How a soccer program in Gaza heals wounds
When Mohammed Abu Saman, wounded by an Israeli sniper during a protest at Gaza’s border, was told that doctors must amputate his leg, his thoughts went to sports.
“The first thing that came to mind was: How can I ever play football again?” he recalls.
He had already gone through six months of medical interventions, even a trip to Turkey, to try to save his leg and avoid what he called “the inevitable.”
Soccer had been both a passion and an identity for the star goalkeeper for his team in the Gaza Strip’s Jabalia refugee camp, his main outlet while living under a stifling Israeli blockade of the Palestinian territory.
“I went to protest to call for my right of return to my homeland,” the 26-year-old says. “I
