“No Palestinian Climber Is Safe, Anywhere, at Any Time”
- Matthieu Amaré
- 3 minutes ago
- 11 min read
President of the Palestine Climbing Association, recognized by World Climbing as a national federation in 2024, Hiba Shaheen lives and climbs in Palestine. Between crags she says have been taken over under Israeli occupation, daily checkpoints, and a federation motion that never made it to a vote, she speaks for the first time about the reality facing Palestinian climbers under occupation — and the institutional fight she is leading to put them on the international stage. A long interview from Ramallah.
Vertige Media: Just before this interview, we heard that a Palestinian climber had just been attacked by an Israeli settler. Can you tell us what happened?
Hiba Shaheen: It happened yesterday, June 9, in a village north of Ramallah. One of our climbers was there with friends. They weren’t at a climbing crag — an outdoor climbing area — they were setting up a hammock, which is why they had climbing gear with them. A settler came and started attacking them. They managed to run away and weren’t seriously hurt because they escaped quickly. But when they came back, all their belongings were gone: phones, passports, climbing gear, everything.
Vertige Media: What are the current living conditions like for Palestinian climbers?
Hiba Shaheen: What I just described is pretty typical. It is not the first time a Palestinian climber has been attacked. About a month ago, another member of ours was at home in Hizma, a village near Ramallah, when the Israeli military invaded the neighborhood. They were going into houses at random, searching them, detaining people, handcuffing them, blindfolding them. People from the village could be held for an entire day with their hands tied behind their backs and their eyes covered. These are not isolated stories. This is our reality. Today, no Palestinian climber is safe, anywhere, at any time.
“Even when you go climbing outside: if the military shows up and finds a knife in your bag, you can be arrested or shot”
Hiba Shaheen, climber and president of the Palestinian Climbing Federation
Vertige Media: How would you explain the situation?
Hiba Shaheen: It is not that complicated: someone wants to come to your land and colonize it, and your mere presence becomes a problem. Settlers say it openly: “A good Arab is a dead Arab.” They want all Palestinians to leave. And right now, they have a green light, with full support from the Israeli government, the police, the military. A settler can attack, hurt, even kill someone, and never be held accountable. Even when you go climbing outside: if the military shows up and finds a knife in your bag, you can be arrested or shot. They can simply say, “They posed a threat. They had a knife.” There is no real accountability. No one protects us.
Vertige Media: In that context, where do you find the motivation to keep climbing?
Hiba Shaheen: When you have been climbing for years, it becomes part of who you are. You cannot really fight the urge to put your hands on rock. For me, the wall is still the only place where I feel truly free. On the wall, you feel connected to the rock, to the land. You move freely. No one tells you what your next move should be. And at the same time, you know it could all stop at any moment. You know that the crag you are climbing today may be a place you never get to climb again. In a strange way, that is one of the things that pushes me to climb even more: to enjoy what we still have, for as long as we can.
Vertige Media: In practical terms, how do movement restrictions affect your climbing?
Hiba Shaheen: Imagine every village has two entrances. Multiply that by a thousand villages, and you have 2,000 gates to get through. My hometown has three gates. Two are completely closed. The third has a color system: if it is yellow, it opens sometimes. If it is orange, it never opens. After a certain hour, you cannot drive back into your own town.
Because of these movement restrictions, our climbing community has never really been able to grow beyond Ramallah. To go to Nablus, where we have a relatively safe crag, you have to cross at least three checkpoints. And depending on your luck that day, one of them will be closed, or they will be searching every car. You can spend one or two hours waiting in line. It is a constant logistics problem built around uncertainty.
Vertige Media: Out of roughly a dozen crags identified in Palestine, you now have access to only one. How has the occupation gradually taken those sites away?
Hiba Shaheen: There are several categories. First, there are crags in areas under Israeli control where the main access route goes through a settlement. Israelis can drive through the settlement and be at the crag in five minutes. Palestinians have to come from another village, walk around the settlement for nearly 40 minutes, and then go through a military and security check at the entrance. If you pass, you climb. If you don’t, you are sent back. It can be for any reason — even something your brother did, not you.
