As a Muslim British Palestinian, and primarily a human, the last few weeks have been so difficult to understand and process. Whichever side of the conflict you sit on, the scale of devastation and suffering is unimaginable. The loss of civilian lives is sending shock waves of grief, terror, insecurity, hate, division, and fear for the present and future across the globe. As a human race, we are not OK right now and need positive action to signal peace, unity and dialogue for the sake of humanity.

My best friend Sarah, who is Jewish with Israeli relatives, and I have decided together to organise a joint challenge in the name of peace, unity and humanity. Naturally we have different perspectives on the conflict but both deeply believe in these most fundamental of principles above all. We will unite in the form of sporting relief in aid of this message: Peace, Humanity and Unity.

The idea of this challenge is that as individuals acting as one we, will swim and/or bike and/or run the entire perimeter of Gaza. We will aim to do this on an unofficial national weekend of sporting relief with participants joining in from wherever they are in the world. People from near and far can pledge however many kilometres they want in whichever sport or sports they want in order to collectively reach our total. Together, children and adults from all faiths, or none, will clock up miles to lap the people of Gaza, hopefully several times over, in the name of peace, humanity and unity.

Distances for the triathlon are as follows:

Swim total: 12 km / 7.5 miles (border of Gaza with Egypt)

Bike total: 51 kms / 32 miles (border of Gaza and Israel)

Run total: 41 kms /25 miles (Gaza sea distance)

This unofficial event will take place on the weekend of Sat 25th and Sun 26th November 2023. I will publish a list of miles pledged and total mileage completed by the end of the weekend. To sign up and pledge miles please use this google docs link:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1nyyvALLDYE3fZ357T3CN4pLOvCA3SiojruBNGBeSGVM/edit?usp=sharing

We would like to do this whilst raising funds for a charity who will send help wherever it is needed most. We wish to recognise the huge grief, loss and human suffering and help with the ongoing humanitarian and medical crisis. Funds raised will go to Médecins Sans Frontiers' (Doctors without Borders) conflict appeal. As doctors ourselves, we have a special affinity with MSF’s non- political humanitarian and medical mission. For more information on MSF, please see link: https://www.msf.org/gaza-israel-war

In the famous words of Jo Cox: ‘We are far more united and have far more in common than that which divides us.’ We really do.