Official welcome and accusations of normalization .. Saudi Arabia faces Palestine in Ramallah

Amid widespread criticism, the Palestinian and Saudi teams will meet on Tuesday in a historic match for the first time in the central city of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, in the double qualifiers for the World Cup in Qatar 2022 and Asian Cup 2023.

While the Palestinian leadership welcomed the "historic" visit, the factions and bodies opposed the establishment of the game, stressing that it is a form of normalization with the Israeli occupation.

Arab football federations often refuse to play in the West Bank because entry requires an Israeli visa, a move usually pursued by accusations of normalization.

The Saudi Federation said in an official statement that it agreed to play the first team match in the Asian qualifiers for the 2022 World Cup and the 2023 Asian Cup against its Palestinian counterpart on October 15 at the Martyr Faisal Husseini Stadium in Ramallah, Palestine, "in response to the request of the brothers in the Federation Palestinian Authority. "

Abdul Aziz Al-Faisal, chairman of the General Authority for Sports in Saudi Arabia, said the decision comes "to ensure that the Palestinian team is not deprived of playing the game at home and among its fans like other countries."

The Saudi team arrived on Sunday morning in the Palestinian city of Ramallah to play the match against his Palestinian counterpart, and received a popular and official reception.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas also met with President of the Saudi Football Federation Yasser Al-Mishal in Ramallah, expressing "Palestinian pride and happiness for this visit, which reflects the deep historical relationship between the two countries."

"Your country has honored Palestine," Abbas told the Saudi team. "Our relations with the kingdom are historic since the beginning of the Palestinian cause."

Jibril Rajoub, president of the Palestinian Football Federation, said in a statement last week that the visit "is of great interest to the political leadership, the Palestinian sports movement in all its spectrums, and all our people."

The Saudi team has refused to play in Palestine, to the point of threatening to withdraw, most recently in the qualifiers for Russia 2018, before moving its place to Jordan.

However, Omar al-Jaafari, director of the media department of the Palestinian Union, told the Anatolia news agency that the Saudi players would not be subjected to any Israeli inspection procedures while crossing to the West Bank.

"The Saudi team will leave the Jordanian Queen Alia airport directly towards Ramallah (in the center of the West Bank), in two closed buses, without going through any Israeli checkpoints," he added.

"The Saudi players will take the two buses from the airport, in the presence of a FIFA delegate, to make sure that all measures are taken to the players, before the buses start."

He said the Jordanian side proposed to transport the Saudi team via two planes, but in the end the two buses were agreed.

Jaafari said that the visit of the Saudi team will contribute to "breaking many sports barriers that were closed to the Palestinians, and constitute an incentive for other teams to play on the land of Palestine." He pointed out that the visit and play of any team from outside Palestine is "supportive of the right acquired in the home stadium and preserve it."

Rejectionist positions
In contrast, several Palestinian factions, including Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, refused to visit the Saudi team and considered it a kind of normalization with Israel.

Hamas demanded "a halt to normalization and the establishment of relations with the Israeli occupation." In a statement, she called on "the Arab brothers not to undertake such visits that would gain the Israeli occupation legitimacy."

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (left) and the second largest faction in the PLO expressed "rejection of normalization through the sports gate." She called in a statement "the Palestinian and Arab masses to express their popular rejection of attempts to enter normalization with the Zionist entity through the gateway to organize a meeting between the Saudi and Palestinian team .. To market and polish Saudi policies in the region, and open the door to normalization with the Zionist entity."

Islamic Jihad also refused to "visit the Saudi team because it would pass through the Israeli checkpoints and contribute to normalization with the Israeli occupation."

For its part, the Palestinian popular campaign against normalization expressed its rejection of the visit, regardless of the way it was arranged, and distancing the players from the Israeli checkpoints, as it contradicts the historical Arab position.

The campaign activist, Hadeel Shatara, told Anatolia that the Arab countries for 50 years remained committed to their refusal to normalize with Israel, and all visits of an official nature contradict this historical position.

"No one can enter the West Bank unless they are subjected to Israeli inspection and control and have to deal with Israeli crossing staff," she said.

She refused to separate the issue of sport and get it out of the context of normalization, saying that this is an attempt to justify it, showing that the Palestinian sport has full freedom, and the ability to move and develop without any obstacles.

"Rather, it is to expose Israeli policies towards sport and Palestinian players, and to deny them the exercise of various sports activities, especially preventing the players in Gaza from moving to the West Bank or Jerusalem."

For its part, the International Boycott Movement (BDS), an international movement, said that "the visit of the Saudi team does not contradict the anti-normalization standards unanimously approved by the first national conference of the movement in 2007, provided that during these visits there is no relationship with the occupying power or its institutions. ".

However, "the arrival of the Saudi team, which officially represents the Kingdom to occupied Palestine, can only be read in the context of the serious official normalization of the Saudi regime with Israel, and the growing security relations between them."

The movement pointed out that "the Saudi Football Federation had refused in 2015 to play with his Palestinian counterpart in the occupied Palestinian territory, for fear of suspicion of normalization."

"Why has his attitude changed now and he has agreed to play this year in the double qualifiers for the 2022 World Cup and the 2023 Asian Cup?"

Unlike Jordan and Egypt, Arab states do not have formal diplomatic relations with Israel.

In August, the Israeli Foreign Ministry said it aimed to "publicly normalize with the Gulf states, which do not have official relations."

Israeli Prime Minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu has often spoken in recent years of a close rapprochement with Arab states, without naming them.