“For Palestinians, sport, especially football, remains a platform for cultural resistance. Every aspect of a Palestinian football match bears witness to this, from the names of the teams and the cheers of the fans, to the pictures embroidered on the shirts of the players and the names of the martyrs. Football in Palestine is a political act.”

(Ramzi Baroud, Palestinian author and writer for the Palestine Chronicle platform)

In 2017, FIFA decided not to vote to sanction, or even urge the Israel Football Association to stop sponsoring clubs based in illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank, even though in 2014 UEFA decided to ban Clubs in Crimea from playing in the Russian league after Russia took control of the region, this is of course other than preventing the International Federation of Russian Clubs and National Teams from participating in tournaments after the Russian war on Ukraine in 2022.

This is a good introduction to understanding the history of the global soccer system with the Palestinian cause, which is similar to the history of most international institutions in dealing with Palestine.

A history of disregard, double standards and legitimization of colonialism, as football played a role, even before the Nakba, in preparing the ground for stealing the history of the Palestinians by seizing Palestinian symbols and Zionizing them before controlling the land and destiny of the Palestinians.

And while the World Cup is being held these days and watched by millions around the world, this gives us an opportunity to restore a history that has not been shed much light.

It is the history of the Palestinian national team in the World Cup qualifiers, that team that was represented exclusively by the Jews, without the original Palestinian Arabs.

With the help of FIFA, the story of the robbery of the national team

The beginning of our story goes back to 1928, when the “Palestinian” Football Association was founded, and joined FIFA the following year immediately. But the irony is that that association was neither Palestinian nor Arab, but rather a union founded by Jewish immigrants and completely dominated by Jewish teams.

Just as the Israelis stole the country and its history after that completely, they worked hard at first to steal all their symbols, and football was not immune from this approach.

At first, it was not reasonable for the new federation to join FIFA while it represented Jews only in a country whose absolute majority were Arabs, and the Jews did not come to it until a few years ago, enjoying the hospitality they did not find on the European continent.

Hence, the alleged "Palestinian" federation was forced to symbolically involve the Arabs, but it quickly expelled them after its establishment.

And the documents of that period reveal that the Palestinians did not stand idly by in front of the Zionists theft of their country's national team, as they established the Palestinian (Arab) Sports Federation in 1931 and re-established it in 1944, but the problem they faced was the blatant bias of FIFA for the union that stole the Palestinian identity.

In the end, the "Palestinian" football team became exclusively represented by Jews, whose percentage at that time did not exceed a third of the country's population, before they converted the logo and language of the federation into Hebrew, and made the national anthem of the team the Zionist anthem "Hatikvah", whose words say: "As long as In the heart of our hearts, our hope has not yet been set.. a wandering Jewish soul, a thousand years old, and an eye looking at Zion, that we be a free nation in our country.

However, FIFA continued to recognize this Jewish federation as representing Palestine, under the pretext that they applied before the Arabs to join FIFA. Indeed, Palestinian teams are unable to play with their Arab counterparts due to the lack of recognition and the Zionist Federation not allowing them to do so.

In its letters to the Zionist Federation, FIFA emphasized its sovereignty and that foreign teams could not play against Arab clubs in Palestine without the permission of that federation.

At the level of the World Cup, the "Palestinian" Jewish national team participated in the 1934 and 1938 World Cup qualifiers, and the Egyptian national team played two matches against the Palestinian national team in the 1934 World Cup qualifiers, the first in Abbasiya and ended with seven goals in favor of the Egyptian national team, and the second in the "Hapoel" stadium in Palestine, It is the city that, after the official occupation, took the name "Tel Aviv", and the Egyptian national team won 4 goals to 1 at that time.

Although the team that the Egyptians played under the name of the Palestine national team was composed of Jews, the matter passed easily without attention. The story of the Jewish federation stealing the name of Palestine not only reflected a colonial reality, but also reflected the slow Arabs’ assimilation of the intentions and nature of Zionist movements in many cases.

Sport was simply the gateway to the Zionist movement to present Palestine as a Jewish land, and the Zionists began their attempts in this regard through amateur athletics, but the attempt failed because the International Federation saw that they did not represent the Arabs and the English in the country, and then the Zionists learned the lesson when they advanced By requesting recognition to FIFA, they included one Arab representative in their union, which was enough for the International Football Association to recognize the Jewish Federation as a representative of the Palestinian territories.

