Jul

DATE
Thousands of pro- Sat
democracy protesters
gather in Hong Kong on 1st
the 20th anniversary of
the handover from
British to Chinese rule.
Xi Jinping warns Hong
Kongers not to challenge
Chinese sovereignty.
Hundreds queue
overnight to buy
recreational marijuana
in Nevada as it becomes
the fifth US state to
legalise its sale.

The
DATE
Aid workers in South Sun
Sudan warn of a cholera
outbreak in the country 2nd
after a sharp increase in
cases since April. Millions

freedom
of people are already at
risk due to famine.
We will keep
doing our jobs
CNN defends itself in a
statement released after

of the sea
President Donald Trump
tweets a video of edited
footage from his 2007
appearance on WWEs
Wrestlemania. The
footage shows him
attacking a man with a
CNN logo for a head.
DATE
The high court in On 6th July, Amjed Tantish began
the latest phase of his plan to get a team Thu
Mon
London hears how
Sports Direct founder 3rd
Mike Ashley vomited of Gazan swimmers to the Olympics. 6th
into a fireplace during a Susan Schulman was there as he began
boozy business meeting
at a pub and mixed senior classes in the sea off Gaza City and tells the
management meetings
with extreme drinking
story of his 18-year struggle
sessions. The revelations
are aired during a lawsuit Photography: Susan Schulman
over an alleged reneged

N
15m deal with a banker,
which Ashley denies. ine-year-old Maisa Abdiram runs
DATE
North Korea
along the beach with her friends, eyes
Tue
successfully tests an sparkling, long brown hair flying, a
intercontinental ballistic 4th huge grin plastered across her face.
missile for the first time.
Donald Trump calls on
Dancing from foot to foot, she and her friends giggle
China to end this uproariously as they dodge through the gigantic
nonsense once and jellyfish which the crashing waves have scattered
for all.
amongst the assorted flotsam on the sand.
 The sea has been uncommonly rough for the last that all the local kids could afford. I decided to
few days, delaying the start of the much-anticipated start training from zero, he says. I would start with
swimming season. Thick white foam still sprays high children at the right age five or six. I began lessons
into the air over a crude sea wall, 15 metres from the for children, to get to the Olympics with them.
shoreline. But it is just that bit calmer today, calm In 1999 everything seemed possible after several
enough to clean the beach, to dig out the delicate netsyears of relative stability in Gaza in the wake of
from the wet sand where they have fallen and rehang the Oslo Accords, signed in 1993 and 1995. Amjed
them on the thin poles used to mark the entrance to launched his swimming lessons using the fishing port
the swimming area. of Gaza City as his pool, and was swiftly overrun with
Young swimming students led by the students. When his older brother Majid emigrated to
enthusiastic Muntasser Ibrahim Sehweil, 15, rake the the US in early 2000 something the brothers had
sand and scoop armfuls of rubbish into sacks. The discussed doing together Amjed decided to stay
last of these are being carted off as the setting sun and bring his dream to fruition. Back then, it was
turns the evening sky scarlet and a parade of camels easy to go back and forth, Amjed explains. There was
and horses passes by. no need for haste. It was holiday time for Gaza, he
Peering out from under the brim of his trademark remarks wryly.
cowboy-style hat, Amjed Tantish looks out over the The Tantish family has deep roots in Beit Lahia.
sea, assessing the situation. Lessons Amjed, now 40 and a father of four,
in Tantish Pool the name scrawled was raised here like generations
in red letters on the rubble walls by before him. Acres of fruit trees on
his students will begin the next day, the family farm roll down a gentle
he declares. Muntasser, a boy with incline to the 1949 Armistice Line
Olympic dreams, beams with delight. two kilometres away. Beyond, Israel
Captain Amjed! shouts Maisa with spreads out to the horizon in all
joy. Swimming has changed her life. directions. Amjed has invited me to
join his family for a picnic. We duck

