Siege deprives Gaza parkour team of international competition

The relatively new sport of parkour sees participants carrying out often dangerous moves in urban spaces. These include free-jumping and free-running across roof tops and walls. With no opportunity to watch and meet practitioners in other countries, Gaza’s parkour team learnt the sport via the internet.

“In 2008,” said the founder and trainer of the parkour team in the Gaza Strip, “I watched parkour videos on YouTube and started to learn by myself from what I saw.” Mohamed Lubbad told MEMO that when he felt ready, he started to train others, free of charge. “After a few years I gained much more expertise and had a 22-member team with the name Three Run Gaza.”

Lubbad and his team became experts in trick gymnastics and brick dance in addition to modified parkour. They inserted moves using a football and jumping from high buildings as well as Gaza’s many damaged buildings into their routines.

Israeli jet targeted the team’s dream

The team received no official support, but reached an understanding with Al-Salam Club to use its training hall for parkour. “It was a good time and we got a lot of experience by using the facility,” said Lubbad. “However, in 2011, an Israeli jet targeted the club and destroyed the training hall, shattering our dreams in the process.”

Lubbad and his colleagues raised some money and rented a new hall, but had to abandon it after a couple of months as they could not afford the rent. “There was no public attention or interest in what we were doing.”

The difficulties they faced made the parkour team more creative as they started to think of new ways to attract positive attention.

Three Run parkour

“We went onto social media and started to publish pictures and short raw videos on Facebook and YouTube,” Lubbad explained. “We could reach the founder of the sport, David Bill, but for political reasons and because of the siege we could not set up a contact channel with him and get the support we needed.”

Nevertheless, a number of international activists saw the videos and pictures, contacted Gaza parkour and then offered to help them to get in touch with various international bodies.

“At first, journalists and free activists visited us in Gaza, took pictures and video footage, produced short films with English songs and comments and published them on social media,” Lubbad told us. “This was followed by links with the international media, including the BBC, who interviewed us and broadcast what we were doing. This was our most successful platform.”

Invitations to take part in international competitions and events soon followed. “Unfortunately, the strict Israeli siege prevents us from accepting them,” lamented Lubbad. Last November, two members of Three Run Gaza parkour team qualified to take part in a championship in Qatar; they couldn’t get out of Gaza in order to take part.

As Mohamed Lubbad puts it, “All of our dreams end on the doorstep of the Israeli siege on the Gaza Strip.”

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