In Gaza, the occupation enforces slowness. Speed is our escape.

In Gaza, we are always waiting—for electricity, for fuel, for permission, for reconstruction, for relief. Occupation stretches time until it becomes a punishment. This is why speed matters.

Photograph: Khames al-Refi

Every Friday afternoon, when the week loosens its grip on Gaza, the sand begins to vibrate. In west Gaza, where the land meets the sea, engines roar back to life along the scarred stretch once known as the “Netzarim corridor” and on the sand dunes of al-Zahra.

Motorbikes and off-road vehicles surge forward, cutting through sand dunes that look out toward a sea that is somehow still breathing, still blue. Tires dig in. Sand sprays into the air like fireworks.

For a few fleeting hours, Gaza’s youth move fast. Faster than grief, faster than memory, faster than the suffocating slowness imposed on their lives.

This weekly ritual is not new. Since around 2015, young Palestinians have gathered in the Netzarim area and nearby al-Zahra city to ride, perform stunts, and test their limits.

But after two years of genocide, displacement, fuel starvation, and an Israeli military presence that rendered the area a killing zone, the return to these dunes is more than a hobby. It is an act of reclamation.

“We love life,” Mahmoud Saqer, 30, one of the riders in the group, tells me. “And this is how we remember that.”

Mahmoud remembers the early days clearly. Back then, al-Zahra was completely alive. Thousands of people would come on Fridays, including riders, families, children, vendors, and spectators. The dunes were wide, the streets intact, and petrol was available.

Photograph: Khames al-Refi

“Everyone had his own style,” Mahmoud adds. “Some would lift the bike on one wheel. Others would race up steep sand hills. Some would fall, break a bone—we used to joke and call it a ‘quick death’. But no one would give up. We keep trying until we make it.”

The gatherings were communal events. Crowds formed naturally, drawn by the sound of engines and the sight of young men defying gravity. Watching was part of the experience. For riders and spectators alike, it was a release.

Empty horizon

That release became impossible after the genocide started.

During the genocide, Netzarim was transformed into a corridor of death. Israeli occupation forces occupied the area; anyone attempting to cross or even approach it risked being shot on sight. Petrol vanished. What little entered Gaza became impossibly expensive—up to $40 per litre. Motorbikes and off-road vehicles were hidden away.

“We stored all the motorbikes,” Issam Abu Asr, 26, who was displaced after his home in al-Shejaiya neighbourhood was destroyed, tells me. “Not because we forgot our passion, but because a single missile could take it all away.”

For younger riders like 15-year-old Waleed Alareer, the loss was deeply personal. Before the genocide, he rode along the brightly-lit asphalt roads by the sea, learning balance and control. During the genocide, he could only walk to the closest accessible point, stare at the empty horizon, and imagine the sound of his engine.

“When the IOF soldiers were centring in the Netzarim area, I was reaching to the last point I could reach and standing there and remembering,” he tells me. “About how I used to start my bike and ride from north to south.”

Burning rubber

When the Israeli forces withdrew and riders cautiously returned, the feeling was overwhelming - but incomplete. “I hadn’t ridden in two years,” Mahmoud says. “The first time back, it felt strange. I couldn’t even lift the bike on one wheel.”

Mohammad Al-Zaza, 22, describes the return as an attempt to stitch his scattered memories back together. “We try to remember how it was before,” he says, “but the memories are missing pieces. The streets are destroyed. There’s no lighting. We have to leave at sunset. Before, we stayed until midnight.”

The losses are visible everywhere. Friends who once rode together are gone - killed, displaced, or unable to repair bikes destroyed in the bombing. Al-Zahra City has been wiped off the map. What remains of Netzarim are fragments, now narrow and crowded. Still, they come.

Photograph: Khames al-Refi

But on Friday afternoons, people gather around the riders again, forming loose circles. Some sit on broken concrete slabs. Others stand barefoot in the sand. Children cheer when a bike catches air. The sea breeze carries the smell of salt and petrol, mixing with the sharp scent of burning rubber.

When engines rev, sand sprays outward in wide arcs. The first acceleration sends dunes trembling. Riders perform wheelies, drift sideways across loose terrain, and charge uphill until gravity nearly wins—until, finally, it doesn’t. “It’s not just for us,” Mahmoud explains. “The people watching—they’re releasing energy too. They watch the bikes, the sea, the flying sand. For a moment, everyone breathes.”

Speed here is contagious. Even standing still, you feel it.

Enforced slowness

In Gaza, slowness is enforced. Waiting—for electricity, for fuel, for permission, for reconstruction, for relief. Occupation stretches time until it becomes a punishment. That is why speed matters. “When I ride fast, adrenaline and happiness hormones are released,” Mohammad says. “It’s indescribable.” Issam puts it differently: “Speed is instinct. It’s inside us. Occupation tried to kill that—especially when fuel was cut—but it didn’t work.”

Even now, petrol remains scarce and exorbitantly priced. Spare parts and engine oil are nearly impossible to obtain. Each ride is calculated, rationed, precious. And yet, the bikes keep moving.

Riders never go alone. They arrive together and leave together, partly for camaraderie, partly for safety. But the emptiness of Netzarim carries risks—criminal gangs, collaborators, and the lingering threat of violence. “We ride as a group,” Issam says. “It’s about spirit and protection.”

Photograph: Khames al-Refi

The riders coordinate beforehand, message each other, share routes, and document their rides on Instagram and TikTok. Visibility itself becomes a statement: we are here, and we are alive.

Walid laughs when he describes his first ride back. “I was flying with happiness. I couldn’t stop laughing.”

Despite exhaustion, loss, and uncertainty, the dunes offer something rare in Gaza: unfiltered joy. The riders are not naive about what they face. They speak openly about petrol prices, destroyed infrastructure, and the impossibility of returning to what once was. But none of them speak of surrender.

Photograph: Khames al-Refi

Their message to the world is clear. Pressure the occupation to allow fuel, spare parts, and reconstruction. Support Gaza’s youth, whose talents survive without resources. Above all, understand that joy itself is a form of resistance.

As the sun dips toward the Mediterranean and engines fall silent, the sand settles. The riders pack up, promising to return next Friday. On the dunes of Netzarim - amid ruins, sea air, and flying sand - they choose speed over erasure, and life over everything else.

Ali Skaik is an English Literature student and writer from Gaza City. Every word he writes is a pulse from his life in Gaza. He is a member of WANN and has published work in The Nation, The New Arab, The Intercept and The Electronic Intifada.