According to the Palestinians I have spoken to, the majority of FIFA delegates supported their case, but then a problem came from an unexpected direction. On the same day of the vote on the Palestinian proposition to suspend Israel, another vote was to take place at the FIFA convention: the election of the organization’s president. Prince Ali Bin Hussein, brother of Jordanian King Abdullah, was running for the position against Switzerland’s Sepp Blatter. Delegates from the European countries did not favor the Jordanian candidate, but he offered them a kind of compromise. In return for their support, bin Hussein would put pressure on the Palestinians to back off. It was a seductive offer. These delegates were eager to end what had become a major diplomatic scandal, but didn’t want to be seen as suppressing Palestine’s initiative. They wanted bin Hussein to do their dirty work.
At first, Rajoub fought fiercely against the Jordanians, but thirty minutes before the vote, Rajoub withdrew his proposition. Many Palestinians who are familiar with Rajoub’s career in the Preventative security forces, and his role as PFA head, believe his decision was tainted by corruption and international pressure. They believe, and have written, that he sold out the cause for his political career.
Disappointed Palestinian organizations started a new campaign: a red card for Jibril Rajoub. The people felt betrayed and angry. Rajoub, anxious about losing the people’s support, summoned anger of his own. After several days of posturing, both sides decided to take advantage of the momentum they had achieved and negotiated a reconciliation: in return for backing off, Rajoub was promised that a special FIFA committee would examine Israel’s compliance with FIFA rules and human rights. The Palestinian organizations promised to work together to help the committee.
Israel’s political might carried the day, but the values of soccer—opportunity for the underdog, consistent rules applied to all—also had their moment. The message that came across was that Palestinians want to play soccer, but are not allowed to do so.
The FIFA committee finally made it to the Palestinian territories in May 2016. It was headed by Mosima Gabriel “Tokyo” Sexwale, himself a fascinating character. A black South African from Soweto, he was a member of the ANC who had fought against apartheid and sat in jail alongside Nelson Mandela, and after apartheid had risen in the ranks of the South African government. His ambitions to replace Mandela as president were ultimately thwarted, and he started a successful career as a businessman in the diamond mining industry. He acquired his nickname in childhood after becoming a karate champion.
Sexwale visited, among other places, the village of Beit Liqya in the Ramallah region, and was present with Rajoub at a special tournament organized for the FIFA delegation. The location was carefully picked by the Palestinians: Beit Liqya was home to a new soccer pitch built two years earlier and officially inaugurated by FIFA president Blatter but, owing to an Israeli prohibition, had never been used.
About two weeks after Sexwale’s visit, I traveled to Beit Liqya with Hilmy, a village resident who told me he used to work in construction in Tel Aviv, to see what had happened to the stadium. We left Jerusalem, traveling north to Ramallah, wound our way through an hour and a half of bypasses and rough roads, passed village after village, and maneuvered around restricted highway 443. When we arrived at Beit Liqya, Hilmy pointed to a hill and said that beyond it was Abu Gosh and Ma’ale Hachamisha. I know those hills well; that’s where I went to high school. Had we been able to travel directly, we would have arrived fifteen minutes after leaving Jerusalem.
Hilmy showed me the old soccer field on the southern side of the village, a dry earth pitch with two rusty goals. Here young people used to play daily, but since Israel started constructing the security barrier in 2004, it had become the site of clashes between the IDF and villagers protesting against the barrier cutting through their fields and orchards. The skirmishes reached their tragic peak on May 4, 2005. According to Hilmy, an IDF helicopter landed on an overlooking hilltop and unloaded soldiers. Children who were playing on the pitch that morning started throwing stones at the soldiers, who chased the kids and opened fire. Two boys under the age of fourteen, Uday Assi and Jamal Assi, were shot and killed. They are buried next to the field.
