Watch.. Gaza girls kick despair with a team for amputees | sports

Gaza – In the Gaza Strip, where the Israeli war of annihilation is merciless, and the dreams of many Gazans are assassinated before they are born, young voices are coming out telling the world: “We are here, kicking the ball and kicking with it sadness and despair.”

Rozan, Kifah, Aisha and other girls lost their limbs due to the occupation’s missiles and bombs, but they did not lose the will to live or the passion for sports, and together they form the nucleus of a women’s amputee football team, to prove to themselves and others that their bodies were amputated, but their dreams remained hugging the sky.

On the floor of a small grassy playground in the city of Deir al-Balah in the middle of the Gaza Strip, among the few playgrounds that escaped destruction, shouts rise, mixing with laughter, and the will to live rises, among girls playing soccer within a team established by the Palestine Amputee Football Association and working to qualify it to form the Palestine Amputee National Team for women, with the hope of participating and competing in external sports competitions.

The dream remains and continues

After she passed the ball to her colleague with a crutch on which she was leaning, Rozan Khaira stood up and spoke to Al Jazeera Net, saying, “The fires of the occupation amputated our bodies, but they did not stop our dreams and our will to live.”

Rozan (24 years old) is a resident of the Al-Daraj neighborhood in the heart of “Old Gaza”, where ancient houses and buildings exude the scent of history, and whose roots go deep into the earth. This girl grew up in an athletic family in this neighborhood. Like her father, she used to run and participate in local competitions before the outbreak of war on October 7, 2023.

On November 19 of that year, when the war was at its bloodiest, Rozan’s life changed in an instant, like the blink of an eye. She remembers that the clock was pointing to ten at night, when a violent air strike occurred on a house opposite her family’s home, and she was injured, which led to the amputation of her leg.

The young woman tried to get out of bed but could not. In the nearby neighborhood clinic, “the doctor put my leg in my lap, and a small piece of skin was still connecting it to my body,” Rozan says as she recalls this harsh experience, adding that in the hospital the doctors had no choice but to amputate the leg.

Rozan experienced the horrors of displacement and the bitterness of moving with one leg, but she insists that she did not lose hope and the will to live for a moment, and she chose with love and passion to join the amputee football team, and she has a big dream to represent Palestine as part of a national women’s team that competes in international sports competitions.

Loss generated determination

Official data issued by the Ministry of Health in Gaza on the International Day of Persons with Disabilities last December showed that the war left 6,000 amputation cases in need of urgent, long-term rehabilitation programmes. Of the total, 25% of these cases included children facing permanent disabilities at an early age.

On June 30 last year, Kifah Al-Fakhouri was the victim of a treacherous Israeli missile. She told Al-Jazeera Net that it had stolen her leg, her companions, and the moments of joy they were stealing from the clutches of death in a coastal cafe on the sea in Gaza City.

As a result of the raid on this café, Kifah lost consciousness, and woke up without a leg on the bed of Al-Shifa Hospital in the city, and was immersed in intense grief over the great loss of her leg and that of her martyred companions.

But this thirty-year-old girl did not give in to her sorrows for long, and she quickly regained her health and began spreading a cheerful spirit and distinctive play among her colleagues in the amputee girls’ soccer team, which she joined out of her determination to stay and continue life.

Kifah says that she found in playing football a different and influential resistance, enabling her to regain her life and continue on her path, despite the cruelty of amputation and loss.

With one arm, she guards her goal

Between three logs, the child Aisha Al-Abadla (16 years old) stands guarding the goal with one arm, wearing a glove on her right hand, while her left arm is not fully developed, as she was born in this shape, as a result of her mother inhaling white phosphorus during the first Israeli war on the Gaza Strip in late 2008.

At that time, Aisha told Al Jazeera Net – she was a fetus in her mother’s womb, and was born with an incomplete arm. She points out that doctors told her family that the condition was caused by inhaling white phosphorus from bombs that the occupation used to target the Gaza Strip during that war.

Despite her disability, Aisha has loved football for 8 years, and plays as a goalkeeper. She confidently talks about her dream of guarding the goal of the Palestinian women’s national football team, and participating in foreign championships and competitions, to carry the message of life to the people of Gaza to the entire world.

Amputation is for the body, not for the dream

Between this and that, coach Lamia Musleh moves between the girls players, running here and there, urging them to run, kick the ball, and pass properly. She tells Al Jazeera Net: “Football here is not just a game. It is a space for hope and psychological release.”

At a time when they aim to qualify distinguished players to join the Palestinian amputee football team, “we are instilling in the amputee girls the spirit of determination, challenge, and desire to continue and carry on with life,” Lamia adds.

The coach sees a positive change in the players, and a significant improvement in their physical and psychological health. She points out that when the player kicks the ball, it is as if she is kicking away her sadness and pain, to say with her voice and movement, “No to the impossible. Amputating the body does not mean amputating the dream and will.”

Challenges and hopes

For his part, the founder and president of the Palestine Amputee Football Association, Fouad Abu Ghalioun, explains that the association was founded in 2018, and holds a local, Asian, and international license. Its activity stopped with the outbreak of war, before it resumed it again with this team of girls, amid great challenges.

He said: “Our goal is great, but the challenges are also many and great. We work in a destroyed environment, lacking capabilities and means of assistance, in addition to the difficulty of transportation and the dangers.”

Despite these challenges, and the increasing number of amputees as a result of the war, Abu Ghalioun shows his determination to continue working, and he believes that playing football enhances the self-confidence of amputee girls, and does not make them “feel any inferiority, but rather helps them to return to integrating into society and living their lives effectively and quickly.”