HAzem Solimanus is a member Gaza SunbirdsThe paracycling team is based in Gaza. A former footballer, he lost his leg as a result of protests at the Rafah border in 2018. We first spoke to him about five months ago. part of our Gaza Voices series about the daily life of Palestine. At the time, Suleiman, who also had photographs and documents of his life in Gaza, was driving the toll of the displacement from his home in Rafah to the town of Khan Younis.
He and the other Sunbirds were training hard, hoping to represent Palestine at the 2024 Paralympics in Paris, but after Israel launched an attack on Gaza following the attack by Hamas on October 7, 2023, they were unable to realize this dream. At least they achieved their goal – to compete in an international competition for the first time – in May this year: the Para-cycling Road World Cup, in Belgium and Italy.
Solimanus is doubly honest since we last spoke. A few days after our conversation in July, he fled from western Khan Younis towards Rafah, at the southern end Gaza Take it off. He knows exactly how long he and his young family of 10 will be staying around Rafah: 41 days. Late in September they returned to the neighborhood of Khan Younis and set up their blue tent in the same place.
“When we came back, everything was destroyed. It was not what we left before. Every now and then we hear a shell, or a tent, or a building nearby,” he said. He saw the bodies of several friends and neighbors on his way back.
The murmur of the drone’s head is sometimes so loud that Soliman sinks completely. He looks around on his phone to show the destruction of the sandy apartment neighborhood known as Hamad City. He says the Israeli bombardment gutted the interior of the building. In the shadow of the dilapidated buildings he points to the camera, to display the flowers and peppers he planted after his return.
We took the tiles, he said, from the street, and placed them inside our tents. “Partly it was because we don’t want to live in quicksand. But it also shows that these are our homes. We care about each one of them.”
Even the roads that Suleiman described as using short cycle routes when we mentioned earlier were damaged beyond recognition in the months after. The streets of asphalt were replaced by sandy dust, and paved with concrete tracks. “All decent roads are lost and no matter how good a rider you are, it’s difficult,” he said. “My bike is great and I’m a good athlete, but it’s still so hard.”
When the co-founder of the Gaza Sunbirds, Alaa al-Dali, was released from Gaza and competed in Belgium and Italy last May, he marked the pinnacle of his sporting achievements. But the question of what the next team stood for, together with the others, was what they wanted to be in the paracycling group, where many people now have no training facilities, no homes – no bikes, even.
When leaving Gaza was very difficult, it is impossible to do. Karim Ali, another co-founder of Sunbirds, says the Sunbirds are keeping track of the number of people they know who have been killed since last year. “We must adapt to the situation of the world that sent us, but the whole system is not built for it,” he said.
The group works mainly to help those working in Gaza, where people are dealing with constant loss and struggling to feed themselves and their families. They are trying to help people get food from Sunbirds a steep drop in aid accesswhich was done even worse since October (they are heavily reliant on overseas donations through their Go Fund Me page). The latest initiative is a pizza making factory for thousands of Gazans.
They also hope to raise enough money to help cover the tens of thousands new amputees in Gaza. “We need advocates for people who are stuck in Gaza and I hope Sunaves can play a role in the future,” Ali says. “The best people with disabilities are in a wheelchair when they can finally rebuild communities in an accessible way … our goal is to create a paracycling and rehabilitation center for Gaza’s amputees.”
Solimanus says that he will retire in Belgium for the nation, because he did not want to leave his family. “Even if I could live in any part of the world, I would always choose Gaza. There is a relationship between Gaza and its people that no one can understand – I never want to leave that place,” he said.
In September he founded the institution of aid; Mulham Charity Teamto deliver hot food to his neighbors. He hopes to grow enough to deliver aid across Gaza and overseas.
“My biggest dream is to wake up tomorrow” and cease fire. This, he says, is what we always wanted. “But first and last time you will be able to get me a prosthetic leg. I have a bacterial problem in the bone where my leg was amputated, so I can’t fit a prosthesis – it’s my dream to be able to do this one day.
Solimanus says that every time he passes another amputee, he stops to talk to them and give advice. He still wakes up every day at 6am and tries to collect food, fighting against rising prices, trying to catch a view of the sea while riding his bike.
“I want to prove to the world that I can’t, that I can continue to do my job with one leg, that even in war I risk my life to take photographs and I will tell the world what is happening, that it happened even behind the shells. We raised our houses under the ruins.