Football returns amid ruins as Gaza hosts first organised tournament since war

DOHA: On a worn five-a-side pitch surrounded by rubble and ruined buildings, Jabalia Youth faced Al-Sadaqa in the Gaza Strip’s first organised soccer tournament in more than two years.

The match ended in a draw, as did a second fixture between Beit Hanoun and Al-Shujaiya, but the crowd at the Palestine Pitch in Gaza City’s shattered Tal al-Hawa district showed little disappointment.

Spectators cheered loudly, shaking a chain-link fence, while boys climbed broken concrete walls or peered through gaps in the ruins to watch. A drumbeat echoed across the wasteland.“It’s confusing — happy, sad, joyful,” said Youssef Jendiya, 21, a Jabalia Youth player from an area of Gaza largely depopulated and bulldozed by Israeli forces.

“People search for water in the morning, for food and bread. Life is very difficult. But there is a little left of the day when you can come and play soccer and express some of the joy inside you.”That joy, he added, was incomplete.

“You come to the stadium missing many of your teammates — killed, injured, or those who travelled for treatment.”Four months after a ceasefire ended major fighting in Gaza, reconstruction has barely begun.

Israeli forces have ordered residents out of nearly two-thirds of the territory, forcing more than two million people into a narrow strip of devastated coastline, where most live in tents or damaged buildings.

The former site of Gaza City’s 9,000-seat Yarmouk Stadium, levelled during the war and later used by Israeli forces as a detention centre, now shelters displaced families in white tents spread across what was once the pitch.

For this week’s tournament, the Palestinian Football Association cleared rubble from a collapsed wall beside a half-sized pitch, erected fencing and swept debris from the old artificial turf — modest steps to bring football back to a city still struggling to recover.