Setting off to Gaza as a young marathon runner volunteering with the Danish Church Aid, Signe Smidt discovered that she was unable to run – a basic exercise of freedom of movement and strengthening of spirit – as there were no roads or paths that would allow her to run a distance of more that 10km (5.5miles) or so. Under siege, people are not able to claim this right to movement, she discovered. Not only did this mean a compromising of this right but, as she described to me, it also means that the empowerment, independence, freedom and strength felt whilst running always remains under a certain threshold.
Smidt decided to set up a running club to encourage people to claim their own right to movement and created annual runs for the people of Gaza. “NGOs play way too big a role and it has consequences for the people,” she explained. The social fabric changes as aid donors come to dictate certain ways of living, become part and parcel of people’s lives and the way they make sense of living under siege. The conditions in which aid is given is never through one-way altruism. Therefore, the importance for Gazans to resist the all-consuming NGO and UN aid schemes to claim their own right independently, using their own bodies, became an ever-more powerful idea to her. The active sentiment of resisting the occupation was something that all people, irrespective of gender, could contribute to peacefully. The responsibility had been taken from Gaza’s citizens with the patching over of NGO and INGO solutions, obstructing and disregarding any grassroots resistance and independent impulses emanating from Gaza.
Smidt lived in Haifa for four years, an experience that she recalls as tainted by Israeli discourse on Palestinians, and she found that even after her move to Gaza the discussion remained elitist and academic: “removed in a parallel universe,” she says. The tribunals and other international UN programmes, she says, “we may see making a change over the next 100 years,” but so far she sees them as detrimental or a distraction from the real political issues behind the fight for Palestinian rights. According to Right to Movement, the organisation she founded, this is an alternative narrative for the Palestinians, one that talks about their rights in relation to the Israeli occupation.
Just the mere issue of Gaza not having the required 26.2 miles in order to set up a marathon under international standards is a symptom of the need for people to claim their right to movement. In the first year the Gaza marathon was held, Palestinian authorities suggested that runners should run in four loops of 10km (5.5miles) as there appeared to be no such distance unregulated by Israeli forces. After having to negotiate the circuit, the run turned out to be a massive success, starting their first ever run with over 700 participants in 2013, 40 per cent of whom were (largely Palestinian) women – a higher percentage of women that both the New York and Hamburg marathons. Last year, they had 3,000 runners registered for their event.
The running community aims at being completely voluntary and locally run, organic entity and has so far received a lot of positive feedback from contestants who enjoy the peaceful act of resistance against which Israeli soldiers, as participants explained to Smidt, have no clue how to react. Furthermore, due to the large amount of women, it is her impression that women can now participate in more gender-neutral forms of resistance, rather than stone throwing etc., that may not be their preferred way of standing up to those who are suppressing their right to movement.
The next marathon in Palestine is taking place on 1 April 2016, and you can register here on the Right to Movement website to manifest your support of Palestinians’ right to movement.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.