced fence sep­a­rat­ing Pales­tine and Israel. Hold­ing onto his road bike, clad in neck-to-shin lycra, he watched as tens of thou­sands of Pales­tini­ans walked along the bor­der in the Great March of Return protests, when sud­den­ly he col­lapsed onto the floor.

A sniper had shot him in his right leg, as the Israeli mil­i­tary opened fire on pro­tes­tors. Over the course of the next 12 months, as the demon­stra­tions con­tin­ued, 266 peo­ple were killed and 30,000 more were injured, accord­ing to the health min­istry of Gaza. Alaa’s bone was shat­tered, and he was forced to have his leg ampu­tat­ed. With that went his dream of rid­ing in the Olympics for Palestine.

But Alaa’s cycling sto­ry wouldn’t end there. Three months lat­er he announced his goal of becom­ing Palestine’s first para-cyclist, and he would even­tu­al­ly form the Gaza Sun­birds para-cycling team. Now con­sist­ing of six mem­bers, the team is entire­ly made up of cyclists who lost their legs in the March of Return protests and oth­er pre­vi­ous attacks. Until 16 days ago, they had been train­ing in a bid to enter the 2024 Par­a­lympics, due to be held in Paris. 

On Octo­ber 7, Hamas forces crossed the bor­der into south­ern Israel, sur­pris­ing the coun­try with an attack that killed 1,400 and cap­tured more than 200. Since then, Israel have retal­i­at­ed with a bru­tal siege, and a relent­less bar­rage of airstrikes. On Tues­day (Octo­ber 17) an airstrike hit the Al-Ahli al-Ara­bi Hos­pi­tal, with the Pales­tin­ian health min­istry report­ing that 500 peo­ple were killed in the blast, plac­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty on the Israeli mil­i­tary. Israel have denied wrong­do­ing, instead blam­ing ​“ter­ror­ists” from the Islam­ic Jihad group. Islam­ic Jihad have also denied involve­ment, claim­ing that they were not active in Gaza at the time. In the run up to the bomb­ing Israel had issued evac­u­a­tion orders to 22 hos­pi­tals in North­ern Gaza.

The siege of Gaza has cre­at­ed a human­i­tar­i­an dis­as­ter. Food, med­ical aid, fuel, elec­tric­i­ty, and water have been heav­i­ly restrict­ed, which some human rights organ­i­sa­tions have stat­ed amounts to ​“col­lec­tive pun­ish­ment” – a war crime under inter­na­tion­al law. On Fri­day Octo­ber 13, Israel issued a warn­ing to 1 mil­lion Pales­tini­ans liv­ing in the north of the strip – incud­ing Gaza City – to evac­u­ate. ​“Every­one is afraid, every­one is actu­al­ly ter­ri­fied. They’re afraid of los­ing their loved ones, afraid of los­ing their own lives. When you look into people’s eyes, you might see them smil­ing but you can tell that they’re scared – they’re hop­ing they won’t get bombed and killed,” says Mohammed Abu Julia, 33, the man­ag­er of the Gaza Sun­birds team, and a local jour­nal­ist. He’s writ­ing from the South­ern Gaza strip, and we are unable to talk direct­ly because of Israeli restric­tions on elec­tric­i­ty sup­plies and inter­net access. ​“I am between Rafah and Khan You­nis, [where] Israel has claimed is safe and is still strik­ing with bombs.”

With a total area of just 365 square kilo­me­tres and a pop­u­la­tion of over 2 mil­lion, the strip is small, and the third most dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed ​‘polit­i­cal unit’ in the world. Approx­i­mate­ly half of those liv­ing in the strip are chil­dren.

​“I could ride the entire­ty of Gaza on my bike with­in three hours – 150 kilo­me­tres in three hours,” Mohammed says. ​“Gaza is done. They have us cor­nered. Blocked from the sea, blocked from the East, blocked from the North, and blocked from the West. We are in a big prison, and they just bring in water, food, cig­a­rettes, and they give us some elec­tric­i­ty – six hours of it [a day].”

Mohammed has been on the move since the evac­u­a­tion order, stay­ing with oth­ers kind enough to open their doors in the time of cri­sis. But he is in a more priv­i­leged posi­tion than oth­ers, with a rel­a­tive­ly well-pay­ing job and the abil­i­ty to afford basic needs to keep him­self alive. ​“Any­time I’d be some­where and find canned foods, flour, sug­ar, rice, water – you know, the basic life neces­si­ties – milk for my one-year-old daugh­ter, dia­pers,” he says. ​“I bought huge quan­ti­ties, because when you go for sanc­tu­ary at someone’s place, it is wrong not to share the neces­si­ties you bought with the peo­ple host­ing you in their sup­pos­ed­ly safe area. I am able to do this because I am a jour­nal­ist and I have a car.”

“Oth­ers aren’t so lucky, they have to walk,” he con­tin­ues. ​“Some peo­ple who had been dis­placed from the North to the South walked there. They couldn’t car­ry any canned foods or heavy things – just their own chil­dren who can’t walk on their own.”

