Mohammed Saleh sits on the sands of Manly beach and looks at the waves. The last time he was at the Sydney beach, four and a half years ago, he had completed his training as a surf lifesaver and was heading home to Gaza to set up Palestine’s first surf club.
He planned to return to Sydney to report on its success. Instead, he and his family have fled their war torn home, leaving the club and its decimated junior lifesaving program – known as Nippers – behind.
“My feelings are complicated. I’m so happy but so sad at the same time,” the 40-year-old human rights activist says, just a day after landing in Sydney from Egypt.
“We tried to make something like this,” he adds, referring to Manly beach and its surf lifesaving culture. “But when you see Gaza beach now … nothing will be like before 7 October.”
Since their home in Gaza City was bombed in the early stages of the war, he and his wife, Faten, and children, Guevara, 12, and Adam and Sham, both eight, travelled from refuge to refuge, each time moving further south in the besieged enclave. They finally left Rafah 24 hours before its border crossing closed.
Even standing safe beside Manly’s North Steyne Surf Lifesaving Club, the shock of their experience remains vivid. A passing helicopter panics the children, who fear an imminent airstrike.
Four of their Gaza Nipper friends and three volunteer staff have been killed since 7 October, with more feared dead.
Maha and Zuhair Al Bura’e, aged 10 and 11, died with their family in Bait Lahiya in November. Mohammed and Omar Mduokh, aged five and six, were killed in their home in Gaza City in December. The body of Omar – who dreamed of visiting Australia – remains under rubble.
One of the Gazan club’s managers, Safa’a Abu Saif, died when her home was bombed. Its drone photographer, Mustafa Thrayya, was killed by an airstrike in January. Its first aid trainer, Hatem Awad, died when his ambulance was hit.
Hasan Alhabil, who several years ago trained with Saleh at North Steyne, is unable to escape Gaza, where all exits remain indefinitely closed.
Daily existence in Gaza was all about survival, says Saleh. People queued for up to four hours for food and water; it took three hours of on-and-off electricity to get 10 minutes of mobile phone charge; Saleh regularly told his neighbours where his family planned to sleep each night in case the building was bombed while they slept.
“It’s horrible. Really, nobody can describe the situation there, even me. It’s too difficult,” he says.
Gaza Beach Surf Lifesaving Club was to be a different kind of refuge, a place of hope.
The Covid-19 pandemic set plans back, as did isolated conflict in the territory in 2021. However, despite military tension in the summer of 2022, a pilot program for the club was launched that July, followed by the club’s first full season in 2023.
Water safety and education form the backbone of Nippers – Australia’s surf lifesaving program for about 60,000 children aged five to 14. But in Gaza, Nippers also provided a much-needed opportunity for children to play and exercise on the 45km strip of shoreline, which is heavily surveilled by the Israeli Defence Force.
Saleh and Alhabil incorporated beach clean-ups into each session and the 50 Nippers practised paddling, surfing and swimming. They played games including What’s the time, Mr Shark?, tug of war, bucket races and the club favourite, beach flags.
They also improvised. The Israeli government did not allow them to import fibreglass surfboards, so they made their own. Without a dedicated surf club, they trained in tents. Saturday became Nippers day – and slip, slop, slap, slurp was their mantra.
“It was a new experience in Gaza,” recalls Saleh.
But even before the club finished its first surf lifesaving patrol on Gaza beach, the refuge was shattered.
In 2020, the president of North Steyne surf club, Chris Gibbs Stewart, said that training two Palestinians in surf life saving was the start of a long collaboration. She didn’t know that support would extend to an emergency evacuation during a bloody conflict.
With the help of the Northern Beaches Committee for Palestine, the surf club rallied to raise money to pay for the family’s tourist visas and to ensure their safe passage to Egypt.
“There were two miracles,” Caroline Graham, co-founder of the committee, says. “We had to raise $20,000 to get them out, and we did. The other miracle is the Rafah crossing was closed for good, 24 hours after we got them across.”
Now, Saleh is a member of the North Steyne surf club and his children plan to join its Nippers program in September. But the fate of the Gaza Beach Surf Lifesaving Club is less certain.
A local architect had drafted plans for an Australian-style club house at Gaza beach – a building that, had it been completed, “would have been bombed to rubble by now,” Graham says.
Gaza-born Shamikh Khalil Badra, a University of Wollongong PhD student who lives in Sydney, initially proposed the idea of the Gaza surf lifesavers. He vows to keep the club alive.
His father, a great supporter of the club, visited Gaza beach every week during the Nippers’ inaugural season. He died in December after being unable to access medical support during an illness. Badra’s brother and his six family members in Gaza have been missing, presumed dead, for more than seven months.
“Bringing Mohammed here is a compensation. We will rise up and relaunch the Nippers program on the shores of the Gaza Strip,” he says.
For Saleh, though, the club’s resurrection feels a long way off.
“The important thing is: we are still alive and we are here,” he says. “I can’t think about anything else.”