Following this incident, the village decided to build a new soccer field, far from the violent fighting zone of the barrier, on the western side of the village. Money was raised. The mayor brought in an engineer and a lawyer, and they started working on the paperwork. After surveying and measuring, they submitted a detailed construction plan to the Israeli Civil Administration in Beit El. Israel refused to approve the plans, offering no explanation. Outer Beit Liqya is in Area C, the part of the West Bank that remained under Israeli military and administrative control after the Oslo accords. Israel virtually never approves Palestinian construction in Area C. So even though the pitch has been laid out at the site for two years, there are no changing rooms and no stands and no games played there, because Israel won’t allow it. As hard as I try, I can’t find any explanation for how this structure could possibly harm Israel. On the contrary, it could help deescalate the violence that has attached itself to—and eclipsed—the game of soccer.
Tokyo Sexwale heard the story of the field and met children from Beit Liqya who asked him to help them find a way to play soccer. According to Palestinian journalists, Sexwale said that preventing children from playing the game is a crime that international sport organizations must not ignore.
In 1996, I traveled to Ramallah for the Jerusalem magazine Kol Ha’ir, to write about the Palestinian national soccer team, which had been formed a few weeks earlier. My article begins with a quote from the local newspaper of Macclesfield, England, where the Palestinian national team played its first proper game, losing to an amateur English team from a regional league: “Without an organized league, training structure, and travel permits for eight key players from the Israeli authorities, this national team was not a real threat even to our second team. But the Palestinians made some friends and put a few smiles on faces, especially the performance of goalkeeper Galam Salem, who looked as if he had lost his invitation to the tea party, jumping to and fro, not necessarily in the right direction.” Later in my article, an official of the Palestinian Authority’s Sport Ministry explains, “The grass ruined our players in England. It was slippery and wet and cold, they slipped on it every time.” The official also detailed the difficulties suffered at the hands of the Israelis: refusal to let the Gazan players travel to a West Bank training camp, refusal to let some players leave the country, a twelve-hour delay at Tel Aviv airport (and the missed flight that resulted). “It would be no exaggeration to say,” I conclude, “that from Palestine, the neighbor’s grass looks much greener.”
Twenty years on, it is easy to tell what has changed (there are organized Palestinian leagues and the national team is winning international matches and doesn’t slip around on the grass) and what hasn’t (the Israelis still delay Palestinians at the border and refuse to grant travel permits for players), but what stands out for me rereading my article is the light tone I imbued it with. Yes, I relayed miserable airport and permit stories, but I also did my best to capture the sense of hope I felt. Something new was beginning. Just three years had passed since the Oslo agreement; there was a Palestinian Authority; and it had established its own “civilian” ministries, including one for sports. The national team was brand new. The players and politicians I interviewed spoke about a future in which the team would play all over the world, would beat the national teams of the neighboring Arab nations, would beat Israel. And I, the Israeli reporter, was perhaps somewhat patronizing, but also interested and encouraged. The hope surged through me, too. After thirty years, the occupation looked like it might be in its final days.
Now, fifty years into that occupation, the tone with which I once wrote about Palestinian soccer feels bizarre. This time in Ramallah, Beit Liqya, East Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Hebron, no one joked with me, no one mentioned a future match against Israel. Whe
n you travel for a grueling hour and a half and arrive at a village which is located beyond the hill and see a soccer field that the people are forbidden to use, a field built to allow children to play in safety, far from the pitch where their friends were killed, the disappointment feels absolute, the complications insoluble.
The national team of Palestine fought for a ticket to the 2018 World Cup in the Asian qualifying group A. It finished in third place, trailing Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and ahead of Malaysia and East Timor. The thrashing of the teams below it and draws with those above were not enough to qualify for the World Cup, though they did raise Palestine’s FIFA ranking thirty places, from 140th in the world to 110th. But, as always seems the case with Palestinian soccer, the competition was merely a sideshow. The most interesting story took place away from the pitch.
