By the Palestine Chronicle Staff
Many local Palestinian athletes participated in the 14th edition of the Rachel Corrie Ramadan Football Tournament, organized by the Women’s Program Center in the town of Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip.
Funded by the Rachel Corrie Foundation for Justice and Peace, in collaboration with the Rafah Service Club, 32 teams from all over the besieged region took part in the competition.
The competition was held at the “Hall of Martyr Yasser Arafat”, located within the Rafah Service Club.
The competition, which has been held annually during the month of Ramadan since 2008, has resumed after a two-year hiatus due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Palestinians see the competition as a tribute to the late Rachel Corrie, an American peace activist who was killed in 2003, when she was run over by an Israeli military bulldozer that was preparing to demolish a Palestinian home in southern Gaza.
Corrie acted as a human shield hoping to stop the bulldozer, operated by Israeli forces, from demolishing a house in the Palestinian refugee camp of Rafah.
An Israeli court, in August 2012, acquitted the Israeli bulldozer driver, and the US government refused to take action to hold Israel accountable for Rachel’s murder.
(All Photos: Mahmoud Ajjour, The Palestine Chronicle)