Palestine’s Country Profile
Country name: Palestine
Total Area: 2,436 sq mi (6,309 sq km), broken down as follows: West Bank: 2,270 sq mi (5,879 sq km); East Jerusalem, 27 sq mi (70 sq km); Gaza Strip: 139 sq mi (360 sq km)
Population: 6.65 million (2007 est.), broken down as follows: West Bank, 2.5 million; Gaza Strip, 1.4 million; Syria, 442,000; Lebanon, 408,000; Jordan, 1.9 million. The total population of Palestinians, including worldwide migrants, is around 10 million.
Median age: 16.7
Ethnic Groups: Palestinians are predominantly Arab
GDP and GDP per capita: $3.45 billion and about $1,500 (2006 estimates)
Read a complete profile of Palestine and the Palestinians
Palestine’s Olympic History
First time represented at Summer Olympics:
Gold medals won:
Silver:
Bronze:
Athletes at the Beijing Olympics:
Number of Sports competing in at Beijing Olympics:
Medals at 2008 Beijing Olympics: 0
Palestine’s Olympic Playbook
The very same week, in September 1993, that that Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin of Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization chairman, Yasser Arafat, shook hands on the White House lawn, sealing the Oslo accord that was to set Palestinians toward autonomy and independence from Israeli occupation, the International Olympic Committee recognized Palestine as a legitimate competitor in any upcoming Olympics.
Asked about the killing of 11 Israeli athletes by members of the Palestinian Black September group at the 1972 Munich Olympics, the IOC chief, Francois Carrard, said: “There were very black moments for Olympic history in 1972 but we are in 1993.”
And so the Palestinian Olympic Committee was duly recognized and Palestinian athletes were invited to participate at the Winter Games in Lillehammer, Norway, in 1994. They passed on that one. Snow is scarce to nonexistent in the Occupied Territories, and an occupation isn’t conducive to indoor sports like ice and figure skating. But two Palestinians made it to the 1996 Games in Atlanta. And four Palestinians will make it to the Beijing Games.
Sure, no Palestinian has ever won a medal, but to athletes like 19-year-old swimmer Zakia Nassar, a dental student at the University of Jenin in the West Bank, just getting a chance to represent Palestine is what it’s all about—representing a country yet to be. Talk about a dream within a dream. Her typical experiences involved swimming pools that are more comparable to water holes than Olympic training facilities—an 18-meter-long pool in Bethlehem, a good distance away from Jenin, and another pool that stretches to 25 meters, when she can get to it (the more than 500 Israeli roadblocks in the West Bank make any traveling for any Palestinian going any distance at all an aggravating daily epic).
“A 50-metre pool is like the sea for me,” Nassar told The Age . "When am I going to get to the other end?” She just has.
Palestine’s Athletes at the 2008 Beijing Olympics
Swimming
Hamza Abdo
Zakia Nassar
Track & Field/Athletics
Nader Almassri
Gharid Ghrouf
