Yesterday, Friday, the 10th Palestinian Bethlehem Marathon took place. The race, seen as the Palestinian response to the Israeli Jerusalem Marathon, ran for large sections alongside the separation barrier, bordering Jerusalem neighborhoods on the other side. More than 10,000 runners participated in the event, including around 1,000 international runners from 75 countries worldwide. At the same time, a special marathon stage was held in the Gaza Strip.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This year\u2019s race was held after a two-year suspension due to the war in Gaza. The event was organized by several official and municipal Palestinian bodies, led by the Higher Council for Youth and Sports headed by Jibril Rajoub, who also fired the starting gun for the race.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The marathon started and ended at Manger Square, near the Church of the Nativity in central Bethlehem. The 21-kilometer route passed through Monastery Street, alongside the separation barrier, through the Aida and Dheisheh refugee camps, and toward the town of Al-Khader, where runners turned back along the same path. The route was deliberately designed to illustrate the geopolitical reality in the area, with organizers arguing that there is no uninterrupted 42-kilometer Palestinian route without Israeli checkpoints. Full marathon runners therefore had to complete the same course twice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The marathon was held under the slogans \u201cRun for Freedom\u201d and \u201cUnity of the Homeland.\u201d Along the other side of the barrier, the race route bordered Jerusalem\u2019s Gilo neighborhood and southern city roads such as Hebron Road and the area near Checkpoint 300. From the course, runners could see the towers of Har Homa and the Rachel\u2019s Tomb compound, surrounded by a high wall separating it from Bethlehem\u2019s main street where participants were running.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The International Jerusalem Marathon was founded in 2011. Two years later, in 2013, the first Palestine Marathon was launched in Bethlehem. The Palestinian organizers, including two Danish women who founded the \u201cRight to Movement\u201d initiative, openly stated that the Bethlehem marathon was meant to present \u201cthe other side\u201d of the story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While the Jerusalem Marathon is promoted in Israel as a sports and tourism event uniting both parts of the city, Palestinians viewed it as a political tool reinforcing Israeli sovereignty in East Jerusalem. The Bethlehem Marathon was created as a counter-platform highlighting what organizers describe as the lack of Palestinian freedom of movement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Israel markets the Jerusalem Marathon internationally, it does so under the branding of \u201crunning through history.\u201d Palestinians established the Bethlehem Marathon to send a different message to the world: \u201cIt is impossible to run a real marathon in the Palestinian territories without encountering a wall or a checkpoint.\u201d Unlike the Jerusalem Marathon, which highlights open landscapes and mountainous scenery, the Bethlehem race was intentionally designed around refugee camps and the separation barrier to create a sharp visual contrast to the Israeli narrative.
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Yesterday, Friday, the 10th Palestinian Bethlehem Marathon took place. The race, seen as the Palestinian response to the Israeli Jerusalem Marathon, ran for large sections alongside the separation barrier, bordering Jerusalem neighborhoods on the other side. More than 10,000 runners participated in the event, including around 1,000 international runners from 75 countries worldwide. At the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":181218,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"9320","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[62,184,68,43],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-181220","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking","8":"category-184","9":"category-68","10":"category-sport"},"acf":{"subtitle":"Jerusalem in the background, the separation barrier beside the runners, and political messages throughout the course: this is how the Palestinian marathon returned to Bethlehem this year after a two-year pause"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jerusalem-online.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jerusalem-online.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jerusalem-online.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jerusalem-online.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jerusalem-online.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181220"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jerusalem-online.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181220\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":181222,"href":"https:\/\/jerusalem-online.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181220\/revisions\/181222"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jerusalem-online.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/181218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jerusalem-online.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jerusalem-online.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jerusalem-online.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}