Pools Built From Rubble: How Gaza's Children Are Learning to Swim Again

Volunteers have carved five sea pools out of sandbags and the wreckage of homes, giving hundreds of children a few hours of ordinary childhood

Swimming lessons have returned to Gaza after a three-year interruption, with hundreds of children learning to float, paddle, and take their first strokes in five temporary sea pools built from sandbags and rubble.

The improvised pools have given a few hundred boys and girls a rare taste of childhood in a place with no playgrounds, no formal schooling, and the constant fear of further attack. A UN survey conducted in March found that 96 percent of Gaza’s children believed death was imminent.

“Swimming gives me a chance to escape the war, and the worries I live with,” said Alma Shabat, 13, who witnessed her mother’s killing in an Israeli strike in May. After three weeks of lessons, freestyle has become her favourite stroke; she has made new friends and overcome her fear of the waves and the open sea. “Coming to the beach is a beautiful and enjoyable experience,” she said.

Built by hand, from what was left

Amjed Tantesh, who founded Gaza’s first swimming academy more than two decades ago, gathered dozens of volunteers this summer to create the pools along the beaches of central Gaza, with tarpaulins strung overhead against the Mediterranean heat.

With almost no heavy machinery left in the territory, the work was done by hand: volunteers shifted tons of rubble, filled sandbags to build barriers, and dug into the sand to deepen the water. Mornings are reserved for free lessons for children whose parents were killed; in the afternoons the pools open to everyone, and fill with noise and laughter.

“It’s a rare chance to enjoy, relax and reclaim part of their stolen childhood,” said Tantesh, who has also worked as a journalist. “The pools attract children from all along the beach like huge magnets.”

A generation carrying too much

Most children in Gaza have endured years of severe trauma, including the deaths and injuries of family members. One in ten people from the prewar population has been killed or wounded, and thousands more are believed to remain beneath the rubble. Gaza now has the highest concentration of child amputees anywhere in the world.

“Disability among Palestinian children has ceased to be an individual medical condition and has now become a defining demographic reality,” a UN commission concluded in a report on the targeting of Palestinian children. The famine caused by last year’s siege is expected to leave many with lifelong physical and psychological effects.

Formal education has been unavailable for three years, with nearly every school building damaged or destroyed. Of some 700,000 school-age children, only a minority can reach the temporary tent schools run by aid organisations, while survivors live in crowded, hot, noisy camps squeezed into a third of prewar Gaza, often without adequate water or sanitation.

“Being here allows me to train, play and breathe fresh air, away from the tents,” said Maryam al-Musri, 10, who lost her father in the war.

Moments of calm

Laila Qahman, 14, said swimming has helped her find some peace since losing her seven-year-old brother, killed when a mosque near where he was playing was struck. She dreams of becoming a pharmacist.

“I come here every other day because it makes me feel like I’m living my life and enjoying my time, instead of staying in the tent listening to the sounds of shelling and living with fear and sadness,” she said. “Before I learned how to swim, I was a little afraid of the sea and did not have the courage to go into the water. Now, I feel much more confident and no longer feel afraid.”

So far 700 children have taken part over six weeks. Tantesh hopes to teach thousands more this summer if he can raise funds to pay the instructors — currently volunteering unpaid — and cover basic costs.

An academy born of ambition and grief

The original academy grew out of both. Palestine made its Olympic debut at the Atlanta Games in 1996, and the sight of Gazan athletes on the world stage gave Tantesh a goal. “I wanted to be at the Olympics, but I started as a professional swimmer at a very late age. So I decided to achieve my dream through a new generation,” he said.

There was a more immediate reason too: people drowned every summer. Families came to the beach to escape the heat, but few could swim and there were no lifeguards. Lessons, he believed, could protect children and produce a generation of lifeguards.

Persuading parents was the first hurdle. “People were terrified by water, the sea looked like a monster to them as it consumed dozens of people annually,” he said. For the first few years children learned in Gaza’s port, sheltered from the waves by breakwaters. Later Tantesh built a series of coastal pools where around 11,000 people learned to swim — the largest of them more than 1,000 square metres, constructed from the rubble of homes destroyed in 2014.

The attacks since 2023 destroyed every one of those pools, killed dozens of his students and at least six coaches, and injured many more. Restarting seemed impossible. “I only had the sea, but the sea is dangerous even during summer. You have jellyfish, you have high waves, strong currents, rocks.”

‘I am alive again’

The idea of rebuilding with sandbags and rubble came to him as both a practical solution and a tribute. Tantesh still mourns his older brother Bahjat, a karate champion killed last year as the two fled their family home under Israeli evacuation orders.

“Bahjat was the one that taught me swimming in the first place, then inspired me to pursue sporting excellence as a young man,” he said. “To have him die in my arms was the worst thing imaginable.”

Watching children set down the weight of the war for an hour has, he says, done as much for him as for them.

“Actually the first person I helped with this project was myself. It has given me a great feeling of happiness and recovery. I am alive again.”

Reference: Al-Mayadeen