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Khan Younis, Gaza – In the ruins of the house in Khan Yousis, 75-year-old Shaker Safi Safi Safi Safe Muhammaddin gentle thumbs with faded photos of the sports career.
The group photos of young athletes who train by medals, trophies, team Huddles and Muhammad now serve as an enthusiastic memorial for a dream destroyed by war.
On November 15, 2023, Mohammad Safi – a football coach and physics education teacher – Israel was killed in the air strike.
He was training in sports, schools and community clubs and converted secret teams to local champions.
Mohammad, a graduate of physical education from Al-Aqsa University, was a head coach of the Al-Amal football club south of Gaza, and was widely impressed by the younger-year-old young talent.
“My son dreamed of representing Palestine at the international level,” he said. “He believed that he could lift the sports youth without despair. But before the world, the war reached him.”
Now the IDP, Mohammad’s wife Nermine and their four children – 16-year-old Shaker Jr., Amir, 14, Apple, 11 and Taif, 7 – 7 – 7 – 7 – 7 – death created with a painful cavity.
Children adhere to the last football and coach records.
Nermine, an art teacher, “Why did they get a father from us?”
“He was not a policy, but the man of dreams,” he says. “He wanted to be an international judge. He wanted a master’s degree. Instead, he was killed for a symbol of life and youth.”
Muhammad Safi is one of the hundreds of athletes and sports specialists who have been killed or expelled since the beginning of the war.
According to the Palestinian Olympic Committee, 582 athletes have been killed since October 7, 2023, many of the national teams, coaches and managers.
Sport was replaced by living
Survival for survivors in Gaza was replaced by sports fame.
Yousef Abu Shawarib is a 20-year-old goalkeeper for Rafah’s Premier League football club.
In May 2024, he and his family fled their homes and shelters in the Khan Younis Stadium – shelters in the same area once played in official matches.
Today, the stadium is a shelter for IDP families, synthetic meadow now covered with tents instead of players.
“This is where my coach is briefly informed me before the games,” Yousef said that it is now close to the nearby field. “Now here, I look forward to water, not for water, not for water.”
Today, its presence includes light, irregular education inside the tent, hopes to maintain part of his fitness. However, Germany went to learn sports sciences and play professionally.
“Now I just hope to eat tomorrow,” says Al Jazeere. “The war did not destroy only the fields – destroyed our futures.”
Looking at the stadium in the scroll does not see a temporary displacement.
“This was not a collateral damage. It was systematic. It’s like they want to delete everything – even from our games.”
Hoping under the rubble
Still, like the patches of grass survivors, remaining in the blasts.
Shadi Abu Armanah, head coach of the Palestinian Ampute football team, prepared a six-month plan to continue training.
His 25 players and five coaches had established acceleration before the war in Gaza. The team competed in the 2019 tournament in the international level, including France. Before the start of military operations, in November 2023, they prepared an event in West Asia for October 2025.
“Now, we can’t even collect,” he said. “Every object we used was destroyed. The players lost their homes. Most lost their loved ones. No gear, no field, nothing.”
The team, which was supported by the International Committee of the Red Cross, once stated. Training sessions were more than the drums – they were lifetime. “Sports for amputes was a second chance,” he says. “Now they are just trying to live.”
Glad himself falls. The house was bombed. “The clubs where I worked. The players are either dead or dead or scattered.
Added: “I trained in many clubs and sections. Almost all of them were reduced to rubble. It’s not just a break – it was deleted.”
A systematic deletion
The collection volume extends outside of personal loss.
According to the vice-president of the Palestinian Olympic Committee, Asaad Al-Gaza’s sports infrastructure is on the eve of collapse of Gaza. At least 270 sports facilities were damaged or destroyed: 189 completely arranged and 81 are partially damaged, with the initial assessment of material losses within hundreds of millions of dollars.
“Every major component of Gaza sports system has been hit,” Al-Majdalawi al Jazeera. “Olympic Committee Offices, Sports Federations, Clubs, Schools and University Sports Programs – Even private sports facilities were even targeted private sports facilities. This is a thorough attack.”
There are high-profiled athletes like Palestinian international karate champion Nagham Abu Samra among the falling; The first Palestinian Majed Abu Maraheel to carry the Olympic flag in Atlanta Games in 1996; Olympic football coach Hani al-Masdar; National Athletics Technical Director Bilal Abu Sam’an. Hundreds of others are injured or missing, accurate estimates.
“It’s not just a loss – not destroying,” he said. Majdalawi says. “Every athlete was the column of community. Numbers were not. Hope, unity and perseverance were symbolic. Losing them deep wounded in the Palestinian society.”
It will cause physical, psychological and professional regression for the remaining averent athletes, cutting sports activities within a year and a half. “You lose more than muscle and skill – you lose your goal.”
A global silence
Al-Majdalawi believes that the international reaction is inconveniently insufficient. When Gaza’s sports community reached the global federations, the Olympic authorities and young people and sports ministers, were silenced.
“Private, many international officials are sympathetic,” he says. “However, Israel does not matter on the decision-making level. It does not matter if the global and international sports bodies ignore all international law, human rights and international sports system management rules,” he said.
He believes that if the war ends today, it will take five to 10 years to reset the lost. Even this matte schedule is based on the assumption that the blockade and international funding are available.
“We are building this sports sector since 1994,” Majdalavi says. “It took decades to gather knowledge, experience and professionalism. Now everything was fixed in months.”
Because the war continues, the fate of Gaza sports sector hangs with a rope. Like Yeasef, coaches like a coaches like Safi, athletes and coaches like Shadi, coaches like each other will be a source of life for hope, personality and the Palestinians.
This piece has been published in cooperation Egab.
