I am taking part in the Big Ride for Palestine 2025 to support the Gaza Sunbirds Paracycling team.

This July and August, the Big Ride for Palestine 2025 is riding in cities across UK to support the Gaza Sunbirds Paracycling team.

The Gaza Sunbirds are a team of para-athletes based in the Gaza Strip. The team was founded by Alaa al-Dali, an Olympic hopeful cyclist, after he was hit in the leg whilst watching the Great March of Return. Alaa's leg was amputated from below the knee, but he did not give up his dream, and channeled his energies into establishing an amputee cycling team within Gaza — called the Gaza Sunbirds, with the hope that they would defy the odds to compete in Paris 2024.

Since the Hamas attack on 7th October 2023 and the subsequent Israeli bombardment of Gaza, the Sunbirds have been carrying out vital food aid distributions to their communities, delivering over 7,000 hot meals and providing shelter for over 200 people.

However, this has become increasingly challenging. When the Israelis invaded Rafah in April 2024, the majority of the Sunbirds and their families were displaced to the central Gaza camps in al Mawasi, and then again — as with the entire population, they had to move from one so-called ‘safe zone’ to another.

Since then, the Sunbirds have been working with local partners to continue distributing food aid to their communities. Recently, they have started holding pizza and popcorn parties every Friday for the children and young people in displacement camps.

Due to the current situation in Gaza, the Sunbirds have halted their training programme in favour of distributing food parcels and aid to their communities in Gaza, whilst retaining the dream of representing Palestine on the global stage.

In April 2024, a small group of Sunbirds were able to get permission to leave Gaza for Egypt. Though he didn't make it to the 2024 Paris paralympics, Alaa qualified for a place in the 2024 Cycling World Championships in Zurich, in September 2024, where he became the first cylist to represent Palestine on the world stage!

Alaa is now training in Belgium with his teammate Mohammed Asfour, and has once again qualified for the World Championships in September 2025, this time in Belgium.

To learn more about what the Sunbirds are doing to distribute aid in Gaza, and to follow them on their journey to represent Palestine on a global stage, follow them on Instagram: @gazasunbirds

To find out more about the Sunbirds, visit this page:

https://www.amostrust.org/palestine-justice/gaza/gaza-sunbirds/

Most of the Sunbirds team remain in Gaza where they are distributing aid to their communities.