In a besieged city from all sides, the 45-km coastal strip of Gaza is one of the few places that offers a good sense of freedom. This narrow and besieged strip of land adjacent to the warm waters of the Mediterranean has remained one of the few entertainment facilities available for free to Gazans. This busy city used to stay regularly without electricity for long periods, and includes a few cinemas or sports clubs and a handful of public parks that Children can play in it, and going to the beach is one of the activities that entertain the youth who are used to patience and harsh life in the sector.
In isolated and impoverished Gaza, Muhammad Saleh remembers going to the beach as a child with his mother, who takes him there once every summer, and while the gentle waves and blue waters crashing into the beach, Saleh and his brothers remain prohibited from swimming.
Saleh told the Guardian newspaper through an interpreter: "My mother never allowed us to swim in the sea, because she was afraid of us drowning, and she was worried that we could not swim." That is why Saleh, when he was young, resolved to change the situation for the next generation of Palestinian children.
During January, Saleh arrived in Sydney, where he was a guest of the "North Sydney Water Ski Club" in order to train to become a qualified rescuer, and return to the Strip to create the first rescue club, which is the "Gaza Club to save skiers on the water." "We want to build a club to save skiers, for the people of Gaza, to keep people safe," he says. "Although the sea in Gaza is much thinner than the ocean here in Australia, unfortunately, many people are still drowning in Gaza because they cannot swim safely," he said. "In the summer of 2019, seven people died by drowning."
Saleh belongs to a Palestinian family who fled to Gaza when the occupation forced her to leave the lands of their ancestors in 1948. During 10 years of his childhood, his father was an inmate of an Israeli prison, and his extended family lost dozens of their members for decades due to the might of the occupation. He says that his mother’s excessive protection for him and his siblings came as a result of the existential risks to which the family is exposed.
"I want children in Gaza to learn to enjoy the beach, and to be safe when swimming. "I want to create a program like Nibers to teach children how to save lives." Nibers is an Australian program to save the lives of children while swimming at sea, which is currently joined by more than 60 trainees, starting from the age of five.
And unlike the task of protecting surfers by patrolling the beach to save lives, the presence of a surfing club in Gaza is a strong feeling of solidarity and fellowship. In this region, where the youth unemployment rate reaches 60%, the surfing club can act as an outlet for physical activity, A common goal for Palestinian youth. He concluded by saying, "We want to create a system like the one that was established in Australia, covering the whole society, in which citizens work together to become a safe place to participate."
The beach is all we have
Hassan Al Hubail learned to swim with the help of his older brother, and when he reached the youth stage, he became one of a group of rescuers employed by the municipality to patrol the Gaza beach. "The beach is all we have," Al-Hubail says. "It is the only place of entertainment for the residents of Gaza." But even though we have problems because of the lack of electricity most of the time, and often the raw sewage is disposed of in the sea, and this means that "There is less space where people can swim."
He continued, "There is in Australia, the beach is very safe, it is clean and very organized, and all facilities are available, we do not have that in Gaza."
In a city surrounded by fortifications, and its only exits are military checkpoints, the coastal strip of Gaza that extends along 45 km on the Mediterranean Sea is one of the few places that provide a feeling of space and freedom, yet this seems like an illusion at times, a few miles from the coast , Israeli naval vessels conduct permanent patrols, prohibiting all movement on or offshore.
Saleh and Al-Habil are in the middle of a month of intense training at North Stein Club, on Manly Beach in Sydney, and they will be evaluated for the bronze medal in late January, which is the main Australian life-saving qualification. The president of North Stain Service Life Saving Club, Chris Gibbs Stewart, says dozens of club members volunteered to help these two men from Gaza. "We feel that this is a very important project because saving life is of course means keeping the safety of people on the beach, but it is about something more than that, it is building a community and building a family feeling, we are trying to teach them such a culture we have."
Saleh and Al-Habil travel from Gaza to Sydney were many obstacles. "We had to remain resilient," she said, "to reorganize things and wait for their arrival, but they were late and eventually showed up, and we are committed to the success of their programs and their follow-up." "We want to remain in contact with them, and we continue to provide support, whether it is by sending equipment or training materials, or sending people there to help, we want to plant seeds that will - later on - become a life-saving club on the Gaza beach."
A member of the Northern Shores Committee for Palestine, Shamekh Khalil Badra, a Palestinian citizen who is now studying in Australia, says that it took nearly four years of negotiations and planning with a number of failed attempts to get Saleh and Al-Habil to Australia. Exit permits and visas, which were delayed due to bureaucracy and rejection, were negotiated.
Badra says that the task of building a surfing club on the sands of Gaza beach is much greater than being patrolling the sand and saving swimmers in the water. And he affirms that "this project represents hope. Gaza has suffered from many problems. The United Nations announced eight years ago that Gaza will become ineligible by 2020, we are in 2020 now, and people are still suffering there." "This project may not seem like a small thing, but its concept is very strong, and it can give hope to the people there," he concluded.
Saleh and Al-Habil are in the middle of a month of intense training at North Stein Club on Manly Beach in Sydney, and they will be evaluated for the bronze medal in late January.
In a city surrounded by fortifications, and its only exits are military checkpoints, Gaza's coastal strip that stretches 45 km along the Mediterranean Sea is one of the few places that provide a feeling of space and freedom.