On October 7, 2023, the fragile equilibrium of the Middle East was shattered. The brutal Hamas attack on Israel, which saw more than 1,200 people killed and more than 250 hostages taken, sparked an intense military response from Israel which continues to this day. Millions of Palestinians have been displaced and tens of thousands have been killed, many of them women and children; hundreds of Israeli soldiers have also been killed. Following a short-lived cease-fire from January to March 2025, Israel has again ramped up its military offensive, and on May 16 launched the Operation Gideon’s Chariots campaign, aimed at taking control of the entire Gaza Strip.
Caught in the middle of this is a team of Palestinian paracyclists.
The Gaza Sunbirds, which was founded in 2020 by two local athletes, has spent the years since working toward a dream of providing sporting opportunities to disabled Palestinian cyclists. Many of its members have lost limbs or sustained other injuries as a result of sniper fire or airstrikes.
Lacking basics, it was a slow process to build up the team’s equipment – a Gaza Sunbirds spokesperson told Escape Collective that in the early days it typically took a year for finances to make their way into Gaza due to strict financial regulations; each “trash” bike, sourced second-hand from Israel, would take more than a month to save up for. After more than a year, the team was able to get helmets and pedals. “We would train unprotected, taping our leg on to the pedal to be able to cycle … our training saw us going from wall to wall of the open air prison we call home,” the spokesperson told Escape. Forty-two kilometres was as far as they could roam.
By 2023, the Gaza Sunbirds had grown to 20 members training throughout the week in the hopes of competing at major international competitions, like the Paralympics and Paracycling World Championships. On many of those training rides was a slender young Palestinian called Ahmed Al Dali, who lost his lower left leg in 2014 in an Israeli missile strike. In the aftermath, he took up para-football until discovering cycling, joining Gaza Sunbirds in its early days. Before October 2023, he was a bicycle mechanic.
On May 19, Al Dali was killed in South Gaza by another airstrike. He was 33 years old, and is survived by three daughters, one son, and his cousin, Gaza Sunbirds co-founder Alaa Al Dali, who lost his right leg due to sniper fire in 2019.
Since late 2023, the Gaza Sunbirds have pivoted from a sporting focus to a humanitarian one, with Ahmed Al Dali involved in the non-profit’s efforts. “Ahmed’s courage on the bike was matched only by his devotion to his children and his community,” said Karim Ali, the other co-founder of Gaza Sunbirds.
The group says it has distributed over US$400,000 of aid to the people of Gaza – 120,000 kilograms of food parcels, 15,000 hot meals, toys and baby essentials: much of it distributed by bicycle, as that is one of the few ways to move around Gaza. “The guys are using their bikes to drop off aid parcels and look after their families,” a Gaza Sunbirds spokesperson told Escape in late 2023: dodging potholes and missile strikes to deliver basics. “We are not aid workers, but a group of athletes that knows how to make things happen in Gaza.”
As the conflict has continued, the organisation has been stretched. Every last one of its team members is displaced, having lost their homes. Its last bike has been destroyed, meaning that Gaza Sunbirds is, perhaps, now more a humanitarian organisation than a cycling team. Two weeks ago, the organisation’s new truck delivered the last of the bread it could secure; it has so far distributed 48,825 loaves. “As a team working tirelessly to deliver aid over the last 16 months, there is nothing more we can do,” said Karim Ali in the Instagram post marking Ahmed Al Dali’s death. “It is time for real change. We don’t want to lose more people.”
But improbably, there is hope. At last week’s Paracycling World Cup in Oostende, Belgium, Alaa Al Dali, who was evacuated to Egypt in April and has since claimed asylum in Belgium, placed 19th in the road race – in the process qualifying Team Palestine for the 2025 World Championships. On June 6, the team’s competing athletes will line up at the Asian Championships in Kazakhstan.
Meanwhile, back home in Palestine, the organisation will continue the struggle of sourcing food, distributing it, and bearing the weight of the loss of friends like Ahmed Al Dali.
“When we first started this journey, Ahmed was by my side. He was a great person filled with positivity and a love for sport. Today his life ended," said his cousin, Alaa Al Dali. "It breaks my heart to have to continue our journey without him, but we will keep going for all those we lost during this genocide.”
Tragically, when the horror stops, there’ll be a need for a Palestinian paracycling team again. According to the World Health Organisation, since October 2023 there have been between 3,000 and 4,000 amputations in Gaza – the tiny strip of land that is home to more child amputees per capita than anywhere else on Earth.
