For Palestinian athletes, the Olympics is about more than sports

PARIS (AP) — Most of the athletes representing the Palestinian territories at the Paris Olympics were born elsewhere — Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Germany, Chile and the United States — yet they care deeply about the politics of their parents’ and grandparents’ homeland.

They are eager to compete but say their presence at the Games isn’t only, or even primarily, about sports. With Israel and Hamas locked in a brutal war that has killed tens of thousands in Gaza, these eight athletes — two of whom hail from the West Bank — carry heavier burdens.

Yazan Al Bawwab, a 24-year-old swimmer who was born in Saudi Arabia and lives in Dubai, said he doesn't expect recognition for his performance in the pool. He uses swimming, he said, as a "tool for Palestine.”

“Unfortunately, nobody has ever asked me about my races. Nobody cares,” said al Bawwab, whose parents come from Jerusalem and Lod, a city that today is in central Israel. “I’m going to be plain and honest: France does not recognize Palestine as a country. But I’m over there, raising my flag. That’s my role.”

Omar Ismail, who was born in Dubai to parents who come from the West Bank town of Jenin, has loftier athletic ambitions. Shortly after earning his spot on the team at a taekwondo qualification tournament in China, the 18-year-old said he aims to win a gold medal in Paris.

But even if he does not earn a medal, Ismail — who has visited relatives in Jenin — believes his mere participation symbolizes something larger than himself.

“I represent the identity of the people in Palestine, their steadfastness,” Ismail said. “I’d like to inspire the children of Palestine, show them that each of them can achieve their goals, give them hope.”

Even under the best of circumstances, it is difficult to maintain a vibrant Olympics training program in Gaza, the West Bank and east Jerusalem. Nine months of war between Israel and Hamas has made that challenge next to impossible.

Much of the country’s sporting infrastructure, clubs and institutions have been demolished, said Nader Jayousi, the technical director at the Palestine Olympic Committee.

“Do you know how many approved pools there are in Palestine? Zero,” said al Bawaab, who noted that the Palestinian economy is too small and fragile to consistently support the development of elite athletes. “There is no sports in Palestine. We are a country right now that does not have enough food or shelter, and we are trying to figure out how to stay alive. We are not a sports country yet.”

The Palestinian diaspora has always played an important role at the Olympics and other international competitions, Jayousi said.

Jayousi said it’s not the first time that most of the athletes representing the POC come from abroad. He said the Palestinian diaspora is always represented at any big international sporting competition and Olympics.

More than 38,000 people have been killed in Gaza since the war between Israel and Hamas began, according to local health officials. Among those who died were about 300 athletes, referees, coaches and others working in Gaza's sports sector, according to Jayousi.

Perhaps the most prominent Palestinian athlete to die in the war was long-distance runner Majed Abu Maraheel, who in 1996 in Atlanta became the first Palestinian to compete in the Olympics. He died of kidney failure earlier this year after he was unable to be treated in Gaza and could not be evacuated to Egypt, Palestinian officials said.

Only one Palestinian athlete, Ismail, qualified for the Paris Games in his own right. The seven others gained their spots under a wild-card system delivered as part of the universality quota places.. Backed by the International Olympic Committee, it allows athletes who represent poorer nations with less-established sports programs to compete, even though they did not meet the sporting criteria.

“We had very high hopes that we would go to Paris 2024 with qualified athletes,” Jayousi, the team's technical director, said. “We lost lots of these chances because of the complete stoppage of every single activity in the country.”

Palestinian athletes will compete in boxing, judo, swimming, shooting, track and field and taekwondo.

There is a chance Palestinian athletes could compete against Israelis in Paris. The Israel Olympic Committee said it is sending 88 athletes to Paris, and that they would compete against athletes from anywhere.

Jayousi declined to say whether clear guidelines have been issued to Palestinian athletes about whether they would be expected — as a form of protest against the war in Gaza — to drop out of competition rather than face Israelis.

“Let's see what the draws will put our athletes against," he said. “We know what we want to do, but we don't have to say everything that we want to do.”

One Olympic hopeful who did not make the cut was Gaza-born weightlifter Mohammed Hamada, a flag bearer at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics. When the war began, Hamada moved to Gaza's southernmost city of Rafah and trained there for 25 days. But because of the shortage of food, Hamada — who competed in the 102 kilograms (225 pounds) weight class — gradually lost about 18 kilograms (40 pounds).