T
his is Gaza. Arriving in this and dive through the branches of the
sliver of land, one of the most fruit trees, settling where their tangle
densely populated places forms a welcome arbor that shades us
on earth, you leave behind the 21st I decided from the hot sun.
century the bright lights of Israel, to start Leaning heavily on a cane,
with its gleaming high-rises and training from zero. Amjeds father, Reziq Tantish, 78,
impressive infrastructure and I began lessons for joins us, the light dappling his white
enter a land of donkey carts, dirt children, to get skull cap and illuminating a wide,
roads and dilapidated buildings. At radiant smile. He is very like Amjed
to the Olympics
night the strip is plunged into pitch a warm, convivial man with giant
darkness, punctuated occasionally by
with them swimmers hands. He was nine when
the dim cold-blue glow of LEDs that Amjed Tantish the Israelis arrived in Beit Lahia in
Gazans have rigged up to batteries. 1948 during the Arab-Israeli war
The power supply is fitful, limited to four hours in which followed Israels declaration of independence.
every 12. When they reached here, Israel started to drop barrel
It wasnt like this here 18 years ago when, on bombs so we fled, he remembers. We returned after
a stifling summers night on the roof of his home the truce in 1949 but so many refugees were living
in the border town of Beit Lahia, 22-year-old here, hungry, on the bare land. We were scared, we
Amjed Tantish, then backstroke champion of Gaza, had thought that once the fighting was over, wed be
conceived his bold plan to get to the Olympics. able to go back to normal. But the catastrophe was
He would not be able to take part himself hed much greater than we expected, he says.
started competing too late and there was a lack of These lush acres of verdant fruit trees have been
serious coaching available in Gaza. Instead he would bombed, destroyed and replanted many times. Much
build a team of swimmers from Gaza who could blood has been spilled here. But today it is an oasis
represent Palestine at the Olympics. And at the same of peace, the only sound the inescapable buzz of an
time, he would save lives by giving swimming lessons Israeli drone hovering in the skies above us.

