In 2020, Mohammed Saleh ventured to Manly to learn what it takes to run a Nippers program. The goal was to take that knowledge back to Gaza and begin a culture of surf life saving education, which was gaining some momentum, until the bombs dropped.
It’s been almost three months since the Palestinian man, his wife, and three kids escaped Gaza to Australia on a travelling visa, but it was not without great sacrifice. Mohammed sits with us at the locally dubbed ‘Office’ by East Esplanade, where he reminisces on the simpler times of enjoying a beverage just a stone’s throw away at the Skiff Club upon his first visit four years ago.
Those times seem far more bitter than sweet as the fleeting feelings of nostalgia juxtapose his current circumstance for arriving in Australia – his family’s plight for survival. Although they are safe from the Israeli bombings left in Gaza, their trauma is never far behind.
“We try hard to settle down, especially my family, my three kids and my wife, but it’s difficult,” Mohammed explained as his delightful demeanour deteriorated to a sombre one.
“They’re suffering, all of us suffering. All of us faced this horrific situation and circumstances in Gaza… I can’t sleep for three days now. I don’t know; maybe it’s something about trauma or something like that, but I don’t know why. There are many thinking. Thinking about my kids.”
“They have nightmares. Guevara [The eldest son, 12], a week ago, woke up in the middle of the night, and he said, the house is bumping, the house is bumping!”
On 7 October 2023, Israel began the bombing of Gaza following Hamas-led attacks on citizens in Israel. From here, Mohammad’s house and countless other infrastructures in the strip were destroyed. His family fled for seven months to five different cities to multiple refuges, seeking shelter from airstrikes and attempting to find a constant supply of basics to survive.
The results were scarce. Mohammed explained it would take hours to find drinking or cleaning water each day, and thousands lined up to buy limited food. Phone communication was almost impossible as electricity was restricted to hospitals, and working signals were found to be few and far between.
He eventually decided to take his family to Rafah, a city in the southern Gaza Strip, as the Israeli military announced the city as safe. Unfortunately, this was not the case.
“It’s not safe every day, every single day; there are people killed, there are air strikes, we’re facing a shortage of food, shortage of water… the last month, it was a horrific month. I started to collapse because I can’t do anything,” Mohammed said.
“As a father, you have a responsibility… I would spend half an hour playing with my kids, do something we used to do as normal. I lie to them; of course, I lie to myself.”
“As a father, you have a responsibility… I would spend half an hour playing with my kids, do something we used to do as normal. I lie to them; of course, I lie to myself.”
Fortunately, Mohammed and his family were among the few thousand Palestinian refugees provided with tourist visas to Australia. Although the Nippers program is now far from what was envisioned years ago, Northern Beaches resident – members of all different statures from his last visit to Australia – were not quick to forget their relationship established during his lifeguard training. This, he is sure, has saved his life.
The Nippers Initiative
The Gazan-Australian Nippers program was a grand initiative with a long-running start and a swift, devastating end.
Caroline Graham is co-founder of the Northern Beaches Committee for Palestine (NBCP), a group dedicated to advocating for peace in the country. The 80-year-old contributed immensely to the Nippers program and became desolate about its destruction. She now sits at her Willandra Retirement Home, explaining the origins of the endeavour.
“We were doing various things like delegations to see politicians and so on. But then we were joined by a Palestinian student, Shamikh Badra, he’s now doing a PhD at Wollongong uni, and it was him who suggested that we should bring out two blokes from Gaza to train as lifesavers,” Caroline said.
“We had two seasons, and we had lovely videos from that. But then, of course, the disaster happened, and some of the little nippers have been killed by Israel’s bombs, and some of the adult organisers too. And, of course, the whole beachfront is in rubble.”
Shamikh is Gazan-born, currently living in Sydney, and a member of the NBCP. Equipped with knowledge of Australian and Gazan lifestyles, he suggested a cultural shift.
“She said [Caroline], we want to send some surfing equipment to Gaza. So I told her, even if we succeeded in sending some equipment for surfing, I don’t think this will be helpful because the idea is that we need to support them by giving some of the lifeguards training,” Shamikh explained.