The Saudi Arabian national team was expected to arrive at their game in Palestine in the middle of 2015’s violent fall, in November of that year. The Saudis tried to switch the game to neutral ground in Jordan, their reasoning being that Saudi Arabia had no relations with Israel and therefore its team was not willing to pass border checkpoints manned by Israelis. The Saudi act was supposedly pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli. However the Palestinians were eager to host a home game against a major team like Saudi Arabia in order to send a message to the soccer world that they were no longer the charming footnote they once had been, but were now a strong national team, one with a home in which it hosts its games. Jibril Rajoub opposed the Saudi decision vehemently and told FIFA that it could not force Palestine to play away from home. A couple of weeks before the game, FIFA made an announcement recognizing the Palestinians’ right to host games on their land, a right that could not be revoked. The Saudis increased their pressure, aiming it in all directions: at FIFA, at President Abbas, at the Jordanians, even at Hamas, who announced at one stage that they supported the Saudis.
Why would an organization fighting for the freedom and independence of Palestine oppose the Palestinian national team’s hosting a soccer game in its home country? There were rumors that the Saudis had bribed Hamas. But as is the case with so much of this brand of soccer politics, definitive answers elude us. Rajoub continued to resist, and twenty-four hours before the game was supposed to take place in al-Ram, it looked as if the Saudis would suffer an automatic 3–0 loss for failing to appear. Rajoub said, “If, for the Saudis, supporting the Palestinian struggle is so important, and normalization with Israel is so dangerous, I’m sure they would be happy to sacrifice three points and have their Palestinian brethren get them.” But the Saudis kept pressing for a change of venue, and at the last minute, possibly following instructions from President Abbas’s office, the Palestinian security forces announced that they could not guarantee the safety of the Saudi players. It was now too much for Rajoub to fight against. The game moved to Jordan and ended in a 0–0 tie.
It was another diplomatic defeat for Rajoub after yet another heroic stand for the rights of Palestine. Another story in which the Palestinians showed that they would not allow themselves to be eternally portrayed as victims, but rather as a people trying to build success, pride, national identity, and a civil society. Soccer inspires all these possibilities. Yes, Palestinian soccer has suffered due to many crimes of the occupation, but it also has the power to create whatever is waiting beyond occupation. Here is a national team representing a state that does not exist, that has no airport or control over the movement of its players, that is never certain where it will play, which players will be allowed to attend and which won’t. But at the same time, it is a team participating in tournaments, achieving better and better results in them, positioning itself and its people as a national entity that exists on the world’s stage.
The Palestinian national team creates Palestinian identity and pride in another way: as an institution that unites Palestinians from all over the world. West Bank Palestinians with Gazan Palestinians, Palestinians living within Israel’s borders and carrying Israeli passports with second- and third-generation Palestinians who emigrated to different parts of the world. The unity is reflected in the backgrounds of the Palestinian soccer players: Ahmad Awad, who was born and grew up in Sweden, recently joined Palestine’s national team; Yashir Pinto is the latest recruit from Chile, a country that has created a pipeline of players of Palestinian descent to the league and the national team. (Famously, there is a team founded by Palestinian immigrants in the Chilean first league that features on its jerseys a map of Palestine in place of the number 1.) In the current team there are also six players who carry Israeli passports, among them Muhammed Darwish from Fureidis (who previously played ten years in the Israeli league), Ahmad Abu Nayeh from Sakhnin, and Shadi Shaaban from Acre (who played for the Israel national youth team). There was also the late Azmi Nasser, a native of Nazareth who coached the town’s team in the Israeli league before becoming the coach of the Palestinian national team.
Palestinians take great pride in their league. Salman Amar, a coach born in Beit Safafa, an Arab neighborhood of Jerusalem, is just one example. Amar, who holds Israeli citizenship, played most of his career as an iconic right back for the Israeli team Hapoel Jerusalem and later coached it. Then, earlier this year, he transferred leagues without even moving out of Jerusalem—when he accepted an offer to coach the Palestinian team Hilal al-Quds, he simply drove down to the Palestinian part of Jerusalem.