Nine-year-old Maisa Abdiram on the

first day of swimming classes at Tantish Pool
 Children swimming during one of Amjeds classes.
The red graffitti on the rubble wall reads Tantish Pool
The brief period Amjed describes as holiday
time for Gaza ended on 28th September 2000,
when Ariel Sharon walked on the Temple Mount
in Jerusalem. Temple Mount, which is of sacred
significance to both Muslims and Jews, had been
overseen by Muslims since the time of the crusades:
with the creation of Israel, it became a hotly contested
flashpoint. Sharons act was seen by Palestinians as a
deliberate provocation and precipitated the Second
Palestinian Intifada (uprising), also known as the
Al-Aqsa Intifada.
The fighting which followed Sharons visit lasted
for four years. During this time, Israels frequent
incursions into Gaza caused death, injury, and
widespread property destruction. Human Rights
Watch states that between 2000 and 2004 well over
3,000 Palestinians were killed and 34,000 injured,
most of them civilians. On the other side, Palestinians
are estimated to have killed at least 1,000 Israelis
with guns and suicide bombs.
Palestinians were barred from working in Israel
and travel restrictions between Gaza and Israel were
tightened. The 100,000 Palestinians who had jobs
in Israel soon found themselves unemployed and
long-established working relationships between
Israelis and Palestinians in agriculture and crafts
struggled to continue. Within three years, any
remaining business collaborations with Israel had
been ended, devastating the Gazan economy. After a
promising start, it was an overwhelming setback for
Amjeds plans of creating an Olympic swim team. It
was not a time for sport, he notes dryly. Doors were
closing to Palestinians hoping to go abroad too, and
after 9/11, Amjeds brother Majid warned him that it
had become a dark period to be an Arab in the US.
Since the Second Intifada ended in February
2005, Gaza has been devastated by three separate
wars with Israel. The area has been under a
decade-long siege which has left its infrastructure
destroyed and its water polluted, undrinkable and
Amjed Tantish takes a
class through a swimming drill
A
in short supply. Unemployment in this 140 square mjeds first pool was in Gaza Citys port a
mile strip is estimated to be running at 41.5 percent, perfect spot, he explains, wide enough for
the highest in the world, and the population is not team training, with crystal clear water
allowed to leave without difficult-to-obtain permits. calmed by a jetty, but when Israeli forces destroyed
Since Amjed launched his sewage lines in 2004, the water in
swimming school 18 years ago, the port was contaminated and the
the lessons have become less Amjeds pool abandoned. An improvised pool
about getting a Gazan team to the lessons have on the beach followed - I dug a hole
Olympics and more about helping prevented many and lined it with plastic, explains
traumatised children. Amjed has deaths from Amjed - but was destroyed when
become well known in the Strip. His Israel launched Operation Summer
drowning and
lessons have prevented many deaths Rains in 2006. Undeterred, Amjed
from drowning and brought joy and
brought joy and built a pool on the family farm to
emotional healing to children. I emotional healing keep the swimming lessons going,
am famous as Abu Amjed (Amjeds to Gazan children but on 27th December 2008, war
father), Reziq exclaims. He is the broke out once again.
conqueror of the sea! Operation Cast Lead, also known as the Gaza
It has been a long, hard road. But Amjed is not War, was launched with the aim of ending rocket
satisfied with merely conquering the sea he has fire into Israel and weapons smuggling into Gaza.
never totally given up on his Olympic dream. It lasted for only 22 days, but the devastation
 Ahmed Tantish with one of the pools he was
forced to abandon during military incursions
wrought on the local population during that time
was momentous and unprecedented. According
to BTselem, the Israeli Information Center for
Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, 13
Israelis and 1,391 Palestinians were killed, 318 of
them children.
Amjeds house was hit. Two of his nephews,
11-year-old Hamza and 16-year-old Muhammed
were killed. It was 7am. I was woken up by the
bomb, the noise, the smoke. It was so terrible, says
Amjed. He shakes his head, eyes glazed. It was
the most terrible day I have lived. Everything was
destroyed, including the pool.
In the wake of the war, which left 5,300
wounded, Gazas Community Mental Health
Programme reported high levels of anxiety, insecurity
and other symptoms of trauma among children.
It was so painful, but I felt the children needed the
pool to recover from the war so I built one on land I
bought in Beit Lahia, says Amjed. It was a beautiful
creation lined with patterned tiles, and he used it to
offer free lessons to all the children in his deceased
nephew Hamzas class as well as to the children of a
friend who died trying to rescue a group of injured
people. But the strain of keeping the classes going
eventually broke him. I did everything I could to
help the children but many couldnt pay and I was
left with a lot of debts. In 2011, I was exhausted
financially. Amjed shut down the classes. It was
a painful choice for me. It was like I was dead, he
explains, I had run these classes for 12 years through
wars and intifadas, but I was just exhausted.
In 2014, after five children from Beit Lahia
drowned in the sea in a single week, Ajmed decided
to start again. The worsening economic situation
made it impossible to use the pool hed built: there
was no money to pump or filter the water. He found
a place on the west side of the Gaza seaport with
shallow water and started a charitable programme
to support the classes. They didnt last long.
In Gaza City, residents only have
electricity for four hours in every 12
O
peration Protective Edge was launched on UNWRA Abu Hussein school. They had been there
8th July 2014 with the stated aim of stopping for one week when the school was bombed.
rockets being fired from Gaza into Israel. Fifty At 5am we woke up to the sound of women
days later 2,205 Palestinians and 72 Israelis had been screaming, Maisas older brother Ibrahim Jihad
killed. Amjed lost another nephew Abdiram, 28, remembers. Then I
and a cousin. They were killed in the looked around and saw my father
fields and the bombing was so fierce The worsening and brother torn to pieces and I
that their relatives couldnt risk going economic looked at myself and my legs were
outside to retrieve their bodies until situation made it blown off. Ibrahims four-year-old
after the truce. The war was hell. impossible to use daughter Rahaf is playing at our feet,