Conversations between NBCP and the North Steyne Surf Club began around 2016. The club’s president at the time, Chris Gibbs Stewart, immediately loved the Gaza Nippers idea. In late 2019, after long deliberations over visas, Mohammed and his friend Hasan Alhabil travelled to Australia and spent the next ten weeks learning how to become a lifesaver and manage a surf club.
The idea was simple: bring a culture of early surf lifesaving education from Australia to Gaza. It was the execution that proved to be a challenge.
“It’s not only activities we want to transport from place to place,” Mohammed explained, “In Gaza, every season we lost a lot of people, a lot of people drowning… The main idea is not regarding lifeguards only. It’s culture, to understand the environment, beach environment, to train kids from early growing up here.”
It was a slow start to get the initiative up and running. In 2020, COVID put an initial halt on the program. In 2021, the country was again in turmoil with another Israel-Palestine crisis. It wasn’t until 2022 that the program finally saw some success with its pilot day.
Then, in 2023 – after enduring another delay due to a short week-long conflict – the official season kicked off.
Mohammed, Hasan, and ten other instructors the pair trained provided 50 Gazan children with the experience they had learnt from Australian Nippers. The program implemented swimming and surf training, beach clean-ups and games such as the Aussie cult favourite, Flags.
Pleased with the program’s results, Mohammed reported the progress back to North Steyne Surf Club, noting all the steps implemented to achieve their goal of replicating the Australian Nippers experience.
But, once again, tragedy struck. On 7 October, the Israeli-Palestine crisis erupted and the finalisation of the report did not come to fruition. Years in the making, the Surf Life Saving initiative was no more.
“It’s the first season, and unfortunately, it’s the last season,” Mohammed sadly admitted.
“We can’t start what we promised our partners here in Sydney and to all the people who participated in fundraising for this program.
“We failed to do what we promised.”
The crisis didn’t just put an end to the program; it killed its members.
A 22-year-old age manager, Safa’a Abu Saif, lost her life to a bombing at her home; the club’s first aid educator, a paramedic named Hatem Awad, was killed by an airstrike while responding to an alert in the North of Gaza and Shamikh’s father, Khalil, died after becoming sick and not having regular access to his medication.
Mohammed also described the cruel irony of their drone photographer, Mustafa Thrayya, killed by an Israeli drone airstrike.
Even children in the program were not spared. Mohammed and Omar Mdukh, aged five and six, were killed last December. Ten and 11-year-old Maha Al and Zuhair Al Burae’e were also killed in November – an unfathomable fate to die not far from where they were learning beach safety skills just months before.
“The children who were doing the Nippers program, they were talking about their wishes,” Shamikh said as he shared the footage recorded of the kids during the program.
“They were talking about their dreams, and then we discovered they were killed.”
Plans to expand the program had already been drawn up before the crisis. A local architect crafted blueprints for a new clubhouse, but ultimately, they never came to a reality.
“We were fundraising to build a surf club building, and they had land given to them at the beach by the authority, and we were starting to raise money. We paid for some plans to be drafted up for a clubhouse, but of course, that’s all up in smoke, literally,” Caroline said.
“I don’t know when we’ll be starting up again.”
Escape from Gaza
Getting Mohammed, his three young children, and his wife out of Gaza was no easy feat. Not only did they need visas, but they also needed to be smuggled into Cairo, Egypt. Money for accommodation and tickets to Australia was another issue—fortunately, after months of running and hiding for survival, they were blessed with some external support.
Independent member for Warringah Zali Steggall first met Mohammed and Hasan in 2020 when the duo was training to bring the Nippers program back to Gaza. After the events of October 7, her office decided to take action after an outcry from the community.
“I had been approached by members in our community about helping Mo and his family and others who had been involved in the program around trying to get out of Gaza… I immediately got on the phone to the minister at the time, and he was incredibly responsive,” Ms Steggall told Manly Observer.
“They were one of the very few people who had gotten out of Gaza before the gate was shut and had made their way to Australia, and it was incredibly nice and rewarding amid so much devastation in this horrendous conflict. It was so nice to have a little glimmer of a good story and to meet Mo and his wife and kids.”