Hamada eventually secured a visa to leave Gaza and moved to Qatar to continue his training. But, Jayousi said, he just couldn't get his body back to Olympic-level condition.

Jayousi said winning medals is not the top priority for the athletes who made it to Paris. (No Palestinian athlete has ever won an Olympic medal).

“We are going here to show our Palestinianism,” he said. “We are focused on fighting until the last second, which we have been doing as a nation for the last 80 years.”

Al Bawaab said he wants to empower the next generation of Palestinian athletes, in part by providing them with greater financial resources. He founded the Palestinian Olympians Association to help athletes prepare for sports and life beyond, including by providing them with mental-health support.

"We don’t have that sports culture yet,” al Bawaab said. “When I’m done swimming, we’ll hopefully get that rolling in the country. But you have to be safe first.”

AP Summer Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/2024-paris-olympic-games

Omar Ismail, who was born in Dubai and will be competing for the Palestinian territories at the Paris Olympics, talks to his taekwondo coach in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, on Thursday, June 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Martin Dokoupil)

Omar Ismail, who was born in Dubai and will be competing for the Palestinian territories at the Paris Olympics, practices taekwondo in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, on Thursday, June 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Martin Dokoupil)

Palestinian Omar Yaser Ismail stretches with coach Humaid Almheiri during his Taekwondo training session at the Sharjah Sports Club in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, Thursday, June 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Martin Dokoupil)

Omar Ismail, who was born in Dubai and will be competing for the Palestinian territories at the Paris Olympics, practices taekwondo in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, on Thursday, June 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Martin Dokoupil)

FILE – Yazan Al Bawwab, who was born in Saudi Arabia and will be competing for the Palestinian territories at the Paris Olympics, reacts during the men's 100m freestyle heats at the World Swimming Championships in Fukuoka, Japan, Wednesday, July 26, 2023. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man, File)

Omar Ismail, who was born in Dubai and will be competing for the Palestinian territories at the Paris Olympics, practices taekwondo in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, on Thursday, June 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Martin Dokoupil)

Omar Ismail, who was born in Dubai and will be competing for the Palestinian territories at the Paris Olympics, practices taekwondo in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, on Thursday, June 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Martin Dokoupil)

VATICAN CITY (AP) — There’s a telling anecdote from St. John Paul II's pontificate that illustrates how Pope Leo XIV and his American style of governing have changed the Vatican and the way it handles papal health crises.

The Polish pope, 84 at the time, was back at Gemelli hospital battling an acute respiratory infection, breathing problems and the worsening effects on his larynx of Parkinson’s disease, which had made speaking nearly impossible and breathing difficult.

Doctors performed a tracheotomy under anesthesia, an incision in John Paul’s windpipe, to help him breathe. And yet the next morning, his spokesman gave reporters a remarkably rosy, seemingly implausible update: John Paul had eaten his regular breakfast of coffee with milk, 10 cookies and a yoghurt.

“Something that would suffocate anyone,” church historian Alberto Melloni recalled Friday. “But it was normal then that they told lies about the pope. Those were the rules of the game.”

Two papacies and twenty years later, Pope Leo XIV has changed the rules of the game.

Not only did history’s first American pope announce himself that he had a lung nodule that required surgery – live on television during his Sunday noon blessing from the Apostolic Palace — but Leo's doctors have been providing the medical updates for his recovery, not the Vatican.

Every day since Leo’s surgery Tuesday, Leo’s personal physician Dr. Luigi Carbone and the head of thoracic surgery at Gemelli, Dr. Stefano Margaritora, have signed the medical bulletins updating the world on Leo’s recovery. The Vatican spokesman has provided information primarily involving non-medical details: The Mass Leo celebrated, the Vatican officials who visited.

The written medical updates are spare, but provide authoritative information with a degree of accountability and transparency that has long been anathema to the Vatican.

Leo’s handling of his cancer is in many ways textbook American-style corporate good governance, applied to the Catholic Church, said Julie Rubio, a professor of Christian social ethics at the Jesuit school of theology at Santa Clara University.

“Even though it doesn’t seem all that revolutionary, ‘best practices’ of relying on experts, transparency, evaluation -- all those kinds of things are practices that are good for an institution,” she said.

She said Leo, the American math major pope, had already brought such best practices into his governing style at the Vatican, most visibly in the official rollout in May of his encyclical on artificial intelligence.

