Rubble, Ruins And A Ball: Gaza Finds Hope On The Pitch As Football Endures - Report

Last Updated:February 11, 2026, 14:20 IST

Football returned to Gaza as Jabalia Youth faced Al-Sadaqa in Tal al-Hawa, with fans watching amid rubble.

On a battered five-a-side pitch carved out of rubble and ruin, football returned to Gaza.

Jabalia Youth faced Al-Sadaqa in the first organised tournament in the strip in more than two years, played out in the shattered Tal al-Hawa district of Gaza City.

The game ended in a draw. So did the second fixture between Beit Hanoun and Al-Shujaiya. But results barely mattered.

Fans pressed against a chain-link fence beside the so-called Palestine Pitch. Boys scrambled up broken concrete walls for a glimpse. Others peered through holes in bombed-out buildings. Someone beat a drum.

For a few hours, the noise wasn’t from warplanes — it was from football.

For 21-year-old Jabalia Youth player Youssef Jendiya, stepping back onto the turf stirred conflicting emotions.

“Confused. Happy, sad, joyful, happy," he said to Reuters.

“People search for water in the morning: food, bread. Life is a little difficult. But there is a little left of the day, when you can come and play soccer and express some of the joy inside you."

That joy, he admitted, is incomplete.

“You come to the stadium missing many of your teammates… killed, injured, or those who travelled for treatment. So the joy is incomplete."

Four months after a ceasefire halted major fighting, reconstruction has barely begun. Israeli forces have ordered residents out of nearly two-thirds of Gaza, squeezing more than two million people into a narrow coastal strip, many living in tents or damaged buildings.

The 9,000-seat Yarmouk Stadium — once Gaza City’s football heart — was levelled during the war and later used as a detention centre. Today, displaced families pitch white tents where the grass once grew.

For this modest tournament, organisers cleared rubble from a collapsed wall, swept debris off worn artificial turf and erected a fence around a half-sized pitch. It was enough.

By playing, the teams wanted to send a message.

“That no matter what happened in terms of destruction and genocidal war, we continue with playing, and with life. Life must continue," said Beit Hanoun’s Amjad Abu Awda to Reuters.

In a landscape of loss, football, however fragile, is breathing again.

(with Reuters inputs)

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