Jerusalem Marlins: waterpolo lives in the West Bank

Dream or folly? The idea of bringing waterpolo to Palestine nowadays may seem absurd, considering what has been happening for over a year in the Middle East, in the territories occupied by Israel.

However, in Palestine there are still people who try to carry on the lesson of sport, putting in their sacrifice and commitment to achieve their goal. People like Fadi Awisat, a young coach and former international swimmer, who has set his sights on spreading waterpolo in Palestine. Awisat felt in love with it as a boy, in the 2000s, when he took part in a tournament in the West Bank organized by swimmers like him, who wanted to try their hand at a new sport: that project failed later due to the lack of pools and above all the logistical difficulties in the occupied territories.

Awisat kept cultivating his passion for waterpolo, achieving an exceptional outcome in the last two years: in 2022 he created a waterpolo section at La Salle College in East Jerusalem and last June the school’s U13 squad became the first Palestinian team to participate in HaBaWaBa in Italy, the most important waterpolo event for children in the world. After leaving its mark in Italy, where the Palestinian kids were welcomed with curiosity, affection and solidarity by the other young waterpolo players of the HaBaWaBa community, Awisat’s project suffered a setback: La Salle College decided to close the waterpolo section.

The coach, however, did not lose heart. With passion, creativity and determination, he jumped into a new project and started the Jerusalem Marlins Water Polo, a new club directly managed by Awisat. Unlike La Salle, the new club has its swimming pool beyond the wall built by Israel to divide the Holy City from the West Bank, precisely in Abu Dis, a village that is part of the Jerusalem Governorate. Awisat bought water spaces at the Legends Fitness Pool, goal gates and balls, which he found also thanks to the contacts he collected at HaBaWaBa. “Anyone who lives in the West Bank and wants to play waterpolo can come to this pool,” Awisat explains to Waterpolo Development. “Only those with Arab-Israeli citizenship are allowed to enter East Jerusalem, you need a permit – the coach continues – Instead people from Bethlehem, Ramallah, Nablus and all the nearby cities and villages need no authorization to come to Abu Dis”.

However the journey is not so easy… “Checkpoints, roadblocks, traffic jam and roads that pass near Israeli settlements make the journey complicated, it can take up to two hours to travel 20 km… But at least now the pool is accessible to everyone”, Awisat says. On November 15th he held the first open waterpolo day in Abu Dis.

“I have trained 7 kids from 9 to 15 years old: we are only at the beginning, but having this kind of response is important. Truth is that I wanted a better place to train my team and to host, why not, other teams. The Abu Dis pool allows me to create a connection with sports clubs in other cities in the West Bank: if projects similar to the Jerusalem Marlins were to be born in the swimming clubs of Jericho, Bethlehem, Ramallah or Nablus, these teams could then come here to train with us. And maybe in the future we could have a real championship or even a Palestine national team”.

Some might argue that playing waterpolo is not exactly among the nowadays needs of the Palestinian people, who is dealing with one of the most dramatic moments in their history. However sport remains an exercise of freedom at every latitude, a tool you can use in order to affirm your own identity and, therefore, your existence. It’s a means to erase distances, to produce empathy: the child who plays waterpolo in Abu Dis will feel the same emotions as any young Italian, French, Australian or Hungarian young waterpolo player, we saw that at HaBaWaBa. In practice, sport is capable to transform itself into an obstacle to dehumanization.

“Before coming here I wanted a home for myself and Palestinian waterpolo: well, now we have it”, Awisat says before closing our video-call. His project has just been born, but its value is already immense.