In March 2018, Palestinian cyclist Alaa al-Dali was just months away from fulfilling his dream of representing his country at an international tournament, the Asian Games in Jakarta. But first, duty called.
Alaa, then 21 years old, headed to the Great Return March, a weeks-long protest of Israeli occupation at Gaza’s frontier with Israel, decked out in his cycling gear and with his bike in tow.
At the march, an Israeli sniper fired an explosive bullet at him, shattering his right leg and, seemingly, his dreams of competing. His leg had to be amputated.
Alaa was down, but not out. A month after the amputation, he was back on a bicycle. He reconfigured his ambitions and sought instead to become Palestine’s first para-cyclist to compete internationally.
His struggle moved Karim Ali, a university student in London who had helped translate for a film a producer made about Alaa in 2019. Alaa and Karim would collaborate to establish the Gaza Sunbirds, Gaza’s first-ever para-cycling team.
“I loved Alaa’s story, and I thought there was something really universal about it. We started working together, and by 2020 we had co-founded the Sunbirds,” Karim, who is of Palestinian descent, said at a webinar hosted by the Harvard Graduate Student Union on Wednesday – the day the Paralympic Games began in Paris.
Dreams stalled
Before Israel’s genocide in Gaza began on October 7, the Gaza Sunbirds had 20 athletes and five members of staff in the territory, training people who had incurred impairments through the war as cyclists and hoping to develop them into competitive athletes who might able to represent Palestine internationally.
One of the group’s longer-term aims was to send athletes to compete for Palestine at the current Paralympic Games.
That dream appeared to have come crashing down when Israel began its onslaught more than 10 months ago. While pounding Gaza with bombs from the skies, Israel tightened its already suffocating siege of Gaza even further, making the entry of even the most basic of items like food and medicine virtually impossible – never mind the exit of an athlete for international competition to qualify for the Paralympics.
It was hard enough to try to leave Gaza before October, with the 16-year-long siege indefinitely penning the enclave’s population in the territory.
Alaa had for years been trying to leave Gaza to compete in international competition but was stopped from doing so by multiple visa rejections, Karim said.
But there was a massive stroke of luck in April when an evacuation order came through after months of waiting. Leaving his family behind, Alaa and a few other Sunbirds team members were evacuated to Egypt.
From there, Alaa headed to Paralympic qualifying races – Para-Cycling World Cup events in Belgium and Italy – to participate in Sunbird’s first-ever international competition.
It was a tall order to expect Alaa to qualify for the Games this way and in such a limited timeframe. Before the evacuation in April, the Sunbirds had decided to apply for a wild card for the Paralympics – an exemption for athletes unable to qualify through the usual routes.
Karim and the Sunbirds navigated a sea of complicated paperwork in a limited amount of time to try to secure the wild card.
“It’s a lot of bureaucracy… you have to go through it to learn it and make sense of it,” Karim said in response to a question from The New Arab. “We were lucky to even be able to put in the wild card application. There was a high chance that we weren’t even going to be able to do that.”
The application was sent, but Alaa was not given a place at the Games, to his and the Sunbirds’ disappointment.
“It was my dream for years to compete at these games in Paris,” Alaa told the webinar in response to a question from The New Arab. “We tried… Unfortunately, we didn’t make it. Hopefully, luck will be on our side in future years. We’re going to continue.”
Two other Palestinian para-athletes’ hopes of securing a place at the Games were also hampered by red tape, Ali said.
'We hope the Palestinian flag will be held high'
There is just one representative for Palestine at the Games – shot-putter Fadi al-Deeb, who is Europe-based but is from Gaza.
Deeb’s presence at the Paralympics continues Palestine’s short but already rich history at the Games. Palestinian athletes began competing at the Paralympics in Sydney in 2000, where shot-putter Husam Azzam won a bronze medal; Azzam would go one better in Athens in 2004, winning a silver. Mohammed Fannouna won a bronze in the long jump at those Games in Greece.
“I hope what’s happening in Palestine will be remembered at these Games, especially what’s happening in Gaza, which is undergoing genocide, war, and killings… we hope the Palestinian flag will be held high,” Alaa said.
Israel has been allowed to compete at both the Olympics and Paralympics, with International Paralympic Committee chief Andrew Parsons saying in May that there were no grounds for such a suspension.
Ahmed Habib, an Iraqi disability justice advocate, said at the webinar in response to a question from The New Arab: “It’s an absolute travesty and tremendously ironic that a tournament that is celebrating disability will allow a country that is causing and perpetuating disability to compete alongside people that are disabled.”
Since October, the para-cyclists have had to turn their attention away from training and towards the delivery of aid – food, shelter, toys, and even toilets.
Before being evacuated, Alaa was among the Sunbirds making deliveries through Gaza and its obliterated road network.
“When we would deliver aid, people were more struck by the sight of us delivering aid than the aid itself,” Alaa said during the webinar. “We were a source of inspiration to people… a sight of hope, determination, and strength.”
Eyes on Zurich
Before the genocide began, there were some 58,000 people recognised as having disabilities in Gaza, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS). This number has shot up since the Israeli onslaught began, with many of the nearly 94,000 people injured since October left with an impairment.
UNRWA chief Phillipp Lazzarini said in June that 10 children were losing one or both of their legs every day in Gaza.
As though Palestinians in Gaza were not having to navigate enough horrors, a polio outbreak has also begun to rear its head. Last week, a 10-month-old boy was confirmed to have been left paralysed by the disease.
As the number of people left with life-altering injuries spirals, the Sunbirds want their quest to feature at high-profile tournaments to be a source of hope.
“To us, sports are a way of saying ‘your journey doesn’t end here’,” Karim said. “We wanted to get that on the biggest platform that we possibly could, for every single child in Gaza that is now going to have to be reborn with a condition that is going to alter their life forever.”
While Alaa manages his disappointment about not featuring at the Paralympics, he and the Sunbirds are now turning their attention to the 2024 Road and Para-Cycling Road World Championships to be held in Zurich at the end of September, which he qualified for after competing at the Asian Road Para-Cycling Championships in Almaty, Kazakhstan in June.
After the Paralympics, it is the second-biggest event on the para-cycling calendar. It sees cyclists and para-cyclists at the same tournament, and will likely draw an unprecedented level of attention to Alaa, the Gaza Sunbirds, and Palestinian para-athletes.
In the meantime, the Sunbirds who remain in Gaza are getting ready to make their biggest food distribution push so far – $130,000 worth in two weeks – while hoping that they can one day get back to training.
Shahla Omar is a freelance journalist based in London. She was previously a staff journalist and news editor at The New Arab.
Follow her on X: @shahlasomar