Amputee football team a game changer for Gaza wounded

GAZA — A football team made up of Palestinians who lost limbs to Israeli fire in the Gaza Strip is giving its players new purpose.

Players aged between 13 and 42 play eight-a-side intra-squad games. Most have only one leg and play on crutches.

“I was sitting home most of the time, sad. Now I am happy, have friends and we play,” said Ibrahim Khattab, 13, who lost his left leg during the 2014 Israeli war on Gaza when an Israeli missile struck while he was playing football outside his home.

“He was always desperate, now after he joined the football team, I see he has hope,” his father, Khaled, said. “He used to spend most of his time playing games on a tablet.”

Fouad Abu Ghalyoun, a member of the Palestinian paralympic committee, founded the team, having come up with the idea after a match last year between amputee squads from England and Turkey. Within five months, some 16 players had signed up.

“It was hard to convince those with amputated limps to come forward. Nowadays they are calling us to ask about exercise times,” said Abu Ghalyoun.

“Football is the beloved game of youth, so first it is entertaining and second ... [it] is a kind of psychological support,” he told Reuters.

The team’s coach, Khaled Al Mabhouh, said the squad was still lacking sturdier crutches to replace regular ones that tend to break when a player puts weight on them during a match.

Some of the 54 Palestinians, who had limbs amputated after being wounded by Israeli occupation forces’ fire during recent protests along the Gaza-Israel border, have expressed interest in joining the team.

At least 130 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces during mass demonstrations since March 30, Gaza health officials said. 

Protesters are demanding a right of return to the homeland from which thousands of Palestinians were forced to flee during the war around Israel’s creation in 1948. 

Israel’s tactics in confronting the protests have drawn international condemnation.