Mohammed’s fam­i­ly have tak­en the deci­sion to split up, with his wife and chil­dren stay­ing in one home, while his father and sib­lings stay in anoth­er. ​“We sleep in sep­a­rate places, so that at least some of us sur­vive,” he explains. ​“Oth­ers have a dif­fer­ent sit­u­a­tion – some peo­ple are choos­ing to sleep all in one room so that if they get striked they all get wiped out togeth­er so that none of them have to live alone. Because no one is going to fill the hole in their hearts if they lose their families.”

In 1948, the nation of Israel was cre­at­ed as 750,000 Pales­tini­ans were vio­lent­ly forced to leave their ances­tral homes as Zion­ist mil­i­tary forces launched an offen­sive across vil­lages in Pales­tine, declar­ing inde­pen­dence and the right to the land. Now known as the Nak­ba (cat­a­stro­phe), it would be the begin­ning of a tumul­tuous peri­od in the Mid­dle East, par­tic­u­lar­ly for Pales­tin­ian peo­ple. Over the past 75 years, Israel has set­tled into and invad­ed even more ter­ri­to­ry – marked by the Six Day War in 1967, which saw Israel occu­py the whole of his­toric Pales­tine, leav­ing some 70 per cent of Gaza’s pop­u­la­tion offi­cial­ly reg­is­tered as refugees. It’s with­in this con­text that Hamas was cre­at­ed and came to pow­er in Gaza in 2007, after win­ning the 2006 elec­tion and forc­ing out the sec­u­lar Fatah gov­ern­ment in a brief civ­il war.

Israel respond­ed by blockad­ing the strip, mak­ing con­di­tions for those liv­ing inside even more dif­fi­cult. ​“The Israeli occu­pa­tion had already been putting a lot of pres­sure on Pales­tini­ans and lim­it­ing every­thing going into Gaza,” Mohammed says. ​“We have six miles of coast­line, and no one is allowed to fish.”

For peo­ple grow­ing up in the Gaza Strip, who are so used to vio­lence, the dan­ger of airstrikes, and Israel’s con­trol of essen­tial resources – the sit­u­a­tion now feels like a tip­ping point. ​“Hon­est­ly, ever since I was 10 and became aware about all this hap­pen­ing, this is the first time that I feel like the sit­u­a­tion is cat­a­stroph­ic,” Mohammed says. ​“The sit­u­a­tion is com­plete­ly cat­a­stroph­ic in all aspects. Water, the envi­ron­ment – there’s huge amounts of trash in the streets because the munic­i­pal­i­ty can’t remove any of it. There’s no fuel, no elec­tric­i­ty, no water.

“They keep call­ing all the wars that had hap­pened before wars, but they were actu­al­ly inten­tion­al acts of aggres­sion tar­get­ing Gaza or cer­tain indi­vid­u­als,” he alleges. ​“This time it’s a one-sided war – it’s an exter­mi­na­tion war from one very strong side, an oppres­sor that is sup­port­ed by the US and a lot of Euro­pean coun­tries. I have no idea what they’re think­ing when they give them the green light to bomb a hos­pi­tal, when they give them the green light to hit a home they know is filled with chil­dren, women, and civil­ians. They bombed the mar­ket in Mukhayam Jabalya. Ever since the begin­ning they’ve been bomb­ing places they know are very active and filled with people.”

It’s a des­per­ate­ly trag­ic sit­u­a­tion, for a team that had found mean­ing and pur­pose in the tough con­di­tions. All of the Sun­birds mem­bers have lost loved ones in the past fort­night, and with Israeli senior offi­cials hint­ing at a full-scale ground inva­sion to come, it’s like­ly to get even worse. With train­ing for the Par­a­lympics off the cards now, the team mem­bers have turned to help­ing the com­mu­ni­ty in any way they can. On Wednes­day, Octo­ber 18, the team hand­ed out over 300 kgs of bread to 1,800 peo­ple in the city of Rafah. It’s a small-yet-sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion – to 0.01 per cent of the city’s pop­u­la­tion – but they hope to be able to con­tin­ue to offer sup­port in the com­ing days.

Com­ment­ing on the distribution’s suc­cess in a state­ment seen by Huck, the Gaza Sun­birds founder and cap­tain Alaa al-Dali said: ​“Some peo­ple start­ed cry­ing when they received the bread. Tears of joy. For bread. Peo­ple were cry­ing over receiv­ing bread, some­thing that was always avail­able to us is now pre­cious. Peo­ple used to suf­fer from the lack of oth­er things but not some­thing as basic as bread.

“I was out, and my wife and fam­i­ly were very afraid for me,” he con­tin­ued. ​“They were afraid of get­ting bombed while I wasn’t there too. But it was impor­tant for me to help peo­ple and I was con­cerned about get­ting this bread to peo­ple in need.”

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