OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 11 January 2004 — Raad Awisat clambered out of the swimming pool on a biting night this week and immediately broke out in goose bumps.
His 25-yard-long pool is sheathed in low-hanging plastic sheeting to retain heat during the winter. But the low-tech barrier has proved no better at keeping in warmth than it is at keeping out the icy rain that drips through cracks in the tin roof.
Raad, 16, is one of two athletes who will represent the Palestinians this year at the Olympic Games in Athens. When his big moment comes, he’ll face competitors who are practicing in heated indoor pools twice the length of the one dug by Raad’s father and other villagers, and toning their muscles on computer-monitored hydraulic weight machines, not on aging equipment in a gym fashioned from a former stable.
Nevertheless, Raad and the other Palestinian entrant — Sana Bakhith, 19, a middle-distance runner from the village of Deir Balah in the southern Gaza Strip — say their primitive training conditions and the conflict between Palestinians and Israel are powerful incentives for their participation on the international sports stage.
“I feel I am carrying extra responsibility,” said Raad, who lives in the Palestinian community of Jabal Mukaber, on the southeastern edge of Jerusalem, and is coached by his father. “If I succeed, I’m doing something positive not only for myself, but for my country.”
He paused, recognizing he has no official country. Jabbing his hands at the air almost as forcefully as he attacks the water when he swims, Raad said, “The goal is going for the championship, having the Palestinian national anthem played and everyone standing in its honor.”
“To participate is important, to be there just like any other country,” said Bakhith, who was chosen by the local Olympic committee as the Palestinians’ female representative. “Unfortunately, we don’t have much chance to develop sports in our country.”
Bakhith is one of six children. Her father is a police officer who earns about $230 a month. With no proper track for training, she said in a telephone interview, she runs on stretches of sand or rocky land along the beach near her village.
“It is more difficult for girls, as we have less freedom because of our customs and traditions,” said Bakhith, who began running competitively just three years ago in the 800-meter race. “In the beginning, it was not easy. Kids would throw stones at us. But that is over now, and no one bothers us when we run.”
The two Palestinian Olympic designees said they had never met. Because of stringent travel restrictions imposed by the Israeli government, athletes from the Gaza Strip are unable to compete or train with fellow Palestinians in the West Bank or Israel.
Since the Palestinian uprising against Israel broke out in September 2000, Palestinian sports programs have been crippled. With the Palestinian economy collapsing and the governing Palestinian Authority dependent principally on foreign aid, athletics take a back seat at budget time.
Israeli military incursions, curfews and crackdowns have also taken a toll. Roadblocks have paralyzed travel inside the West Bank and Gaza, preventing competitors from reaching sporting events. And military operations in Palestinian cities and communities, which Israeli officials say have been taken to prevent suicide bombings and other attacks, have damaged some training facilities and sports clubs.
At a recent competition in Bethlehem, swimmers from the northern West Bank city of Jenin were held up for hours at a military checkpoint, only to be refused passage. Other swimmers arrived at the meet only after sneaking through the desert to skirt roadblocks, said Hussein Awisat, Raad’s father.
Although the Awisats’ community inside Jerusalem has been spared from military incursions, the large fence-and-wall complex that Israel is constructing through the West Bank, in what it says is an effort to reduce terrorism, will slice through Jabal Mukaber about 500 yards from the Awisats’ home. “It’s very upsetting,” said Raad, who said about half his classmates would be forced to drop out of school because they will be living on the opposite side of the barrier when it is finished. “It’s going to separate me from my friends.”
Before the conflict, Raad practiced his butterfly strokes at the Jerusalem YMCA pool not far from his neighborhood. But when the intifada erupted, YMCA officials said swimmers who used the facility would be required to join the Israeli Swimming Association.
That was unacceptable to the Palestinian swimmers, but the only other pool available to them was 17 yards long, far too short for Olympic training. Raad’s father organized the parents of the two dozen youngsters he trains, and within a week the villagers had expanded the pool to an acceptable 25 yards.
With virtually no outside funding, however, Awisat said he can afford to heat the pool only for two-hour swim sessions each day. Even that costs about $100 a day, he said. Other parents said they chip in to cover the $4,000 monthly cost of operating the pool.
“What do we need? Everything,” said Awisat, 39, a medical technician at a local hospital and the father of four children — all swimmers. Raad’s mother, Amal, coaches the girls from the community who swim.
Raad and the other swimmers lack even the most basic training aids, according to their coach. They have no money to buy the oversized gloves competitive swimmers use in practice, so they make their own by cutting up pieces of plastic. The lanes of their pool are so narrow that swimmers have to take extra care to keep from bumping into each other.
The plastic drape used to tame the teeth-rattling cold also traps the chlorine fumes from the water. Barely 15 minutes after the flock of swimmers begins flailing in the water, a thick fog settles over the pool’s surface.
“It’s dangerous. The conditions are terrible,” said Ibrahim Tawil, chairman of the Palestine Swimming Federation. “Can you imagine the motivation these kids have to swim?”
