Khan Younis, Gaza – In the ruins of his house in Khan Younis, Shaker, 75, Safi, slowly crosses photographs of the sports career of his son Mohammed.
The medals, the trophies, the team Huddles and the photos of groups of young athletes trained by Mohammed are now used as a hazardous memorial to a dream destroyed by war.
On November 15, 2023, Mohammed Safi – football coach and physical education teacher – was killed in an Israeli air strike.
He had spent years building an inheritance of hope through sport, training in schools and community clubs and transforming the Outsiders teams into local champions.
A graduate of physical education at Al-Aqsa University, Mohammed was the Al-Amal Football Club head coach in southern Gaza and was widely admired for his nourishing work of young talents aged six to 16.
“My son dreamed of representing Palestine internationally,” says Shaker, surrounded by remains of his son’s distinctions. “He thought that sport could raise young people from despair. But war reached him before he could reach the world. ”
Now moved, Mohammed’s wife, Nermeen, and their four children – Shaker Jr, 16, Amir, 14, Alma, 11, and Taif, 7 years old – live with the painful vacuum created by his death.
Children cling to their father’s latest football and trainer notes as memories.
Nermeen, an art teacher, gently wipes taive tears when she asks: “Why did they take Dad?”
“He was a man of dreams, no politics,” says Nermeen. “He wanted to become an international referee. He wanted his mastery. Instead, he was killed to be a symbol of life and youth. ”
Mohammed Sadi is one of the hundreds of athletes and sport professionals who have been killed or moved since the start of the war.
According to the Palestinian Olympic Committee, 582 athletes have been killed since October 7, 2023, many of them of national team players, coaches and administrators.
Sports replaced by survival
For those who stay alive in Gaza, survival has replaced sporting ambition.
Yousef Abu Shawarib is a 20 -year -old goalkeeper for the Rafah Premier League football club.
In May 2024, he and his family fled their house and took refuge at the Khan Younis stadium – the same field where he played official matches.
Today, the stadium is a refuge for displaced families, its synthetic lawn now bordered by tents instead of players.
“This is where my coach brie me before the games,” said Yousef, standing near what was the bench area, now a water distribution point. “Now I’m waiting for water here, not kick off.”
His routine today involves light and irregular training inside his tent, hoping to preserve a fraction of his physical form. But his dreams of studying the sports sciences in Germany and playing professionally have disappeared.
“Now, I only hope that we have something to eat tomorrow,” he said in Al Jazeera. “War has not only destroyed the fields – it destroyed our future.”
When he looks at the charred stadium, he does not see a temporary trip.
“It was not collateral damage. It was systematic. It is as if they wanted to erase everything on us – even our games.”
Hope under the rubble
However, like the grass plates that have survived explosions, a little hope remains.
Shadi Abu Armanah, head coach of the Palestine amputees football team, had developed a six-month plan to resume training.
His 25 players and five coaches had taken momentum before the war against Gaza. The team had participated in the international, including in a tournament in 2019 in France. Before the start of hostilities, they were preparing for another event in November 2023 and an event in Western Asia took place for October 2025.
“Now we can’t even get together,” says Shadi. “Each installation we used has been destroyed. The players lost their house. Most have lost dear beings. There is nowhere where to train – no equipment, no field, nothing. ”
Supported by the International Committee of the Red Cross, the team had once symbolized resilience. The training sessions were more than exercises – they were living lines. “For amputees, sport was a second chance,” says Shadi. “Now they just try to survive.”
Shadi himself is moved. His house was also bombed. “The clubs for which I worked disappeared. The players died or dispersed. If the war ends today, we will always need years to even bring back a fraction of what has been lost. ”
He adds: “I have trained in many clubs and divisions. Almost all their installations have been reduced to rubble. It’s not just a break – it’s erasure. “
Systematic erasure
The scope of devastation extends beyond personal loss.
According to Asaad Al-Majdalawi, vice-president of the Palestinian Olympic Committee, all of Gaza’s sports infrastructure is on the verge of collapse. At least 270 sports facilities have been damaged or destroyed: 189 fully flattened and 81 partially damaged, with initial estimates of material losses in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
“Each major component of the Gaza sports system has been affected,” Al-Majdalawi told Al Jazeera. “The offices of the Olympic Committee, sports federations, clubs, school and university sports programs – even private sports facilities have been targeted. It is a complete assault. “
Among the fallen are high -level athletes like Nagham Abu Samra, International Champion of Karate of Palestine; Majed Abu Maraheel, the first Palestinian to wear the Olympic flag at the 1996 Atlanta Games; Olympic football coach Hani Al-Masdar; And the national athletics coach Bilal Abu Sam’an. Hundreds of others remain injured or missing, complicating precise assessments.
“It is not only a loss – it is extermination,” explains Al -Majdalawi. “Each athlete was a community pillar. They were not figures. They were symbols of hope, unity and perseverance. Losing them deeply injured Palestinian society. ”
It warns that beyond the immediate human assessment, the interruption of sports activities for a year and a half will lead to a physical, psychological and professional regression for the remaining athletes. “You lose more than muscle and skills – you lose a goal.”
A world silence
Al-Majdalawi believes that the international response has been an inadequate alarming. When the Gaza sports community reaches out to the world federations, the Olympic organizations and the youth and sport ministers, they met silence.
“In private, many international officials sympathize,” he says. “But in terms of decision-making, Israel seems to operate above the law. There is no responsibility. It is as if sport did not matter when it is Palestinian. The global and international sports institutions seem accomplices by their silence, ignoring all international laws, human rights and the governing rules of the international sports system, “he said.
He thinks that if the war ends today, it would still take five to 10 years to rebuild what has been lost. Even this dark chronology is based on the hypothesis that the blockade ends and that international funding becomes available.
“We have been building this sports sector since 1994,” explains Al-Majdalawi. “It took us decades to accumulate knowledge, experience and professionalism. Now everything was leveled in months. ”
While war continues, the fate of the Gaza sports sector is suspended by a thread. However, in the midst of ruins, fathers like Shaker Sadi, athletes like Yousef and coaches like Shadi retain an inflexible belief: this sport will once again be a source of hope, identity and life for the Palestinians.
This play was published in collaboration with Egab.