A soccer team made up of Palestinians who lost limbs to violence in the Gaza Strip is giving its players new purpose.
The team, comprising players aged between 13 and 42, plays eight-a-side intrasquad games. Most of the players have only one leg and play on crutches.
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 limbs 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.
"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 Operation Protective Edge in 2014, when an Israeli missile exploded outside his home as he was playing soccer nearby. During the summer of 2014, Israel fought Hamas terrorists who had dug tunnels across the border with the purpose of executing mass attacks against Israeli civilians.
Khattab's father, Khaled, described his son as having been "always desperate," and spending most of his time "playing games on a tablet," noting that "now, after he joined the soccer team, I see he has hope."
The team's coach, Khaled Al-Mabhouh, said the squad needs sturdier crutches, to replace regular ones, which tend to break when a player puts weight on them during a match.
Some of the 54 Palestinians who lost limbs in the border riots of the past several months have also expressed interest in playing on the team.
Hamas has been busing civilians to the border and inciting them to violent action against Israeli forces, which the IDF counters with live fire, but many of the casualties have been Hamas operatives who were planted among what the terrorist group calls "spontaneous popular protests."
