Runner on first Palestinian Olympic squad

The Associated Press, Gaza City

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Transcribed from the clipping

“GAZA CITY (AP) — Majed Abu Marahil sighed as he pulled his police uniform from a khaki duffel bag. His afternoon training for the Olympics was over. Now it was time to work the night shift as a guard at Yasser Arafat’s headquarters.

Abu Marahil will compete in the 10,000 meters at the Atlanta Games this summer, part of Palestine’s first Olympic team, but he can’t afford to quit his $300-a-month job. Arafat’s fledgling government has no money to spare for athletes’ stipends. The 32-year-old father of five is one, and perhaps the only, member of the team.

The Palestinians were admitted to the Olympic movement as a result of their 1993 peace agreement with Israel. Abu Marahil has little chance of winning a medal. His best time in the 10,000 is about 30 minutes, almost 3½ minutes slower than the world record of 26:43.53 by Ethiopia’s Haile Gebrselassie.

But his goal is not to win — it is to help change the negative association his people have had with the games since the massacre of Israeli athletes by Palestinian terrorists at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

Eleven Israeli athletes and coaches were killed in the attack that ended in a shootout between German commandos and the hostage-takers. ‘I know the world remembers us as terrorists,’ Abu Marahil said, a dark blue track suit covering his lean 6-foot frame.

‘I hope I can change this picture.’… Abu Marahil is on his own in preparing for the Olympics. With no doctors or dieticians to advise him, he has designed a simple plan. He runs about two hours every day, stays away from cigarettes and alcohol, eats a lot of fruit and vegetables and tries to get as much sleep as possible.

Some days, he runs from his small house in Gaza City’s Zaytoun neighborhood to work at Arafat’s seaside compound and back. The 2½-mile route takes him through potholed streets crowded with cars, donkey carts and street vendors. Most times, Abu Marahil trains at Yarmouk Stadium, the city’s only sports arena.

Built by the Egyptians in the 1960s, Yarmouk’s track has long since been pockmarked by holes and covered by the sand that is so abundant in the coastal strip… Abu Marahil has been promised a $10,000 reward and a promotion in the police force if he brings home Palestine’s first Olympic medal.

But he dismissed the money. ‘It is enough for me to raise the flag of Palestine,’ he said.”

Context added by this archive

A sports story that routes through Munich by the fifth paragraph. The reward he turned down was worth nearly three years of his wages. This paper spells him Abu Marahil; the Atlanta Constitution spells him Abu Maraheel four months later.

Cite this clipping

"Runner on first Palestinian Olympic squad," Index-Journal, 7 April 1996, p. 1. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1996-004. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1996-004