Everything was destroyed, Amjed the pool Amjed had wearing thick lenses in blue-framed
says with a sigh. It was a very dark glasses. She was not yet two when the
period of my life. He wasnt alone in
built: there was no shrapnel from the bomb hit her in
that feeling. money to pump or the head, leaving her with permanent
A donkey clatters along the dirt filter the water. ocular damage. Ibrahim looks over
lane next to the home of Amjeds to Maisa, who is sitting in the chair
student Maisa Abdiram in Beit Hanoun as we sit next to him. Her brown eyes are brimming with
outside drinking tea with her family. As the bombing tears. She has shrunk down into her chair as her
escalated in July 2014, Maisa and her family took brother tells his story, her fingernails digging into
refuge with around 3,000 others at the nearby her clenched fists.
 But the landscape of devastation proved
inspirational to Amjed. Using the rubble of
bombed-out buildings, he would create his own
mini-seaport pool in unpolluted water up-current
Notes Jul
from the destroyed sewage mains: a phoenix would
DATE
rise from the ashes of the war. He secured permission
Wed Khalifa Haftar,
from the municipality and, using a loader and fuel commander of the
they provided, set about excavating the pool, creating 5th so-called Libyan
a foundation and a boundary wall from the rubble of National Army, declares
the city of Benghazi to
destroyed houses. be liberated following
At the beginning I underestimated the years of fighting with
power of the sea, says Amjed. He surveys the 50 Islamist militants. The
victory represents a
children practicing front crawls and kicks in the significant gain for the
water of Tantish Pool, one of whose walls still bears LNA, which is not
the words Abu Saleem Playground, a hangover from recognised by the
UN-backed government
its former function. That first year, I had to re- in Tripoli.
excavate three times. It was a crazy idea. But eventually
Supporters of
it worked. embattled Venezuelan
To cheer Maisa up, Ibrahim used to take her to president Nicolas
the sea. Before long, Amjed took her under his wing, Maduro storm the
national assembly in
bringing her to lessons in the new seaport pool. She Caracas on the countrys
slowly started to smile again. She has just emerged independence day,
from the sea after a class when I ask her what attacking opposition
lawmakers and
swimming has meant to her. Before swimming, I was journalists, and injuring
feeling bad emotions and was not at all happy, but at least 12 people.
with swimming I feel so much happier. And not only DATE
Authorities in Hong
Muntasser Ibrahim Sehweil, 15, at Tantish Pool. Muntasser dreams that, she exclaims excitedly, but I am also a coach for Thu
Kong announce the
of becoming an Olympic swimmer like his hero Michael Phelps some of the other children now! 6th seizure of 7.2 tonnes of
Despite everything Amjed has been through ivory tusks with an
estimated street value
since he began his classes 18 years ago, he has of 7m, which would
Ibrahim had always been the family joker but and killed us all. To get over the war, he says, he no regrets about not getting on that plane to In numbers amount to the largest
when they implored him to help make them smile after tried to focus on swimming, reclaiming his dreams America with his brother. I am very happy that I haul ever recorded.
Palestinian athletes DATE
the war, he was skeptical. I said, I am disabled - how of becoming a champion like his longtime hero, stayed, says Amjed, who estimates he has taught at the
Unesco recognises the
Olympics / Fri
can I make you happy? But they said you have a way US Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps. Amjed was more than 5,000 children to swim. If I had gone disputed West Bank city
Paralympics:
about you He tries to inject levity now, grabbing determined to help. In 2015, after the war, the abroad, I could have had a good life on my own, I 7th of Hebron as a
Palestinian world
the window bars overhead and pulling himself up, need for lessons increased because the children could have grown from an academic and financial Rio 2016 heritage site despite
swinging his legless torso around and needed huge support, he explains, perspective, I could have enjoyed freedom but I 6/0
efforts from Israel to derail
acting the fool. Maisas eyes brighten Swimming is not just fun, but it is would have done nothing to help the people here. the ruling. The decision is
London 2012
and she allows herself to grin at her If I had gone huge from a social and psychological Thousands of children would have lost their chance 5/2
hailed as a diplomatic
victory by Palestinian
brother. abroad, I perspective too. to swim and many lives would not have been saved if
Beijing 2008 officials and derided as
Maisas fellow swimming student could have had a The war had destroyed Gazas Id gone abroad. 4/2
delusional by Israels
prime minister, Benjamin
Muntasser also lost family members good life but I main sewage pipe. Raw sewage was After years of frustration, Amjeds Olympic hopes Netanyahu.
in the bombing of the Abu Hussein once again pouring into the sea and came a step closer in February 2017, when German Athens 2004
would have done 3/2 UN-sponsored talks
school. I felt so scared during the the coast down current from the port NGO Sternenstaub agreed to sponsor 20 members of
war, he remembers. Death was
nothing to help the was dotted with red signs emblazoned a swimming team. At the end of the summer, Amjed Sydney 2000
billed as the best
chance of reunifying
around in all directions. It affected people here with skulls and crossbones warning picked his team and began training them in earnest. 2/2 Cyprus after 43 years
my spirits. I felt so bad at the loss Amjed Tantish of the danger of death from pollution. There remain many obstacles not least of which are Atlanta 1996
break down after ten
days, fuelling fears of a
of my relatives and the destruction With the infrastructure so seriously the prohibitions on exiting Gaza but nonetheless, it 1/0 permanent partition. The
of my town. The trauma hounded him long after damaged, the fresh water needed for swimming pools is an exciting time. Muntasser made the cut for the talks collapse over the
Source: sports- issue of Turkish troops on
the last bomb fell, tormenting with recurrent night- was in perilously short supply there was not enough team and is ready for the challenge. I kept dreaming reference.com the island: Turkey refuses
mares. I would dream that me and my family were to meet the basic needs of the population, never mind about this, he says. God willing, you will see me at to withdraw its 40,000
sleeping and Israeli soldiers broke into the house for the luxury of swimming. the 2020 Olympics. strong military force.