Only three or four men still surf in the Gaza Strip because of a severe shortage of surfboards and the materials needed to repair damaged ones, according to Tahseen Abu Assi, a surfer in Gaza City. The Associated Press reported on Tuesday that Abu Assi and two other surfers, including Khalil Abu Jiab, paddled out off the territory’s port as rare, rideable swells rolled in.
Despite the dire humanitarian crisis across Gaza, where a fragile ceasefire took effect on Oct. 10 but deadly Israeli strikes have continued, the surfers said they drop everything when the sea rises. “As soon as the sea gets high, you leave your work and leave your whole life,” Abu Assi told the AP. “Work can be caught up on, as they say. We go practice this sport.”
Abu Assi carried his surfboard through every displacement he endured over two years of war, unwilling to risk losing a board he could not replace. No new surfboards have entered the Palestinian territory since 2007, he said, because they fall under a broader Israeli ban on certain imports. The ban was tightened last year when Israel declared Gaza’s waters a “no-go zone,” formally prohibiting fishing, swimming, and sea access. The United Nations has reported that some fishermen were attacked onshore and at sea during the war, and the Israeli military heavily restricted maritime activity. Entering the water off central Gaza, where Gaza City is located, remains risky due to Israeli patrols.
Still, the surfers persisted. “During the war, in the middle of the war, in the middle of the bombing and the planes above us, we used to go down and practice this sport,” Abu Assi said. On Tuesday, Abu Jiab rode the high waves with his arms raised in joy—an image of brief reprieve against a backdrop of widespread destruction.
The war, sparked by Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack that killed roughly 1,200 people and took 251 hostages, has killed 72,628 Palestinians and wounded 172,520 others, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Most residents are displaced, and Palestinians continue to struggle to secure food, clean water, medical care, and shelter.
But for the territory’s few surfers, the rare high waves offer something the war has not destroyed. “There is fear, of course,” Abu Assi said, “but we can’t leave this sport.”