“For me, the wall is still the only place where I feel truly free. On the wall, you feel connected to the rock, to the land. You move freely. No one tells you what your next move should be. And at the same time, you know it could all stop at any moment. You know that the crag you are climbing today may be a place you never get to climb again. In a strange way, that is one of the things that pushes me to climb even more: to enjoy what we still have, for as long as we can”
Hiba Shaheen, climber and president of the Palestinian Climbing Federation
Then there are crags near settlements. Settlement security can show up within minutes and tell you that you are not allowed to be there. Sometimes you barely have time to park before you are told to leave. And then there is the most serious category: stolen crags. These are crags that were bolted — equipped with fixed protection — by Palestinian climbers, sometimes with help from international partners, on Palestinian land, for Palestinians. Then another federation came in, listed those crags in its own guidebook, renamed the routes, and reclassified the land as a military zone. Now they are off-limits to Palestinians, but Israelis can climb there. I do not think this has ever happened anywhere else in the world: a national federation taking routes equipped by another climbing community, changing their names, putting them in its own guidebook — without having bolted them in the first place.
Our most beautiful crag, Yabrud — the one you see in Andrew Bisharat’s documentary Resistance Climbing — is now completely inaccessible. A settler established an outpost there. Since then, every time our climbers have gone, military jeeps have shown up. The last time, they were told: “Leave, or you will be in the crossfire.”
Vertige Media: You say crags have been “stolen.” What exactly is the role of the Israeli federation, the ILCA, in this?
Hiba Shaheen: First, we have to go back to a basic point. Under the Oslo Accords, all Israeli settlements in the West Bank are illegal. The West Bank belongs to Palestinians. And yet the ILCA is bolting crags and organizing climbing activities in those settlements, even though it should not be operating in the West Bank. And it does not hide this. The federation openly runs military training for Israeli soldiers — rappelling, knots, climbing techniques. So it is directly linked to, and complicit in, military operations.
Vertige Media: Activist sources say the logos of the IFSC — the former name of World Climbing — and the UIAA appear on Israeli guidebooks for crags in the occupied West Bank. Can you confirm that?
Hiba Shaheen: Yes, I can confirm it. I saw it on the Israeli Climbing Association website. Their guidebook carries the IFSC logo. I do not know whether that means formal approval or whether it was simply overlooked. I cannot say with certainty that the IFSC approved it. But if we are telling them about this, they have to open an investigation.
Vertige Media: What did you formally ask World Climbing to do, and how did the organization respond?
Hiba Shaheen: We submitted a formal letter requesting the suspension of the Israeli federation, with evidence of violations of IOC and World Climbing statutes — including the unequal access to training facilities imposed on Palestinians. For us, crags are training facilities. We do not have a proper climbing gym. We documented the fact that our athletes were stuck at the border for three days while trying to travel to a competition, and that a two-week bridge closure prevented us from attending another event. All of that was documented and sent. Our letter did not even make it into the folder of motions submitted for a vote. The response we received was that our letter did not establish the complicity of the Israel Climbing Association, only the actions of the Israeli state. And the state, they said, did not fit the criteria.
Vertige Media: What do you make of that?
Hiba Shaheen: When they suspended Russia, no one had to prove that the Russian federation was complicit. They simply suspended it. With Israel, we are being asked to meet an impossible standard of proof. It is a double standard. Our motion was co-signed by Palestine, Jordan, and Iraq. Spain also submitted one, under pressure from Climbers for Palestine, but it was more cautious: it called for discussion and investigation rather than a direct suspension. None of these motions were put to a vote.
“A full suspension of Israel from all World Climbing activities — competitions and meetings included”
Hiba Shaheen, climber and president of the Palestinian Climbing Federation
Vertige Media: An extraordinary General Assembly is scheduled for July 2026 to discuss “geopolitical issues.” What do you know about it?
Hiba Shaheen: Honestly, not much more than what has been made public. I do not know exactly what will be put to a vote, or in what form. What I know is that the idea came up as a way to deal with all the pending motions — ours, the ones about Russia and Belarus, and others. We were prepared to bring our motion directly to the World Climbing General Assembly last February, which was supposed to be held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. But then Israel and the United States struck Iran. In the chaos that followed, World Climbing announced that the in-person General Assembly was canceled and said that only statutory items would be handled. The session where votes could happen was postponed.
Vertige Media: What exactly are you asking World Climbing to do?
Hiba Shaheen: A full suspension of Israel from all World Climbing activities — competitions and meetings included. Competing under a neutral flag, as was done with Russia, does not work in Israel’s case. Every athlete would have to prove neutrality. But for Israeli athletes, that is impossible. All of their athletes of service age are listed in the reserves. That is a legal obligation. An athlete who was on active duty in Gaza six months before an international competition cannot be neutral. We also stated the criteria for lifting the suspension: Palestinians must have free access to our crags, we must be able to travel between our cities, and we must be able to travel to competitions. Right now, none of those conditions is met.
