Outside Ramallah’s ElBarrio Gym, two young boys are boxing in the late afternoon sun, the smaller one smiling as his fist slowly curls around, the other with his hands up, protecting his torso. Three girls walk past, one gripping boxing gloves. Another sits on a bench, pulls hers out of her small backpack and puts them on.
In the air-conditioned studio inside, a group of women are in the plank position, straining to maintain it until they hear a beeping sound. Their trainer’s baby sits in a carrier at the side.
“There’s a lot of babies everywhere,” laughed Mira Kharma (18), who helps out at the gym, taking photographs and videos. Boxing in Palestine, she says, is “kind of popular”, but “not the way it should be ... it’s underrated”.
ElBarrio is the gym that Palestine’s first Olympic boxer trains in. Waseem Abu Sal (20), did not pass the qualifying rounds, but he has secured a wild-card entry to the Paris games. He will compete on July 28th in the 57kg category and is one of eight Palestinian athletes taking part in the Olympics.
“I feel like this is like one of the most important Olympics we’ve been to,” said Nader Jayousi, one of Abu’s coaches and technical director of the Palestinian Olympic Committee. “It comes in a time where the Palestinian national identity is threatened, and I think it plays a major role in preserving the national identity of Palestinians, not just in Palestine, but also all around the world.” Jayousi was speaking through WhatsApp, after leaving for Paris.
He said he believes Abu Sal would deliver a “great performance”, but he a “still young, fresh talent” who needed time to mature and develop physically. Their big hope for him the next Olympics, in 2028, he said.
Ramallah, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, is the de facto administrative capital of Palestine, which was recognised as a state by Ireland in May.
ElBarrio Gym – which opened in 2016 – holds classes in boxing, kick-boxing and CrossFit and will have MMA on offer when Jayousi returns from Paris. There are classes for both adults and children.
Writing painted on the wall reads “everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face”, and “every battle is won before it is fought”. Numb/Encore by Linkin Park and Jay-Z is among the songs blasting from speakers as women and men bench press weights on one side and jog, to warm up, on the other.
“Boxing in Palestine has a big history. It’s a game that has been here since the old times. But unfortunately it was not developed. It was not handled by the right people,” said Jayousi.
Israeli military checkpoints are ubiquitous in the West Bank, and Palestinians can be prevented from passing them. They also face major issues when it comes to international travel. A lack of mobility affects the ability of their top athletes to train, Jayousi said. “We do have big problems with movement. We always have to apply for visas and submit for visas, which slows down the whole process.”
He said that as Palestinian athletes have prepared for the Olympics, there has been “another war happening in the West Bank, it’s not just in Gaza”.
Israeli military raids in the West Bank have been taking place since long before the Hamas-led attack from Gaza of October 7th, 2023. They usually happen in more northern cities, but sometimes affect Ramallah. There is also violence by Israeli settlers. According to the UN’s Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs, 553 Palestinians, including 131 children, were killed in the West Bank and East Jerusalem between October 7th, 2023, and July 8th, 2024.
On July 19th, the Norwegian Refugee Council said more than 1,000 Palestinians in the West Bank had been displaced by Israeli forces and settlers, and nearly 160,000 were adversely affected by demolitions, in the first half of 2024.
The Israeli army says it tries to protect everyone living in the West Bank and that complaints about soldiers are investigated.
The financial side also challenging, Jayousi said, though he praised the Palestinian Olympic Committee for taking good care of boxers and funding trips “all around the world”.
On top of everything else, Palestinians were mentally suffering, said Jayousi. “They’re very sad, and it’s sucking out the hope of their life, you know? And also, what’s happening in Gaza is making it much worse, because we’re seeing our brothers and sisters being killed and murdered every day, and we can’t do anything about it.” The death toll in Gaza of people killed by Israel since October 7th is approaching 40,000, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry.
Amid this horror, the upcoming Olympics have given Palestinians something to rally around.
“We all are so proud of Wasseem,” says Kharma, as she watched an enthusiastic new generation of boxers warm up in Ramallah, under the careful eyes of their trainers.
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