Halfpipes Under Siege: The Skateboarding Scene in Gaza & the West Bank

Founder Rajab Al-Reefi pushes cinder blocks to the side, clearing a path for members of the Gaza Skate Team. One by one, they practice tricks on the side of a collapsed building using the few skateboards they have left—skateboards they dug out from under rubble. “Hello my friends. Today we went to play skateboard between rubble and destruction.” Al-Reefi addresses the followers of the Gaza Skate Team's Instagram account, now numbering nearly 150 thousand. The camera pans to reveal a neighbourhood demolished. “We’re here to play skateboard in these places to get the message across.” In 2017, Al-Reefi founded the Gaza Skate Team to support youth in the Strip. He himself was introduced to skateboarding just a couple years earlier when Italian organisation Gaza Freestyle built a ramp in the capital. The collective has continued skating lessons in Gaza City through Israel's genocidal war. This summer, 65 displaced children participated in their one-week camp. Since 2013, the UK-based organisation SkatePal has worked to develop a self-sustaining skateboarding scene in Palestine by providing equipment, building skateparks, and acting as a financial life line. SkatePal is a funder of both the Gaza Skate Team and the West Bank sister organisation Stakeboarding.ps. SkatePal raises funds through donations and an online store—you may have seen their popular ‘Palestine’ football jerseys on Instagram.  This year alone, they have sent over USD 50,000 to Gaza despite the difficulties of moving money into the besieged enclave. This amount includes monthly SkatePal donations as well as external money from Al-Reefi’s GoFundMe and fundraising events around the world, which not only support skate sessions, but also provide necessities such as medicine, clothing and housing. SkatePal founder and executive director Charlie Davis said that although they have known Al-Reefi for years, they have never met in person. Recently, it has been difficult to communicate with him given unreliable phone service and power outages. Al-Reefi’s dad is also very ill, Davis explained. They mainly talk over WhatsApp and over occasional phone calls.  Al-Reefi was displaced in November 2023 after an Israeli airstrike destroyed his home in Shuja’iyya, Gaza’s Old City. Since then, he has been displaced more than once in northern Gaza. Al-Reefi often transported his belongings on his skateboard.  “He gets the kids active to an amazing degree, despite everything,” Davis said. “The main issue for them is, at some point, the boards are going to break, and we can’t get boards in.” SkatePal has skateboards stockpiled in Ramallah ready to be delivered at the first possible moment. But until then, the Gaza Skate Team shares a few skateboards between hundreds of kids. “Since the war on G4za began,” the Gaza Skate Team posted on September 20th, “we have been striving relentlessly to amplify our work because children need us now more than ever. They have faced immense pressures and are in very poor psychological condition. That is why we stand with them and will never abandon them.” Ten photos accompany the write-up: groups of children smiling, holding skateboards and a thumbs-up, sitting together on stairs and in front of fences. Some children wear shoes, others are barefoot. Some little girls wear colourful dresses, other teenage boys pose in hoodies.  In the occupied West Bank—where Israeli assaults, settlement expansion, and escalated annexation have defined much of the past two years—SkatePal partners with Skateboarding.ps and employs a local manager in Ramallah, Aram Sabbah.  Sabbah was the first skateboarder to represent Palestine at an Olympic skating qualifier event in Dubai in 2024. He wore a Keffiyeh and a shirt with ‘Palestine’ written front and centre, representing his homeland on a national stage nearly a year into the genocide. But none of this would have been possible without SkatePal, which sought to create the environment 11 years earlier that eventually put Sabbah on a world stage.  When Sabbah met Davis in 2013, he had only started skating mere weeks earlier, when the skateboarding scene in Palestine was almost non-existent. After graduating from college, Davis volunteered as an English teacher in Jenin, the West Bank. He brought his skateboard out onto the street and saw how excited the kids were about trying the sport.  “I realised that if there were boards available, the kids would be really up for it,” Davis said, “but there was nowhere that had skateboards on sale.” After a few years of studying Arabic and visiting the West Bank more than once, he decided it was time to start his own initiative. Davis was inspired by Skateistan, a similar organisation established in 2007 in Afghanistan to empower at-risk youth through skateboarding. “It started very small—just building a small ramp out of wood—then gradually growing it, both in Palestine and across the world, thanks to Instagram,” Davis said. “That was the initial phase: just us heading over and seeing what might happen.” From 2013 to 2023, SkatePal grew into a sustainable organisation, running classes out of skateparks they built in different areas of the West Bank including Ramallah and Asira Al-Shmaliya, the latter the largest in the country. In 2023, Skateboarding.ps grew out of SkatePal to run operations in the West Bank with a fully local staff led by SkatePal member Mahmoud Kilani. Before 2023, SkatePal relied on international volunteers to run operations in the West Bank. They had already planned to transition to local staff, but after October 7th, 2023, it was impossible to continue sending volunteers.  Now, Skateboarding.ps is currently running three programs—four classes per week at the skatepark in Asira Al-Shmaliya serving up to 35 children per class, and sessions at the Istiqlal Park in Ramallah for around 20 kids. They also officially restarted the lessons at the An’ash al-Usrah Association skatepark located near Ramallah in Al-Bireh.  Skateboarding benefits communities in Palestine the same way it does any community as an outlet for exercise, perseverance, and creativity, Davis said, but with added significance under Israeli occupation. “Skateboarding provides a release for kids dealing with daily stress. It reduces antisocial behaviour, builds civic engagement, and creates a local economy." Skate parks also reclaim space in Area C—the 60% of land in the West Bank that remains under full Israeli control, where Palestinian construction is all but forbidden. Israeli forces control the movement of Palestinian goods and citizens in the West Bank through a web of restrictions. This means that the skating equipment SkatePal sends to their colleagues in the West Bank often gets stuck or destroyed at Israeli checkpoints. Moreover, checkpoints and road closures prevent access to skate parks and sometimes military operations force projects to pause.  The backdrop of occupation also means staff need more time off due to depression and stress, Davis added, as the biggest factor affecting their work.  “After October 7th, everything became heavier. Skating stopped being just a sport or a hobby, it became a form of freedom, survival, and some would say resistance,” director of Skateboarding.ps Kilani said. “For the kids, it’s one of the only ways to feel joy, even in such dark times.” “It feels like our responsibility is bigger now,” he added, “to give hope, structure and a space for them to just simply be kids.” While skating is still relatively new in the West Bank, it already plays an important role in the community since SkatePal started around 12 years ago, Kilani said. “It gives young people an outlet, a way to express themselves and a chance to feel part of something bigger.” The organisation is also challenging perceptions of skating in Palestine. “Parents and communities are starting to see it as a healthy creative activity that can keep kids away from negative influences,” Kilani added. He hopes that people see Skateboarding.ps as more than just a skate team. That it can show the world that despite Israeli occupation, “we are full of creativity, strength, and a desire for a better future.” “Supporting us means supporting the spirit of Palestinian youth, and the idea that even in challenging circumstances, we can create spaces for growth, creativity, and community.”