GAZA CITY, Dec 9: The players race across the pitch on crutches, jostling for the football and passing it back and forth, their prosthetic legs lined up along the sidelines at a stadium in the Gaza Strip.
They are the first Palestinian national football team made up entirely of amputees – players drawn from a population of hundreds that has grown in recent years through several rounds of fighting between Israel and the territory’s militant Hamas rulers.
They say the game helps them cope with the trauma of their injuries and the hardships of living in a crowded territory that has endured four wars and a blockade imposed by Israel and Egypt since Hamas seized power from rival Palestinian forces in 2007.
“We feel we have something, we can give something,” said Ziad Abu Halib, 41, who lost his right leg in 2008, during the first Israel-Hamas war. He hasn’t missed a single practice or match since joining the local league after it was founded in 2019.
The International Committee of the Red Cross, working with the Palestinian Amputee Football Association, sponsored the long process of forming the national team. The players hope to compete regionally, their sights set on the World Cup for amputees in Turkey next October.
Qualifying matches will be held in Iran in March – they can make the trip if the border opens to allow them to travel through Egypt.
Coach Simon Baker, a Red Cross consultant and founder of the Irish Amputee Football Association, oversaw a final training session of the season on Sunday. The rules are modified in accordance with the World Amputee Football Federation. Players leave their prosthetic limbs on the sidelines and move about with crutches, which cannot be used to advance or direct the ball.
Baker selected 20 players from a pool of 47 athletes representing five Gaza clubs.
“They were tested (for) speed, agility, fitness and also looking at the skill,” Baker said. “We want the player that has everything” and is also a team player, he said.
Sadly, the war and unrest of recent years have provided hundreds of potential recruits. Gaza is home to an estimated 1,600 amputees out of a population of more than 2 million.
Hamas organized violent protests along the heavily-guarded frontier with Israel for several months in 2018 and 2019, with the aim of easing the blockade of Gaza. Thousands turned out every Friday, many of them bused in by Hamas, an Islamic militant group hostile to Israel. (AP)1
