The first official Palestinian marathon is set to take place next Sunday, April 21, in Bethlehem. There will be races for 10 km, a half Marathon and full Marathon (42.2 km), all within area A. The start and finish lines are at the Church of Nativity.
Twenty-five runners – 24 men and a woman – from Gaza were planning to take part in the Marathon, but currently they are not being issued travel permits by Israel. Among them is Nader Masri, who represented Palestine in the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.
The Gaza runners were planning to take run the Gaza UNRWA Marathon last month, but a ban by Hamas authorities on the participation of women in the race led to cancel the event. Therefore, the Bethlehem Marathon presents a rare opportunity for the runners to take part in such a race.
The poster of the first Palestinian marathon
According to the Israeli NGO Gisha, which deals with Palestinian freedom of movement, the Gaza runners were denied travel permits as a group, without even conducting individual security background checks, which is standard in such cases. In other words, it was not security concerns that prevented the runners from traveling, but a decision that the marathon is not part of the cases in which Israel allows Gazans to travel outside the Strip.
Gisha is calling on people to fax requests to the IDF’s commander for civilian administration, asking him to allow the runners to participate in the race. The fax number is 03-6976306 (more details, in Hebrew, here).
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