Soon we started talking with Dr. Mazen Al-Khatib, president of the Palestinian Athletics Federation, until he said, "What we will speak will hurt the heart and stir emotions. Today, we celebrate 100 years or more of Palestinian sporting activities."

The researcher in Palestinian history and sports heritage will find sports activities, competitions, and tournaments that were documented by photos and documents of an almost forgotten era before the Nakba, and the displacement of the Palestinian people from their lands.

Al-Khatib says - to Al-Jazeera Net - that the Palestinian researcher of American origin, Ghassan Haddad, was able, through his research in the Library of Congress, to obtain pictures of a Palestinian sports track established in West Jerusalem in 1933 in front of the King David Hotel, and he found documents and other pictures part of which were forged as places Israeli mathematician, although all of that was before the establishment of Israel in 1948.

Mathematical Research

The two men discussed and launched the "100 Years of Palestinian Athletics" campaign, referring to the first documents that talked about Palestinian sporting activities, most notably the international athletics track in West Jerusalem before the Nakba.

The campaign began with an old aerial photo that was suspended by the Union in the Gaza Strip, and there will be research and sports activities to introduce Palestinian sports before the Nakba. The campaign will also go to Palestinian universities to spread the idea and research and revive this important era, and to obtain documents and photos of these sporting events for the Palestinians.

Al-Khatib encouraged us to speak with the Palestinian researcher Ghassan Haddad, who lives today in Washington, so we spoke to him on the phone, and he seemed very happy.

The man did not speak Arabic for a long time, telling Al-Jazeera Net that he "wrote a book that he recently published under the name (the file), about the Palestinian sports movement from 1929 to 1948, which shocked him from the information he gathered."

Regarding the name of the book, "the file," Haddad said, "This word was used by the International Olympic Committee to talk about sports in Palestine before the Nakba, so as not to be involved in writing the name of Palestine because of the political conditions in the 1930s.

Pictures showing Palestinian sporting activities during the British Mandate in the 1930s and 1940s (Library of Congress)

YMCA

Haddad is the author of the idea of ​​the athletics centenary, and the oldest documents found for sports in Palestine since 1910 for the football team, as well as in the early twenties with the activities of the Young Christian Association (YMCA), which introduced other sports such as fencing and tennis. Documents of Palestine's participation in the Olympic Games held in Berlin in the 1930s.

Haddad revealed in his book that the Palestinian sports track, which was established in 1932, was the first in the region to carry international standards, in addition to attempts to establish a Palestinian Olympic Committee that had failed due to the Al-Buraq revolution at the end of the twenties and the political tension at that time.

In turn, Secretary General of the YMCA Peter Nasser said, "The association was established in 1844 as a British idea to remove youth from the state of emptiness and nourish the soul, body and mind through physical, social and sports activities. The movement spread from London to all parts of the world in 120 countries, and Palestine was one of them." .

The YMCA building, in front of it, is the International Athletics Track, the first in the region. (Library of Congress)

Refugee institution

The YMCA lived the Nakba in all its details, and became a refugee institution like the Palestinian people. However, 5 of its employees who became refugees in Aqbat Jaber camp in Jericho restarted their activities after the Nakba, and the occupation took control of the association’s headquarters in West Jerusalem, and large parts of its areas were sold. It was invested in apartments and squares, and its role declined under the occupation.

In East Jerusalem, the refugee association’s members were able to reopen its headquarters on Nablus Street, and its social and sporting activities continued until 1986 AD when the operation of a hotel that the association owned was stopped, and it was generating income for it, and its activities were reactivated in 1995.

Announcing the first mural in the "Hundred Years of Palestinian Athletics" campaign (Al Jazeera)

Nasser said - to Al-Jazeera Net - that “the association’s cessation and the suffering of its members’ refugee status caused them to turn their attention towards education before the arrival of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), but it continued industrial education, and this year it will graduate its 70th batch, and the association expanded its activities to include social development, Women’s development and multiple programs that serve the Palestinian people. "

Nasser describes the association today as a refugee institution, and that its sporting activity as the oldest Palestinian sports association has returned again, but the occupation’s control of the old headquarters and the change of geographical features has forgotten the world that there has been a Palestinian sport since ancient times, the occupation wanted to eradicate it as it displaced the Palestinian people, and took control of its land and its gains. And even his sport.