Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, June 2004, pages 50-51

Special Report

The Palestinian National Soccer Team—on Track to Qualify for the 2006 World Cup

By Braden Ruddy

The Palestinian soccer team jogs during a March 30 training session in Doha in preparation for the next day’s 2006 FIFA World Cup qualifying match against Iraqi. The teams tied 1-1 (AFP photo/Karim Jaafar).

“WE WANT to qualify for the World Cup to show we are a living people and have legal rights so we can build our independent state.” —Made Adel Raceme, owner of Ramallah aluminum shop

Despite steadily worsening political conditions, Palestinian national team Coach Alfred Riedl and his committed group of diverse soccer players from the occupied territories and the vast Palestinian diaspora have given the Palestinian people reason to celebrate in recent weeks. Palestine’s 1-1 draw against Iraq on March 31 has put the team in first place in Asian Group 2 of the 2006 World Cup qualifiers.

Coach Riedl has embarked on a football “mission” in assembling a talented and hard-working team that has achieved success on a variety of levels—primarily by inspiring a sense of accomplishment and national pride that has been largely overshadowed by the political strife. “Our team’s mission is to bring the message to the world that the Palestinians are a peaceful people, not terrorists—as they are portrayed in the European and American media,” says Coach Riedl. “We are achieving this through football; sport in general can connect people.”

In 1994 the Palestinian national soccer team was accredited back into FIFA, soccer’s international governing body. The team’s first-place standing in its World Cup 2006 qualifying group has been perhaps the most positive story to emerge from the Middle East in recent weeks. Coach Riedl described the domestic media attention the team received after its resounding 8-0 defeat of Taiwan on Feb. 18 as historically unprecedented. “Palestinian television, during our match against Taiwan, replayed each of our eight goals as ‘breaking news’ segments,” the coach recalled. “This was the first time in history that any positive story interrupted regular programming.”

If the Palestinians continue on this victorious path—one that is a direct result of their unflinching pride and work ethic—it could be one of the most interesting ironies in modern sport. While their people struggle to be recognized politically, economically, legally and diplomatically, there is a very good chance that the Palestinian national soccer team could be one of the 32 represented countries in Germany 2006. To achieve this goal Palestine would have to win Asian Group 2, then place in the top three of the Asian second round qualifying stage. While this may still seem like a distant hope, as Palestine’s Roberto Besche stated after his equalizing goal against Iraq, “Morale was running high—long may it continue.”

	Palestine’s Edgardo Montero (r) fights for the ball against Iraq’s Imad Mohammad (AFP photo/Karim Jaafar).

Day by day, the political situation in the occupied territories seems to get progressively worse. In the last few weeks Palestinians have witnessed the extra-judicial assassination of Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, followed by the April 17 execution of Yassin’s successor, Dr. Abdel Aziz Rantisi. The outpouring of grief and anger and the assurance of continued violence in response to these targeted public executions is compounded by a growing humanitarian disaster, as UNRWA has been forced to cut off food and economic supplies to the Gaza Strip. Most recently, the Sharon-Bush embrace and subsequent Likud endorsement of Israeli “disengagement” from the West Bank has effectively pre-empted future peace negotiations.

In the face of these provocative new assaults on the Palestinian people, their homes, olive orchards—and, indeed, their collective psychology—the success of the national soccer team is manna from heaven, offering an escape from the daily horrors of checkpoints, curfews, and constant dehumanization.

Getting the team together for training, and to and from matches, is itself a logistical challenge. Riedl holds training camp in Ismailia, Egypt, only about 100 kilometers from Gaza. Because of Israeli curfews, closures, and its labyrinth of checkpoints, however, travel for the Gaza-based players takes hours longer than for those based farther away, and often is restricted altogether. For those players based in the West Bank, Israel’s serpentine apartheid wall means they must take a bus to Amman, then fly to Cairo to meet up with their locally based teammates. Another group of players travels independently from Lebanon, Syria and Greece.

The other core group of players hails from South America—four from Chile, where most play for the historic club Palestino, founded in 1920 to represent the more than 100,000 Palestinians living in Santiago. Argentinian-born midfielder Pablo Abdala believes that, rather than creating linguistic confusion, this unique mix of Spanish- and Arabic-speaking players—conversing in English and coached by a Austrian whose native language is German—only adds to the uniqueness of the resilient Palestinian identity that seems to define this team and the players’ common goal of taking Palestine to the largest stage in the soccer world. “Out on the pitch, though, the language is universal,” Abdala says, “and if the results are anything to go by, we seem to be communicating just fine.”

An exciting groundbreaking documentary project entitled “Futbol Palestina 2006” also is in the works. For the past year, Chilean journalist Nelson Soza and Chilean filmmaker Marcelo Piña, both residing in Chicago, have been chronicling the day-by-day hardships and obstacles the team has faced—ranging from travel visas and work permit restrictions to racial profiling and economic hardship. Yet the members of Palestine’s multicultural and multireligious soccer team continue to work tirelessly—so that one day they may see their flag flown at stadiums, hear their national anthem, and wear the Palestinian flag on their jerseys, bringing happiness to their countrymen living under occupation as well as in the diaspora. According to Soza and Piña, “‘Futbol Palestina 2006’ will be told in a global language millions can understand: the game of soccer. Through a global game, a potential audience of millions will experience Palestine anew, its people and their needs.”

With no home field and a budget that is modest even by the standards of some of the most impoverished Asian national teams, the Palestinian team plays all its “home” games in Doha, Qatar, and struggles to put together enough funds for travel to away games—and even for team uniforms. An initial investment by Saudi King Faisal gave the Palestine Football Association (PFA) a new lease on life. Today, with most of PFA’s funding having dried up as a result of the current intifada, the team is largely financed by a few Kuwaiti businessmen. Looking back, one might conclude that Palestine’s re-inclusion into FIFA competitions was perhaps the Oslo accords’ only tangible benefit.

It is hard to overstate the importance of even being able to compete for the chance to play in soccer’s World Cup, by far the world’s largest and most revered sporting event. While much of the world denies the existence of the Palestinians or the history of their struggle, being recognized and succeeding in the world’s most popular sport has brought joy to many who have little else to hope for. For midfielder Abdala, the chance to represent his Palestinian roots on the soccer field has become both his own meaningful expression of cultural identity and a source of inspiration for the countless Palestinian children playing soccer in the street, trying to emulate the skills of their favorite players. “I was enormously proud the first time I put on the national team shirt,” Abdala said. “I wanted to defend it against all suffering.”

Unfortunately, suffering is a daily reality for this team. Trying to help his players with the pain associated with having “family and friends killed regularly” is also part of Coach Riedl’s job, and of the larger personal commitment he now has to the team. Following Israel’s assassination of Sheikh Yassin, for example, some players were unable to train, so Riedl instead used team time for discussion and support. “Coaching Palestine is the most emotional and interesting job I will ever have,” Riedl says. “The Palestinians are a very willing and very positive people in a very negative world. My players are the heroes; they play for their parents and their country—despite being away for up to nine weeks at a time from their wives and children, many of whom are in constant danger.”

The team’s next match is on June 19, against Uzbekistan, the remaining team in the Asian World Cup’s qualifying Group 2. Until then Palestine’s national team sits comfortably in first place. Whether it competes in Germany two years from now or not, however, it will continue to hold first place in the hearts of Palestinians everywhere.

Braden Ruddy, a recent graduate of Columbia University, is a freelance writer living in New York City. He writes regularly on politics in the Middle East, Africa, and the Caribbean, and also covers soccer, Reggae, and Hip Hop music for The Harlem Times.