The Palestinian Authority’s foreign minister has described her country’s athletes, who are taking part in the upcoming Paris 2024 Olympic Games amid Israel’s genocidal war on the Gaza Strip, as “the symbols of resistance.”

Varsen Aghabekian made the remarks during a ceremony in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah on Sunday ahead of the Palestinian delegation’s departure for Paris.

She said that the athletes will represent Palestine at a “very dark moment in our history.”

“You are not just athletes, you are also… symbols of Palestinian resistance,” the top diplomat told the athletes.

The Paris 2024 Olympics officially begin with the opening ceremony on July 26, setting off the two-and-a-half-week sports event which comes to an end on August 11.

Eight athletes will represent Palestine, competing in athletics (track and field), swimming, archery, taekwondo, judo and boxing.

‘400 athletes, sporting officials killed or wounded in Gaza war’

Also speaking at Sunday’s ceremony, Palestinian Olympic Committee head Jibril Rajoub said 400 athletes, coaches and sporting officials have been killed or wounded in Israel’s Gaza onslaught since early October.

“Through this participation, we want to present the suffering of the Palestinian people and the unprecedented killing taking place in Gaza,” he said.

“We want this participation to be a message from the Palestinians to the world that it is time for them to be free in their homeland.”

Palestinian-US swimmer Valerie Rose Tarazi is one of the eight athletes who will compete in the event.

Tarazi said she has relatives in Gaza and speaks with them nearly every day, noting, “My heart aches for them.”

“Being in Paris on behalf of Palestine is a very important thing, and taking part in a global swimming competition at a time when there are no places to train is surreal,” she added.

Israel unleashed its brutal war on Gaza on October 7, 2023, after the Hamas resistance group carried out its historic operation against the occupying entity in retaliation for the regime’s intensified atrocities against the Palestinian people.

According to the Gaza Health Ministry, the Tel Aviv regime has so far killed at least 38,584 Palestinians, mostly women, and children, in Gaza, and injured 88,881 others.

Recently, The Lancet, a leading general medical journal, estimated that the death toll from the Israeli aggression could be 186,000 or even more as many Palestinians have succumbed to the indirect impacts of the Gaza war.