Palestine battling for the people back home
AS they solemnly dissected what Mo Salah’s injury would mean for Liverpool’s title bid on Sky Sports News last Thursday (conveniently ignoring what the image of him crumpled on the turf in the Felix Houphouet Boigny Stadium would mean for Egypt’s dreams of continental glory), Al Jazeera were reporting from the lesser-spotted Asian Cup.
And this was much more significant. It wasn’t about Mohammed Salah, but rather Mohammed Saleh, a defender who plays his club football in Malaysia and was also representing his country on the same day that his almost namesake hit the turf and caused Jurgen Klopp to kick a hole in the nearest television set.
Unless you have a subscription to the triller.tv streaming service — which also brings you delights like New Japan Pro Wrestling and bare-knuckle fighting — you won’t have seen much of the Asian Cup in this part of the world. And that’s a shame, because we won’t see a more remarkable or resilient group of sports people than Saleh and his teammates this year.
‘They are showing their strength and they are showing their resilience, not just on the pitch but off the pitch as well and it is important for us to show our support to them,’ one fan told Al Jazeera prior to Palestine’s 1-1 draw with United Arab Emirates, a result that keeps their hopes of reaching the knock-out stages very much alive. To get out of the group, they will need to beat Hong Kong tomorrow.
How are they doing this? As the world watches Gaza being razed to the ground on TV, how are a group of footballers finding the inner strength and courage to represent their country? Take Saleh. The day before they played their opening match against Iran in Doha, the defender had been informed that his uncle, aunt and their children had been killed in the conflict, forgotten statistics to add to the 25,000 victims — including 10,000 children — since the Israeli bombardment began.
Saleh also went into the Iran match not having heard from his family who had been homeless in Gaza at the time. ‘They are living in a tent on open land… We play football for them, for Gaza and for our cause,’ the defender told France 24 after the 4-1 loss to Iran.
Only last week, Hani Al-Masdar, the 42-year-old coach of the Palestine Olympic soccer team, died in an Israeli airstrike, one of 67 football personalities killed in the past 100 days. One prominent player, 23-year-old Ahmed Daraghmeh, who was the top scorer for Palestine Premier League club, Thaqafi Tulkarem, was shot and killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank. Such has been the horror inflicted on Palestinian athletes – more than 90 have been killed – that there have been calls for Israel to be suspended from the International Olympic Committee.
Groups such as Irish Sports for Palestine — who organised a protest at the National Basketball Arena yesterday as Ireland women are due to play Israel in a EuroBasket qualifier next month — have stepped up their campaign to get Israel excluded from international sport while the Dublin ladies footballers must be commended for their stand on Saturday when they used their profile to call for a ceasefire.
But, perhaps, an even more defiant form of protest would be the success of the Palestine football team who, for so long, have been a symbol of a nation unable to express themselves in any other way.
Football matters in Palestine, as it does in much of the Middle East. They have had a Football Association for almost 100 years, making it one of the most established sports bodies in this part of the world.
Indeed, one of the better moves made by the rapacious Sepp Blatter, during his corrupt governorship of the game, was to admit Palestine to FIFA in 1998, It gave them a place at the biggest sporting family table in the world at a time when it was being shunned by many other institutions.
In his buffoonish way, Blatter actually suggested, on more than one occasion, that with the power of football he could solve the intractable Middle East problem and heal historical wounds that are centuries old. Right up to the end of his tenure, he was proposing a peace match between Israel and Palestine — but it always fell on deaf ears.
Rather than being an instrument for peace, the game has been used to deepen the divide and allow hatred to fester. Only a few years ago, the Palestine Football Association was left with no option but to cancel its national cup final between Khadamat Rafah, from Gaza, and FC Balata, who are located in the West Bank. The reason? Israel had denied travel permits to 31 of the 35 players from the Gaza club, using the opaque phrase ‘security concerns’ that it always utilises whenever it commits cruel acts such as this.
Using sport as a political tool to deny two teams the opportunity to contest a national championship game is about as ruthless and callous as one can imagine. But they got away with it.
Football stadiums have been flattened in Gaza in the past 106 days, along with hospitals and universities, while Yarmouk Stadium, the most famous football ground in the strip, has been turned into a makeshift internment camp by IDF troops.
The fact that Palestine are in Qatar is testament to the human spirit. Players and officials did discuss whether they should compete on a global stage while the people of Gaza are enduring such suffering — up to 85 per cent of the 2 million people who are crammed into that slender strip of land have been displaced since Israel launched its disproportionate response to the barbaric attack by Hamas that killed 1,200 people on October 7.
However, the players are determined to honour the people of Gaza by qualifying for the knockout stages.
‘For us, the message we are here to delver through football is to qualify for the second round because Palestine and its people want to live,’ said midfielder Oday Kharoub.
‘Our hearts are with them and we can only pray for them. We can make them happy, even if it’s just for a little bit, by qualifying for the next round. This is our ambition.’
Palestine’s prospects of beating Hong Kong and making the next round will increase if Ataa Jaber is fully fit. The talented midfielder, recovering from injury, came off the bench in the second half of the 1-1 draw with the UAE, but his presence in Qatar is not without its controversy.
Jaber, who plays for Neftci Baku in Azerbaijan, is an Israeli-Arab and a former captain of the Israel Under 21 team who switched nationality a couple of years ago in response to the continued repression of the Palestinian people. The move didn’t go down well with his former club, MS Ashdod calling Jaber ‘a traitor’ while former Chelsea defender Tai Ben Haim said that his citizenship should be revoked. Other former teammates have charmingly told Jaber that the IDF forces were on the way to him.
This is the sort of toxicity around the beautiful game in this part of the world, just one more aspect of an ugly and seemingly intractable conflict.
But maybe, just maybe, tomorrow’s game against Hong Kong, can give the Palestinian people a rare moment of joy amid the horror being inflicted on them.