A few months ago, Rajab al-Reefi broke the last skateboard he had left. In Gaza, there were no shops to buy a new one, nor any spare parts that could be shipped in. So he asked the kids he trains if anything remained in their collapsed homes. He then searched through the rubble with his bare hands, fully aware that unexploded ordnance could be buried beneath. He found a few parts, reassembled them, and got back to coaching the children with what he built. The Guardian reported his story in late September. Rajab is thirty years old, has led the Gaza skate team for about a decade, and lives about thirty meters from the Yellow Line—the withdrawal line for Israeli troops set by the October 2025 ceasefire.
A Nameless Sport When Rajab first started, skateboarding didn’t even have a name in Gaza. "At first, no one knew this sport. People didn’t even know what it was called," he told SkatePal in 2024, a British charity that builds skateparks in the West Bank. Boards were impossible to find in the Strip, so he built his first one himself. A friend from Italy gave him his second.
It’s no coincidence that the friend was Italian. Rajab began skating in 2015, when Gaza FREEstyle arrived in Gaza—an Italian organization that had been working in the Strip since the previous year. In 2017, the group built the first skatepark in the port area. Over the years, they brought about three hundred skateboards from Italy, along with spare parts and gear.
The Port Park and the First Girls By early 2020, Rajab al-Reefi was coaching nearly seventy kids. Gaza FREEstyle was part of Green Hopes Gaza, a project funded by the Italian Agency for Development Cooperation and implemented by the Association for Cooperation and Solidarity. It featured a 3.7-acre (1.5-hectare) area in the northern Strip, complete with sports courts, community greenhouses, a circus space, and two skate ramps.
The Italian team had also brought several female skaters to Gaza to start a girls' class that hadn't existed until the previous year. Twelve-year-old Sara told The Media Line: "It gives me a bit of hope that we can finally pursue our interests, just like the boys." The team's photographer, André Lucat, recalled that entering the Strip required permits from both Israel and Hamas.
After the Parks Today, there are no skateparks left in Gaza. According to Rajab al-Reefi, one was demolished by the local government to make way for another project, while the other was destroyed by the war in 2024. Where the park built with the help of international friends once stood, there are now tents. "We had skateparks in the Strip; it was our dream. But after we achieved it, the war came and destroyed everything."
The team scattered as well. In September 2025, the group posted that all other members had left their homes, "forced to search for a safe place," leaving Rajab as the only one remaining. Following the October 10 truce, the coaches resumed sessions using a mobile skatepark that moves from one IDP camp to another. Protective gear is nonexistent. "Clothes are the only thing they have to cushion their falls," coach Rimas Dalloul told Al Jazeera. Seven-year-old Marah Salem shared that she used to run away from the bombings just to skate in the street.
Today, the group consists of about forty kids. They train in the YMCA courtyard, open areas near the port, and on the sloped roofs of damaged buildings. Among the rubble, they even use the empty shell of a missile to perform tricks.
Terrain as Found Skateboarding has always sought out spaces meant for other purposes: handrails, staircases, benches, and plazas built for passing through rather than staying put. Projects like Skateistan—founded in Kabul by Oliver Percovich in the late 2000s—and SkatePal grew out of this unique way of navigating the city. In both cases, the board serves primarily to give young people a place to gather.
In Gaza, however, that city is gone. Instead of handrails, there are sloped concrete slabs, rebar jutting out from ceilings, plastic bags, and loose rubble. Photos coming out of the Strip show jumps over piles of debris and grinds on collapsed roofs. It is easy to view them as dramatic spectacles, but the person taking them isn't looking for shock value. Rajab works as a photographer to support his family and uses those images to let the world know the club still exists. On one of the slabs, next to a colorful drawing on the ground, someone wrote "Hope."
In the morning, Rajab al-Reefi sets out to fetch water for his family from another district. Water tankers don't reach areas near the Yellow Line, so water is only available once a week at a set time. Then comes training. For now, he explained, it's just basic moves—no hard tricks.
Photography
Instagram Team_Skate_Gaza
