Eight Palestinian athletes will take part in the Paris Olympic Games, which get under way on July 26. After nine months of war in Gaza, their presence will serve as a platform to raise public awareness of their commitment to their people, according to Palestinian officials.
The Palestinian Territories will this summer be officially represented at the Olympic Games for the eighth time, beginning with the 1996 Games in Atlanta. The Palestinian delegation will include eight athletes in Paris, up from five who competed in the Tokyo Olympics three years ago.
After nine months of war in Gaza, triggered by the unprecedented attack on Israel by Hamas commandos on October 7, their presence in Paris is already a minor miracle. “Representing Palestine” at the Paris Games “is already a victory”, said the Palestinian Authority's minister of state for foreign affairs, Varsen Aghabekian, at a press conference on July 14 at the French Institute in Ramallah.
“The departure of our athletes for the 2024 Olympics comes at a very dark moment in our history,” she added. “You are not just athletes but also ... symbols of Palestinian resistance,” she said.
“Palestinian sport has been hit hard by the war,” said Nicolas Kassianides, the French consul general in Jerusalem, at the Ramallah event, adding that Paris was providing Palestinian sport with €1 million in support in 2024.
A hard-hit sporting world
Sports infrastructure has been largely destroyed in Gaza, while there are many obstacles to taking part in sporting activities in the occupied West Bank. According to Jibril Rajoub, president of the Palestinian Olympic Committee, 400 athletes, volunteers and sports workers have been injured or killed in Gaza since the enclave was besieged by Israel after October 7.
French daily Le Monde reported that “on November 14, 2023, two figures from the national volleyball team, Ibrahim Qusaya and Hassan Zuaiter, were killed in a bombing raid on the Jabalia refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. On December 18, 2023, Bilal Abu Samaan, coach of the national athletics team, was killed in an air raid. In January 2024, Hani al-Masdar, coach of the Palestinian Olympic soccer team, was killed by a missile fired by an Israeli plane”.
The athletes must use the media exposure offered by the Games as a “platform” to raise public awareness of Israel's military campaign in Gaza, says Rajoub. “That's why we have to take part.”
However, Palestinian athletes are expected to abide by the International Olympic Committee's (IOC) rules of neutrality. According to Rule 50 of the Olympic Charter, “No kind of demonstration or political, religious or racial propaganda is permitted in any Olympic sites, venues or other areas.”
Only one athlete qualified directly
The road to Paris was not a straightforward one for the Palestinian competitors. Only one of the eight Palestinian athletes going to this year’s Games qualified under the official criteria, the other seven having received special invitations from the IOC.
Taekwondo athlete Omar Ismail managed to secure his Olympic qualification directly at the Asian qualifying tournament in Tai’an, China – the first time a Palestinian has qualified in a combat sport without having to go through a “wild card” playoff process.
“I've been dreaming of this moment since I was a little boy. I was very happy to imagine myself in Paris with the best athletes in the world. Very happy to show my flag on the podium,” Ismail told RMC Sport in April.
“I represent the Palestinians. I hope that when young people see me, they tell themselves that they can achieve their dreams, that they can work on themselves, that they can be like me or even better than me,” said Ismaïl, currently ranked 61st in the world in the under-58kg category. Ismaïl, who trains in Dubai, confided that he would “rather talk about his sport” than the geopolitical situation.
Two 800-metre specialists, Layla al-Masri and Mohammed Dwedar, will be competing on the track in Paris. The latter had already taken part in last year's World Athletics Championships in Budapest, where he finished ninth in his heat.
Dwedar, from Jericho in the West Bank, said that just participating in Paris was the important thing. “My presence here is already a success. I have represented Palestine in a major championship,” he told the monthly magazine Le Courrier de l'Atlas.
Taking part for a whole people
Two Palestinian swimmers will be competing in Paris: Valerie Tarazi, in the 200-metre medley, and Yazan al Bawwab, in the 100-metre backstroke, who also received an invitation to the Tokyo Games in 2021.
Al Bawwab, 24, was born in Saudi Arabia, grew up in Dubai and has family in the West Bank. He hopes to show the world that Palestinians deserve “the same rights” as everyone else, as he said to the US broadcaster NBC. For him, taking part in the Games is about much more than just sports, it's “a tool to prove to the world that we are human beings too”.
His compatriot Tarazi, who also holds American citizenship, intends to use her presence in Paris to speak out on behalf of the people of Gaza, where many of her relatives live. “We're not here to compete just for ourselves or to represent ourselves personally,” she told NBC. “It's about much more than that.”
While Tarazi is concentrating on the Olympics, she regrets not being able to do more for her people. “I'm one of the luckiest Palestinians because I'm not there, but at the same time I'm unhappy because I can't be there. It's too dangerous,” she says. “It weighs on us every day.”
Difficult preparation for the athletes
In boxing, the Palestinian delegation will be represented by 20-year-old Waseem Abu Sal, who will be the first Palestinian boxer to compete in the Olympics.
After receiving an invitation to compete, he imagined himself bringing home the very first Palestinian medal. “It's been my dream since I was 10,” he told AFP in his gym in Ramallah, in the West Bank. “Every day, I woke up wondering how to get to the Olympics.”
Abu Sal will compete in the lightweight category (under 63kg), with his first Olympic bout on July 28. His training is conducted remotely with his Cairo-based coach Ahmed Harara, who supervises his workouts from Egypt because of Israeli restrictions that prevent him from returning to the West Bank. “I only see him when I travel” for international tournaments, said Abu Sal. ”He defines my training programme every day and I practise every morning.”
Fares Badawi will represent the Palestinian territories in Paris in the under-81kg weight class in judo. The 27-year-old has already taken part in world championships and major tournaments such as the Paris Grand Slam. Finally, in skeet shooting, 49-year-old Jorge Antonio Salhe has been invited to compete for Palestine.
The Palestinians have been recognised as a member of the IOC since 1995 and are looking to take home their first Olympic medal.
For Nader Jayousi, technical director of the Palestinian Olympic Committee, the most important thing is not just to take part. The delegation is hoping to finally place an athlete on the winners’ podium. “We don't need people to feel sorry for us,” he told NBC. “Above all, we need people to recognise what we are capable of achieving as a nation.”
This piece has been translated from the original in French.
