Hazem Suleiman is a member of the Gaza Sunbirds, a paracycling crew based mostly in Gaza. A former footballer, he misplaced a leg on account of being shot in protests on the Rafah border in 2018. We first spoke to him 5 months in the past as a part of our Gaza Voices sequence on on a regular basis Palestinian life. At the moment, Suleiman, who additionally images and paperwork life in Gaza, was coping with the toll of displacement from his residence in Rafah to the city of Khan Younis.
He and the opposite Sunbirds had been coaching arduous, hoping to characterize Palestine within the 2024 Paralympics in Paris, however after the Israeli assault on Gaza following Hamas’s assault on 7 October 2023, they have been unable to grasp this dream. They did at the least obtain their objective – to compete in a global competitors for the primary time – in Could this 12 months: the Para-Biking Highway World Cup, in Belgium and Italy.
Suleiman has been displaced twice since we final spoke. Days after our dialog in July, he fled from western Khan Younis in the direction of Rafah, on the southern finish of the Gaza Strip. He is aware of exactly how lengthy he and his younger household of 10 sheltered close to Rafah: 41 days. In late September, they returned to the Khan Younis neighbourhood and put up their blue tent in the identical spot.
“After we got here again, all the pieces was destroyed. It wasn’t what it was earlier than we left. Every so often, we nonetheless hear shelling, or a tent or close by constructing is bombed,” he says. He noticed the our bodies of a number of buddies and neighbours on their return journey.
The buzzing of a drone overhead is at occasions so loud that it drowns out Suleiman fully. He flips his telephone round to point out the destruction of the neighbourhood of sandy-coloured house blocks often known as Hamad Metropolis. Israeli bombardments, he says, have gutted the inside of the buildings. Within the shadow of the ruined buildings, he factors the digicam down to point out the flowers and peppers he has planted since his return.
“After we got here again, we introduced tiles from the road and put them inside our tents,” he says. “Partly this was as a result of we don’t need to stay with flooring fabricated from sand. Nevertheless it additionally exhibits that these are our houses. We care about these particulars.”
Even the roads that Suleiman described utilizing for brief biking journeys once we spoke earlier than have been broken past recognition within the months since. Lanes of easy asphalt have been changed by sandy grime tracks strewn with shattered concrete. “All of the first rate roads have been destroyed and, irrespective of how good a bike owner you might be, it’s so troublesome to make use of them,” he says. “My bike is nice and I’m athlete, however it’s nonetheless so arduous.”
When the Gaza Sunbirds’ co-founder, Alaa al-Dali, evacuated from Gaza and competed in Belgium and Italy final Could, it marked a peak for the group’s sporting achievements. However the query of what the crew ought to do subsequent loomed giant, together with others about what it meant to be in a paracycling group the place many now haven’t any means to coach, no houses – no bikes, even.
Whereas leaving Gaza was as soon as extraordinarily troublesome, it has turn into unimaginable. Karim Ali, the Sunbirds’ different co-founder, says the Sunbirds have stopped preserving monitor of the variety of individuals they know who’ve been killed since final 12 months. “We have now to adapt to the scenario the world has put us in, however your entire system isn’t constructed for it,” he says.
The group is usually engaged on delivering assist to these struggling in Gaza, the place persons are dealing with fixed loss and struggling to feed themselves and their households. They’re attempting to make sure that meals assist organised by the Sunbirds reaches individuals amid a steep drop in assist entry, which has turn into even worse since October (they’re closely reliant on abroad donations through their Go Fund Me web page). Their newest initiative is pizza-making workshops for hundreds of Gaza kids.
They’re additionally hoping to boost sufficient cash to assist the tens of hundreds of new amputees in Gaza. “We want advocates for individuals with disabilities in Gaza and I hope the Sunbirds can play that function in future,” Ali says. “We’re going to want individuals with disabilities within the driving seat when, ultimately, communities can rebuild in an accessible method … our goal is to create a paracycling and rehabilitation centre in Gaza for amputees.”
Suleiman says he declined to evacuate for the race in Belgium, as a result of he didn’t need to depart his household behind. “Even when I had the choice to stay in any a part of world, I’d all the time select Gaza. There’s a relationship between Gaza and its people who nobody can perceive – I’d by no means need to depart this place,” he stated.
In September, he based an assist organisation, Mulham Charity Crew, to ship sizzling meals to his neighbours. He hopes to develop it sufficient to ship assist throughout Gaza and abroad.
“My foremost dream is to get up tomorrow to a ceasefire. That is what we’ve all the time needed,” he says. “However the first and final journey for me is to have the ability to get a prosthetic leg. I’ve a bacterial challenge within the bone the place my leg was amputated, so I can’t connect a prosthesis – my dream is to have the ability to do this in the future.”
Suleiman says that every time he passes one other amputee, he stops to speak to them and supply recommendation. He nonetheless wakes up every day at 6am and tries to collect meals, preventing in opposition to the rising costs, attempting to catch a glimpse of the ocean as he rides his bike.
“I need to show to the world that I’m unstoppable, that I can proceed doing my job with one leg, that even in a battle I’ll danger my life to take pictures and inform the world what’s occurring, that even after shells fell on our houses, we rose from underneath the rubble.”
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