As the skies over Gaza rumble with the sound of distant explosions, Mohamed Hatem’s grip tightens on the frame of a cracked wall outside a wrecked building.
He’s there to do more muscle-ups, one of the most exhausting and difficult gym exercises imaginable because you have to repeatedly lift your entire body weight above a gymnastic bar.
Hatem, 19, doesn’t have the luxury of a bar – only an unforgiving concrete wedge that can shred your hands in moments if you are not careful. But for this displaced teenager from the devastated city of Khan Younis, bodybuilding has been an invaluable distraction during the ongoing war on Gaza.
“I try to escape the frightening reality while I exercise,” he tells Al Jazeera. “It’s as if I were outside of Gaza entirely. This is the feeling that takes me over when I practise bodybuilding.”
Over more than a year of Israeli shelling, air strikes and ground attacks that have killed more than 44,000 people and are starving many of those who survive, the young man has taken to bodybuilding to help him cope with the unfathomable stress of living in a warzone.
Hatem has been displaced 10 times since the war began 13 months ago, and like many, he frequently struggles with severe food shortages.
His real strength lies in his inventiveness. He uses makeshift equipment in a tiny room in his grandmother’s home in Khan Younis to work out, like weights he’s fashioned out of water canisters, a car battery tied to a rope, a school bag filled with salvaged items and bricks pulled from nearby rubble.
This room has become a sanctuary for Hatem, who is among the two million people displaced by the war. His family’s home was destroyed by Israeli air strikes in the early days of the war, and despite limited resources and constant upheaval, he clings to the pursuit of physical strength as a form of resilience.
“Since the start of the war, my dream of building a strong body has faced unimaginable challenges,” he says. “But I am determined to keep going, using what I can find to replace traditional weights.”
According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), Israel’s war on Gaza has created traumatic experiences that are “chronic and unrelenting” because there’s no safe place in Gaza and available resources for survival are minimal. This war, UNRWA said in August, “defies traditional biomedical definitions of post-traumatic stress disorder, given that there is no ‘post’ in Gaza’s context”.
For Hatem, bodybuilding has been his way out.
“Sports also reduces the tension and terror we live in and the bleak picture that is our reality and future. It’s a fundamental factor in my mental health, and I find psychological comfort through sports and participating with my friends,” he explains.
Taking ‘gym motivation’ to new levels
With Israel’s pounding of the strip and life’s essentials being in such short supply for its trapped population, Hatem finds new ways to stay motivated.
He launched an Instagram page in April, on which he has posted more than 130 videos, sharing snippets of his life, including workouts and meals of canned beans and lentils, revealing the scarcity of fresh food in Gaza. The videos have attracted a global following of more than 183,000 people from the United States, Pakistan, India, Jordan, Oman and the United Arab Emirates admiring his unwavering drive for bodybuilding. Some of his videos have received millions of views.
A relentless self-improver, Hatem had already taught himself English during the COVID-19 lockdown. On his social media posts, he chooses that language to communicate his message to a broader global audience, aware that many others in Gaza already create content for Arabic-speaking audiences. His aim is to amplify the current Palestinian experience using his own story as a bridge.
“My page is called Gym Rat in Gaza,” Hatem explains, “because I want to reach people around the world in English and show that even in Gaza, we have dreams and goals.”
Although the video clips focus on his strict daily regimen to maintain his physical form in the cramped, shared room where he and his extended family try to forge a sense of routine, he says the purpose of the Instagram account is not personal.
“It is a national humanitarian message related to the genocide that is happening to us. While it is true that it affects me, I express the experiences of people living in war,” Hatem tells Al Jazeera.
His bodybuilding journey, which began four years ago, was encouraged by his parents and the discipline required for the sport has been a positive outlet for Hatem.
It also introduced the student of business administration to bodybuilding icons he’s vying to emulate.
“Many people who watch my story and commitment say that I’m on Chris’s path,” he says, referring to six-time Mr Olympia Classic Physique winner, Chris Bumstead, who also happens to be the most popular bodybuilder on the planet.
“I can say that in bodybuilding, Bumstead is a role model and an inspiration to me,” the teenager adds, noting that he has been following the champion’s content long before embarking on his own bodybuilding and content-creating journey.
“Bumstead is a person who is unparalleled in the world in his field and is an extraordinary professional. I hope to achieve what he has accomplished one day,” Hatem concludes.
The challenges of pumping iron during war
Being a bodybuilder in Gaza presents unique difficulties.
Surviving the war has meant Hatem has had to drastically scale back the time he dedicates to his daily workout routine from three hours to about 30 minutes.
Because of the severe lack of food that is pushing 1.84 million of Gaza’s 2.3 million people to the brink of famine, according to the UN, Hatem constantly has had to put his workouts on hold for days at a time. His muscle mass had also decreased for months with his weight dropping from 58kg (128lb) to 53kg (117lb) before he regained it gradually.
His tumultuous and repeated displacements have also weighed heavily on him.
Hatem recalls the terrifying day of October 14, 2023, when an Israeli aircraft bombed a location just 8 metres (26ft) from his family home with five missiles fired over a three hour period.
“We faced moments where we were certain we wouldn’t survive,” he says. While hosting 50 displaced individuals from the north during this time, they managed to stay alive.
One of the most painful moments for Hatem was returning to find his home destroyed after a trip to nearby Rafah.
“It felt as if the world had ended and our chances of returning to normal life had vanished. We hoped to salvage anything from our home, but it was all gone,” he said.
He refuses to lament this loss through his channel. “There are enough stories of tragedy,” he says. But with a few basic media tools – a mobile phone, a small stand – and despite dealing with frequent internet blackouts, which makes uploading videos a tedious process, Hatem continues to share his story – a blend of hope and hardship in equal measure.
“I want to show resilience, to inspire others who may have more resources than we do. My dream is to show them what’s possible, even in Gaza.”
In the temporary calm that sometimes follows intense aerial bombings, Hatem commutes to a gym in central Khan Younis where he can finally work out with proper gym equipment.
“Even when resources are scarce, I still have the will,” he says while lifting bricks and water canisters in place of weights.
“I want people to know what we’re going through. But it’s more than just our suffering – it’s about finding the strength to live.”
This story was published in collaboration with Egab.
