Nine months ago, Fadi al-Deeb did not answer his brother’s calls. The next day, he discovered that he had been killed in an Israeli attack on his home.
Al-Deeb, the only Palestinian athlete to compete in the Paralympics, left the Gaza Strip a decade ago for a wheelchair basketball career that took him to Turkey and Greece before moving to France.
“On December 6, I was playing a French league match and when it ended, I found that my brother had called me several times… I tried to call him back, but I couldn’t get through to him,” said Al-Deeb, who competed in the shot put competition at the Paralympics in Paris.
“On the night of December 7, I received the news that ‘your brother was killed in an attack on our building,'” he added, adding that he “often wonders about the content of his brother’s last message.”
In Paris, Al-Deeb said he feels like he is the voice of his people in the Paralympics.
“A lot of feelings, and a big responsibility because I’m not talking about myself, I’m not playing for myself. I’m here for 11 million people, and everyone who says I’m Palestinian, and everyone who talks about humanity and the freedom of Palestine,” he added.
The Palestinian Olympic Committee was recognized by the International Olympic Committee three decades ago. Gaza has a population of 2.3 million people, while millions of Palestinians live in other areas.
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Al-Deeb, 40, said he was paralyzed after an Israeli soldier shot him in the back in 2001 during the second intifada.
He raises his voice when he talks about life in Gaza, where more than 40,000 Palestinians, most of them women, children and the elderly, have been killed since Israel began its aggression on October 7 of last year.
Al-Deeb, who will continue his basketball career in a wheelchair, believes that “there is no difference (for the Israeli army) between athletes, whether disabled or not, or children and women, between large or small houses, or hospitals or hotels, universities or schools.”
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Al-Deeb explained that he feels uncomfortable with the presence of Israeli athletes in Paris.
But he welcomed the support he received from other competitors, saying: “I don’t feel like I’m alone or like I’m lonely, these people really, it’s amazing and unbelievable, they give me a sense of humanity.”
