AGI – Il first Palestinian athlete to have taken part in an edition of Olympic Games is dead last Thursday in the refugee area of Nuseirat, Gaza. Majed Abu Maraheel lost his life at the age of 61victim of kidney failure on which doctors were unable to intervene due to the precarious conditions of the health facilities and the lack of medicines.
Based on what his brother made known to PaltodayTv, it was not possible to transport the former Olympic athlete to the Rafah crossing to then transfer him to Egypt, where he would find medicines and structures suitable to save his life. Abu Maraheel had carried the Palestinian flag in the 1996 Atlanta gameswhere he participated in the 10 km.
Abu Maraheel’s run paved the way for several Palestinian athletes and after him about 20 men and women born in the Gaza Strip or in the West Bank and East Jerusalem they took to the stage of the Olympics. Abu Marheel was very well known in Gaza, also because it was his habit to train by running from his house to the Erez crossing, the same one that he crossed every day to go to work in Israeli territory.
After Atlanta Abu Maraheel took up coaching career, keeping alive the dream of many young Palestinian athletes. A dream come true for one of his students, Nader el-Masri, also a native of Gaza, who took part in the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. However, Abu Maraheel’s death now shifts attention to the lack of medicines and suffering which afflicts patients with kidney diseases. According to Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, there are more than a thousand people suffering from kidney failure for which the lack of medicines and the inability to access treatment could prove fatal.
