GAZA/CAIRO: Fadi Al-Arawi, a footballer in the Gaza Strip Premier League, hasn’t been able to take the pitch since pro sports were suspended with the outbreak of war more than two years ago. Like most Gazans, he no longer even has a home where he can watch the World Cup on TV.
As Saturday’s match between Qatar and Switzerland was about to get under way, he wore his old Gaza Sports Club professional uniform and medals he had picked up at international competitions.
He hovered in the darkness over a flickering laptop, trying to get an Internet signal to watch the match with a group of friends in a room in a school converted into a shelter for Gazans displaced by Israel’s military campaign.
“See, this is the Internet, it’s starting to cut out and the match hasn’t even started yet,” Al-Arawi, 38, told Reuters in Khan Younis as Israeli drones hummed overhead. “Can you hear the drones? We might live or die, we might be bombed.”
Much of Gaza was destroyed and its infrastructure heavily damaged during Israel’s two-year military assault in the territory, launched after the October 2023 Hamas attacks.