Once he entered Rafah, Mohammed intended to seek refuge, not escape. Although he said migration was not the salvation promised by the IDF and the threats of air strikes were very prominent, the decision ultimately allowed him and his family to be smuggled through the Rafah crossing to Cairo.
However, it was not just good timing that placed Mohammed into this favourable position; the generosity and dedication of leading members in the NBCP made that next step possible. It wasn’t impossible to leave Gaza, but it was expensive. Over $20,000 was donated, with fundraising orchestrated primarily by Caroline.
“We’ve had such luck with this. Mohammed and his wife and family got out 24 hours before the Rafah Crossing was closed forever; that was amazing. The universe, as I say, is helping Mohammed,” she said.
Shamikh, along with a group of others – including a lawyer named Bassan Hamdi, who does pro bono work for Palestinian refugees – worked tirelessly behind the scenes for months to ensure Mohammed and his family were surviving in Cairo while they organised everything needed for their journey to Australia.
“In the end, we succeeded. We did something useful. And for me, I feel comfortable; at least I contributed to rescuing his family. Because I couldn’t rescue my family, my brother was killed in this war. I couldn’t help him and my mother is trapped in Gaza,” Shamikh shared.
Mohammed and his family finally arrived in Australia in August this year after ten months of fleeing. Unfortunately, there are still thousands still trapped in Gaza, Hasan being one of them.
Despite completing his bronze medallion and passing security checks when training as a lifeguard in 2020, Hasan and his family’s temporary visas to Australia were denied. Zali’s office has declared they are willing to help anyone escape a warzone if they successfully pass the correct security checks. Shamikh also said he would discuss with Australian immigration how an evacuation could be possible.
But, with the Rafah Crossing now closed, escape from Gaza will be more complex than ever.
New realities
Sitting on the edge of a deck, sipping on a lemon-infused Corona, looking to the creamy, pink shades forming above, seemingly bleeding into the ocean, was a rather stark contrast from scavenging for water and believing the next time he looked up could be the last only a few months ago in Gaza.
After the interview with Manly Observer and a brief reunion with some of the North Steyne Lifeguards who trained him in 2020 – Mohammed inviting me in the ‘members only’ clubhouse ensuring he’d be able to get us in – a few humble beers during golden hour at the Manly Skiff Club were arranged to satisfy Mohammed’s raging nostalgia when he first visited the venue years ago.
After sharing his playlist—a time capsule of the top hits four years ago, with Tones and I’s ‘Dance Monkey’ crowning as the favourite—it was clear he had taken a liking to the land down under. But the warzone survivor confessed the music no longer replicated the emotions he felt on the first visit. His arrival was bittersweet, and too much trauma had been endured.
Mohammed and his family are safe in Australia, currently living in the Western Sydney suburb of Lakemba. But just because they’re out of the frying pan and quite possibly the fire, doesn’t mean they have complete control of how their fate will be next served up.
The travelling visas provided are set to expire soon, leaving Mohammed’s and his family’s future in uncertainty. As it stands, the visa doesn’t allow Mohammed to work, with all his income coming from the Zakat Foundation, a not-for-profit organisation that provides post-disaster rehabilitation.
The visa also disallows kids to attain an education from an institution. However, the government has made an exception, and for the first time in months, Mohammed’s kids are able to attend school and are now learning English. They will also attend this season of Nippers at North Steyne Surf Club on 20 October. It’s around a four-hour trip to Manly and back from their residence, but they are determined to pick up where they left off in Gaza.
In the meantime, despite his uncertain future in Australia, Mohammed’s demeanour remains primarily positive, and he is grateful to be safe in the country he fell in love with when he visited in 2020. However, with his nippers program destroyed, his children still waking in the night from trauma, and his friend Hasan and other family stuck in Gaza, there’s still a storm on his mind.
“We have all of this available now: the good relationships, nice people, and support from a lot of people here. But, we cannot settle down or feel as Normal. We are trying deeply… Your mind is like a machine, always thinking. Trying to be the same personality after all of us faced this horrific situation and circumstances in Gaza.”
