May 18, 2008	Sunday	Jamadi-ul-Awwal 12, 1429

JERICHO (West Bank), May 17: Every morning at dawn Nadir al-Masri runs around a trackless field at an empty stadium in the occupied West Bank, his coach clocking distances and timing him on a stopwatch.

The lack of a proper track is just one of many obstacles the 28-year-old long distance runner has encountered on his journey from the besieged and war-torn Gaza Strip to the Beijing Olympics.

“I came to Jericho because I cannot train in Gaza with the political circumstances there. I faced huge problems in coming here,” he said one recent morning after a long workout.

The married father of three usually lives in the town of Beit Hanun in northern Gaza, where Israel has carried out several raids and air strikes aimed at halting rocket and mortar attacks by Palestinian militants.

“It’s very hard to train with all the Israeli incursions and the daily firing of rockets and missiles,” says Masri, who hopes to compete in the 5,000 metres event.

Four times a week Masri would run 14 kilometres (about nine miles) from his village to the Yarmuk stadium in Gaza City, past bullet-shredded buildings and garbage-strewn streets, pivoting around donkey carts and microbuses.

But the biggest obstacles Masri has faced are political: since Hamas took power in June, Israel has sealed the territory off from the outside world, sharply limiting the number of people allowed in and out.

After trying for months to secure a permit that would allow him to train with his coach in the West Bank, Masri was finally granted one after Israel’s mass-selling Yediot Aharonot newspaper ran a story on his plight.

“Israeli journalists from Yediot Aharonot helped me to get here,” says Masri, who arrived on April 10.

Israel granted Masri a permit on May 12 to travel to China to complete his training, but he fears he could face new bureaucratic obstacles when he tries to return to Gaza after the games.

In the meantime, Masri and the other three members of the Palestinian team — another runner and two swimmers — are making the most of the facilities they have, determined to compete on a world stage.

Zakia Masar, a 21-year-old swimmer currently studying at a university in the northern West Bank town of Jenin, is only able to practice two days a week because the closest pool she has access to is in east Jerusalem.

The journey between the two cities passes through dozens of the more than 500 Israeli checkpoints and roadblocks that dot the West Bank and, depending on closures, can take several hours.

Masar has applied for a permit to train in Nazareth, a northern Israeli town closer to Jenin, but the Israeli army has not yet responded to her request, according to the Palestinian Olympic committee.

“They are trying to do the best they can with what they have,” says Saba Jarar, a spokeswoman for the committee.

Masri and his team mates can only guess at what the future will bring for their countrymen, just as his coach Yusef Hamad can only dimly estimate the distance he must run in his daily time trials.

“We work very hard amid difficult conditions and lacking lots of things. We don’t even have a running track,” Hamad says. “But in spite of this we are determined to participate because it means a lot to us as Palestinians.”—AFP