Hilal al-Quds, a club with a decorated history that includes winning the championship in 2012, was in the middle of a terrible season. Placed at the bottom of the table, far behind its rivals, it seemed destined for demotion. But under Amar’s guidance, the team turned the season around, emerging victorious in most of its remaining games, and avoiding relegation to the second division. Amar also led Hilal al-Quds to the Palestinian cup final. In a conversation in Beit Safafa, Amar spoke mainly about the incredible experience of working in the Palestinian league, characterizing it as going “back to my roots.” Even though he was delayed for hours every day in the Qalandiya checkpoint on his way to practices and games in the Faisal al-Husseini International Stadium in al-Ram (despite being a Jerusalem team, Hilal must play in the West Bank because some of its players are barred from entering Israeli-controlled East Jerusalem), his feeling was of a homecoming. Coaching in Arabic and traveling to players’ weddings in Jenin and Nablus reconnected him to life in the West Bank, and conversations with players charged the experience with emotion. “In the Israeli league the players speak about their girlfriends. Here you have players and staff from refugee camps. They speak of arrests of their brothers, of sleepless nights.”
Israel is trying to divide the Palestinians, geographically and historically. Gaza is divided from the West Bank. The Israeli Palestinians are divided from those in the occupied territories. Part of the Palestinian struggle is to blur those divisions. “Either we’re all Palestinians, or we aren’t,” says Amar. Like him, most Palestinians I talk to are puzzled when I ask if Israeli Palestinians are welcome in Palestine and not seen as collaborators with the enemy. They are, after all, still Palestinians, they tell me. This is why players with Israeli passports are welcomed into the Palestinian league and onto the national team. And this is why it is so meaningful that Salman Amar, an Israeli citizen and former Hapoel Jerusalem player, led his team in a Palestinian cup final. It demonstrates how futile Israel’s policy of division is; how it only strengthens Palestinians’ bonds and inspires them to cross borders, like the French citizens opting to play for Algeria over half a century ago.
The road to the end of the occupation is long and winding. We’ve been on it for fifty years now, and I’m not convinced it won’t require another fifty. But the occupation will end. And until that day, I suggest that anyone who wants to know where things are going follow Palestinian soccer. Using the power of the game, it is pulling the wagon, slowly, out of the mud.
(Translated from the Hebrew by the author)
Love in the Time of Qalandiya
; Taiye Selasi
At the edge of Ramallah, just up the road from the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Darwish Museum sits perched on a hill, overlooking the city of Jerusalem. The building itself is beautiful: small, modern, minimal, impeccably landscaped, its terraced garden a nod to the typical terrain of a Palestinian village. It is a lovely visual metaphor—the work of the Palestinian architect Jaafar Touqan, himself the son of a poet—and a fitting tribute to Mahmoud Darwish.
Palestine’s beloved national poet was born in the Galilee in 1941, seven years before the Israeli army invaded and razed his village. After fleeing the violence, his family returned in 1949 to what is now northern Israel. The poet spent his twenties in Haifa, then traveled abroad to study. When he joined the PLO at thirty-two, he was banned from reentering Israel. His celebrated literary career unfolded primarily in exile. When Darwish passed away at sixty-seven, the mayor of Ramallah decreed that the nation’s poet would be buried next to the Palace of Culture, a park and memorial erected in his name.
It is here, on the southwestern outskirts of Ramallah, with the sun setting over Jerusalem, that I begin an inquiry, quite unintended, into Palestinian-Israeli love.
I’ve come to Ramallah with a different aim: to explore the city’s nightlife—that is, to understand how young Palestinians, my peers, pursue pleasure in the midst of occupation. Zaher, one of my guides for the evening, meets me in the center, proposing that we swing by the museum en route to Orjuwan, a lounge nearby. Darwish’s grave sits atop a regal set of limestone steps, but Zaher’s favorite spot is the infinity pool tucked into one of the lower terraces. It is a narrow pool with a narrower platform—what appears to be a stone diving board—protruding to its center and surrounded by small lights. When Zaher and his friends were at university, he says, they would come to this pool in the dead of the night. In turn, each would walk to the end of the platform and speak (or shout) his mind. Shrouded in darkness and silvered by moonlight, they’d yell into the water, the black, the night—unburdening themselves with their faces unseen.