Vertige Media: Can World Climbing actually do anything?
Hiba Shaheen: Yes. The power of World Climbing is its General Assembly. If member federations submit motions, World Climbing has to review them and act. The federations have the power. If World Climbing does not act on its own, its General Assembly can force it to. There is also a shared interest. World Climbing wants to grow the sport worldwide and increase international participation. That is necessary if climbing wants to stay in the Olympic program. We asked World Climbing to help us build a climbing gym. The response we received was that they do not have a direct budget for that. They pointed us toward Olympic Solidarity funding, which has to go through our National Olympic Committee. When we went there, we were told: “Climbing is just you. How many climbers are you — 60, 100? It is not interesting for us. We will give the money to football, basketball, volleyball.”
Vertige Media: Do you currently have athletes capable of representing Palestine internationally?
Hiba Shaheen: Yes. And in all of this, there are still some positive signs. Tawfiq Najada, from the village of Ein Qiniya, just sent his second 5.13b — the American equivalent of 8a — at Iraq al-Dub in Jordan. That matters because other climbers have climbed it too, so the grade is confirmed. He had climbed one in Palestine before, but because no one else had graded it, we were not fully certain it was 8a. We founded the PCA in 2019, with nine other climbers. Climbing had just become an Olympic sport, and the sport was starting to grow in Palestine on a small scale. We had a small community, a small gym, and a dream of one day seeing Palestinian climbers at the Olympics. To get there, we had to build the sport locally and gain official representation so we could enter international institutions. That has been done since 2024. Today, we have around 60 members, including six active competitors.
“Even insurance companies have refused to cover female climbers because they assessed the risk as too high. That is one of the things that weighs on me the most. Because I know what climbing feels like, and I want other women in my community and my country to experience it too”
Hiba Shaheen, climber and president of the Palestinian Climbing Federation
But to reach the next level, we do not have enough infrastructure. Our only gym, Wadi Climbing in Ramallah, is a bouldering gym — a gym for shorter climbs above padded floors. It does not have the hold styles used in modern competitions. The walls are only three meters high; competition walls are four and a half meters. We do not have a speed wall at all. And on the only outdoor crag we still have access to, we cannot guarantee safety. That makes everything much harder, especially for women.
Vertige Media: Why are women even more exposed?
Hiba Shaheen: Because we are a conservative culture, and families are very protective of their daughters. If a man is arrested, people feel he may be able to manage. If it is a woman, the fear is very different — the risk of sexual assault, arbitrary detention, everything that can happen. Even insurance companies have refused to cover female climbers because they assessed the risk as too high. That is one of the things that weighs on me the most. Because I know what climbing feels like, and I want other women in my community and my country to experience it too.
Vertige Media: A coach from the Lebanese climbing federation reportedly told you that armed security teams were accompanying the Israeli delegation at international competitions. What do you know about that?
Hiba Shaheen: I can confirm it. It happened in Madrid, and then in Prague. At those competitions, the Israeli climbers had armed security teams in areas reserved for athletes and coaches. They were the only ones with armed security there. As a Palestinian, I am not surprised. I see how they militarize every part of their presence. But at a sports competition on European soil, there is no reason to be surrounded by guns. Why are other federations not reacting? Why does Israel feel it needs that level of protection?
Vertige Media: Israeli climbers were booed during the Climbing World Cup stop in Madrid. Are they personally responsible for the actions of their state?
Hiba Shaheen: Take Ayala Kerem, a World Cup finalist and the 2024 European vice-champion. She is sponsored by Shikun & Binui, an Israeli construction company known for its role in building illegal settlements in the West Bank. This is documented. Through that sponsorship, she is directly endorsing the colonization of Palestine. That is not a coincidence.
“As long as Palestinian climbers do not have access to the same rights, the same crags, the same ability to travel and compete, allowing Israeli athletes to climb freely on the international stage means validating an unjust system”
Hiba Shaheen, climber and president of the Palestinian Climbing Federation
Vertige Media: Is it fair to exclude them from competitions?
Hiba Shaheen: Yes. As long as Palestinian climbers do not have access to the same rights, the same crags, the same ability to travel and compete, allowing Israeli athletes to climb freely on the international stage means validating an unjust system.
Vertige Media: What is your relationship with the international collective Climbers for Palestine?
Hiba Shaheen: I am very grateful to them. I am in regular contact with most of them — about once a month. I keep them updated on what is happening here. They are more courageous than many federations and governments. I hope the movement keeps growing.