Rather than have a handful of prelates talk about the encyclical at a Vatican press conference, Leo himself presided over the presentation. To provide a spectrum of voices, perspective and experience, Leo had on the stage with him three cardinals, two lay female theologians – from Britain and Congo -- and the co-founder of AI developer Anthropic.

Rubio said the inclusive presentation was in keeping with the effort, begun by Pope Francis, to make the church less clerical and more reflective of the real world. It's a church that relies on lay expertise in the way that Leo relied on medical advice to have the nodule removed, she said.

“Those kinds of practices actually can be pretty transformative to a place,” she said. “Though obviously the transformation is a process.”

The process began to some degree under the Francis pontificate, when the Argentine pope took the reins of the Vatican communications apparatus and gave dozens of sit-down interviews over the course of 12 years, often without informing his media handlers. That level of control precluded a Vatican media operation from spinning tall tales as occurred during John Paul's reign.

But when it came to his own health and governing style, Francis was opaque, stubborn and often shunned expert advice. His go-it-alone attitude, in everything from Vatican diplomacy to communications, extended to his view of doctors. He repeatedly refused medical advice, even as his already fragile respiratory health and mobility deteriorated.

Francis had strained ligaments in his right knee that made walking difficult. But he refused to operate on it, saying he didn’t like the effects of anesthesia. Eventually he was unable to walk and had to use a wheelchair. He similarly refused to go to the hospital as his pneumonia worsened toward the end of his life, even as he swelled with the effects of cortisone and other treatments.

Melloni recalled that Francis was very much a Jesuit, a militant-style religious order and its pope a “Rambo-style” fighter who governed alone. He was, Melloni said, “a man who takes care of himself, a man who if injured fights back, a man who always had to give this proof of military-style valor.”

Leo, on the other hand, is the perfect civilian patient: He listens to expert medical advice and follows it, like most people who get sick, Melloni said. Leo moved quickly to remove the nodule, considering other cases of cancer in his family, with his brother currently being treated for blood cancer, he said.

"He knows that this disease —as is obviously the case with all diseases of that sort — is unpredictable,” he said.

Leo is making his mark on governing, even from the hospital, and showing who is in charge in other ways, too.

Late Friday, the Vatican announced he had spoken by telephone with Russian President Vladimir Putin and “expressed his deep concern about the grave humanitarian situation in the city of Oleshky, in the Kherson region, and called for a ceasefire to allow the delivery of food and medical assistance, and the voluntary and safe evacuation of the civilian population.”

The statement was significant, showing Leo was well enough to conduct official diplomatic business from the hospital, was keeping up with world events and was continuing to promote his message of peace as he recovers from surgery. The Kremlin readout of the call suggested progress had actually been made on the humanitarian front.

But the demonstration of Leo's leadership was significant also because it came as intrigue was consuming the Vatican over the fate of the secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin. The seasoned diplomat had said Leo's pontificate may have to be “adjusted” given his cancer diagnosis, a bold claim given all indications were that Leo was recovering well.

Parolin, who had been Francis' top deputy but remains in the job, was considered a leading contender in the conclave that elected Leo and was recently passed over as dean of the College of Cardinals.

Perhaps tellingly, he was not among the Vatican officials who visited Leo Friday.

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

This picture, released by Vatican Media on Friday, Oct. 16, 2026, shows Pope Leo XIV, flanked by his personal secretary, Monsignor Edgard Iván Rimaycuna Inga, left, celebrating Mass at the Agostino Gemelli Polyclinic in Rome, where he is recovering after having cancer removed from his right lung. (Vatican Media via AP)

An image of Pope Leo XIV rests at the base of a statue of Pope St. John Paul II at the Agostino Gemelli Polyclinic, where Leo is hospitalized, in Rome, Friday, Oct. 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)

Vatican Secretary of State Pietro Parolin arrives to attend an international congress titled "Human Splendor: Preserving Fertility, Treating Infertility" at the Agostino Gemelli Polyclinic where Pope Leo XIV is hospitalised, in Rome, Friday, Oct. 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

This picture, released by Vatican Media on Friday, Oct. 16, 2026, shows Pope Leo XIV celebrating Mass at the Agostino Gemelli Polyclinic in Rome, where he is recovering after having cancer removed from his right lung. (Vatican Media via AP)

This picture, released by Vatican Media on Friday, Oct. 16, 2026, shows Pope Leo XIV celebrating Mass at the Agostino Gemelli Polyclinic in Rome, where he is recovering after having cancer removed from his right lung. (Vatican Media via AP)