The Big Match: Football V Occupation
Reageer (0)Palestine sits modestly at 174th in the FIFA world rankings, held jointly with the Seychelles and Somalia. But such a position belies the revolution that has taken place in Palestinian football over the last two years.
25-5-2010
On October 26, 2008, the Palestinian men’s football team played its first home match on national soil. Previous matches where they had officially been at home on the fixture list were played in neighbouring countries such as Jordan and Qatar.
Around 13 months later, in November of 2009, the cycle was completed when the women‘s team were also able to play a home game. Both matches were played against neighbouring Jordan and both finished in draws. 1-1 in the men’s game, 2-2 in the women’s.
Palestine was presented with the FIFA Development Award in 2008, “in recognition of the difficult task that it had accomplished in keeping football alive”. That same year, FIFA’s Goal program contributed around $800,000 to complete the artificial pitch at the Ar-Ram stadium near Jerusalem, the site of the historic match against the Jordanians. Additional funding was provided by France, the King of Saudi Arabia, the Olympic Council of Asia and the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi.
Key to this transformation has been Jibril Rajoub, the pragmatic politician who heads the Palestinian Football Association. Rajoub, the current Palestinian Sports Personality of the Year, has a long and colourful background in political and factional activity, but precious little affiliation with the sport he represents.
Born near Hebron in the West Bank in 1953, by 17 he had been sentenced to life imprisonment on a charge of attacking a convoy of Israeli soldiers. In 1988 he was expelled to Lebanon for nationalist activism, but following the Oslo Accords in 1993, he returned to become head of Preventative Security Services in the West Bank, one of fourteen security services operating under Yasser Arafat. Holding the counterpart position to Mohammed Dahlan in Gaza, he controlled several thousand men and was briefly considered as a possible candidate for the presidency.
As head of the PFA, he was presented with a number of challenges. Of course the biggest among these was finding a way of building a cogent strategy for building mass participation in the face of an occupying power. “We have a problem moving players from one place to another, and building infrastructure”, he explains. “In addition it is difficult to get permits issued for people who come from outside or to bring people from Gaza. This is a very serious and complicated obstacle.”
Gaza is a particularly obstinate problem. The captain of the national side, a Gazan, is unable to enter the West Bank, and currently lives and plays in Jordan. During Israel’s onslaught on the Gaza Strip in December 2008 and January 2009, two footballers, Ayman Alkurd and Wajeh Moshate, were killed, as was Khalil abed Jaber, a member of the Palestinian Olympic Committee. The national stadium and the PFA headquarters were also destroyed.
Rajoub sees one of the association’s greatest achievements as the November 2009 women’s football game. “I think that most of the world was shocked and surprised about the number of women who came to watch the match and came to the stadium – about 15,000 women came to watch the game which I think has no precedent in the whole of the Middle East. There is a very wrong concept that this is a fundamentalist area – it’s not true.”
There are also promising youth teams. The U19 girls’ team is expected to play at a competition in Brazil next month. Recent results include a 3-1 victory over Bahrain and a 17-0 hammering of Kuwait.
Rajoub, presumably utilising the diplomatic skills he learnt as a politician, has established links with numerous international football bodies, including the English FA, who in the past month sent a group of coaches to the West Bank to train their Palestinian counterparts.
But the move from simply playing on home turf to competing at the highest international level can’t happen straight away. “I hope that we will qualify to participate in the Olympics in two years”, he says. “I think we have the right, we have the determination and I think that we should start a new era of football including trying to qualify our teams for the World Cup. But it needs time.”
In Palestine, football is inevitably politicised to some extent. When the country played Iraq, Rajoub was quite clear about the function he expected the match to serve, stating “The match comes in a political and sports context, and is an expression of the Palestinian commitment to breaking the siege of Iraq and to celebrating with Iraqis the departure of American forces from Iraqi cities.”
For him, football’s popularity makes it ideal to use as a PR tool for the nation. “I think that now 90 percent of the media all over the world is talking about football and sport rather than talking about any other thing. Our people have the right to show themselves through the rules of the game, to achieve political aspirations.”
He adds, “Seeing the Palestinian cause through the eyes of sport and football is very positive and constructive. Instead of seeing Palestinians in the context of violence, they see Palestinians through different values. It’s a very positive means to convince the international community that we are normal and that we do deserve independence and freedom.”
MP Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi, Secretary General of the Palestinian National Initiative, believes the sport promotes unity at home and abroad. “We are very proud to have an effective team. Almost all of us have played and loved the game. It is the most popular sport in Palestine as it is in the world. We hope the performance of this team will give the right picture of Palestinians and help to remove the dehumanisation we have suffered. Everybody here is looking forward to the world cup, which has a special importance to us. When Italy won in 1982, at a time when we were being attacked in Lebanon, they dedicated their victory to Palestine.”
But club football, at least in the West Bank, echoes the local grudges common to all national leagues from Glasgow to Milan. Alaadin Farah, a shop-owner from the town of Al-Bireh on the outskirts of Ramallah, describes the diehard rivalry between his team and their arch-enemies, Al Amari, from a nearby refugee camp. “At every game there’s tension – Al Amari used to be the Bireh’s land. It’s always the biggest game of the year.” The last match between the two teams, played at the Majed Al-Asaad stadium in Al-Bireh, ended with a fight in which several people were injured, despite being presided over by at least 50 police.
Rajoub wants to unite these disparate factions behind the national team. “Even in stable and independent countries football has a political dimension, but at least there is a consensus here among all political factions to keep distance between their political plans and plans for football and sport.”
When asked which team he supports, he diplomatically replies that he supports the national team. This is backed up by a story his secretary tells about a recent ambassadorial mission to Europe when he declined tickets both to see Arsenal and El Clasico, when Real Madrid play Barcelona. He wanted to concentrate on his work.
Although most eyes will be on South Africa this summer, Rajoub’s project continues with a friendly against Sudan on June 4. An attempt is also underway by a Mr Muhannad Ar-Rabi, a man from the town of Nablus in the northern West Bank, to organization a friendly football match between Palestinian officials and politicians. It is not clear at this point whether Rajoub will take part.
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