I've arranged to meet the guys on the beach in the afternoon, once they've finished work. There's a baker, a builder, a sardine fisherman and a student from Al-Azhar University. They smile as they stroll with their surfboards underarm, as if they were in Biarritz or California. But we're in Gaza, capital of the World's most tormented strip of land. “In any case, the waves are the same here as they are twenty kilometres further north, in Israel” explain these young men from the Gaza Surf Club as they pass by with their old surfboards, held together with adhesive tape and shoe glue. The situation in Gaza is desperate, this isolation has cut it off from the rest of the world and the Palestinians in the Strip are prisoners in their own home. “This is why surfing is our escape route” they explain, “the only way we can dream of freedom”.