Faced with this early Zionist hijacking of Palestinian football, the Palestinians launched a relatively belated, but intense, sporting resistance effort.

By 1945, there were 25 clubs affiliated with the Real Palestinian Union, based in the Islamic Club in Jaffa, and this number rose to 60 clubs by 1947, despite the political abuse, arrests, and harassment practiced by the Zionist movement against Palestinian clubs in that period before the Nakba.

The federation also tried, through Egyptian mediation, to persuade FIFA to grant it recognition, or at least to intervene to impose an appropriate representation of Arabs in the federation, which was dominated by Jews.

The Secretary of the Arab Federation, "Abdul Rahman Al-Habab," tried to travel to Luxembourg to discuss the matter with FIFA, but his attendance was refused for reasons likely to be linked to pressure from the Zionist Federation.

The stated goals of the Real Palestinian Federation were coordination between the Arab clubs in Palestine and the establishment of sports relations between Palestine and the Arab countries, but the union expressing the indigenous people did not find recognition from FIFA, and despite that it continued to organize sporting events with the Arab teams that became more aware of the danger of Zionism in Palestine, and its contributions were important, albeit symbolically, at the historical level in the face of the Zionist Union's attempt to portray Palestine as a land devoid of Arabs.

It is important here to point out the nature of the names that some Palestinian factions chose in the 1940s for themselves, which were inspired by Islamic military history, such as "Khalid ibn al-Walid" and "Salah al-Din al-Ayyubi."

In a way, sport in Palestine was an expression of a new generation and its awareness of the issue of national independence and the need to take quick steps as opposed to older generations that were somewhat slow to respond to Zionist threats.

A rare picture of the Hebron team in 1924. (Communication sites)

In the end, although the Jewish Federation succeeded in stealing the name of the Palestinian national team in the 1934 and 1938 World Cup qualifiers and making it look like the expected Israeli national team, the active sports movement of the Palestinian Arabs, whether in correspondence with FIFA or correspondence with the Arab federations, left us an archive that refutes the narrative that the Zionists tried to He painted it by seizing the national team and showing it as if the Jewish immigrations came to a deserted land that gave it manifestations of civilization such as art and sports, as this archive shows that the indigenous people were present and expressed by every means their refusal to steal their story, but FIFA had another opinion.

The theft of the land after the theft of the ball.. The history of the Palestinian national team after the Nakba

After the Nakba, many Palestinian actors were aware of the importance of the struggle to recover their stolen symbols, just as their stolen homeland.

The Palestinian Federation continued to work and tried to request again in 1951 to join FIFA, but the International Federation, in collusion with the Israeli Federation, rejected the request again, this time under the pretext that the West Bank had no international legal status.

In the sixties, the Palestinian attempts continued, this time through the Gaza Strip, as their records with FIFA revealed the number of obstacles that the international football system placed in front of them, from promises to discuss the matter to requesting extensive statistics on the volume of playing the game in the Strip (which the Palestinians responded to).

In the end, the International Federation found itself forced to say explicitly that there is no state called Palestine, and therefore the request of the Palestinian Federation cannot be accepted. However, this did not prevent the Palestinian Federation from making two more attempts in 1978 and 1989, but FIFA continued to refuse to accept Palestine under the justification. Palestine has no international legal status.

Palestine was not accepted as a member of FIFA until after the Oslo Accords and the return of the Palestinian Authority to the country in 1994. The acceptance of Palestinian membership finally came in 1998 with recognition of the principle of diaspora separation.

Since then, Palestinian football has experienced many tragedies. In the 2012 war, Israel bombed the Palestine Stadium in Gaza, the building of the Palestinian Olympic Committee, the Football Association, the Yarmouk Stadium, Al-Shams Club, Al-Shuhada Club, Al-Nuseirat Club, Rafah Stadium, and other sports targets, in addition to the players Palestinian football, who were permanently obstructed in the return marches as a result of Israeli bullets, a targeting that indicates a clear awareness of the occupying power of the importance of obstructing the march of Palestinian sports.

However, despite all the obstacles imposed by the Israeli authorities to the renaissance of Palestinian football and sports in general so far, the results of the "Fedayeen" team are going from good to better, if we take into account the pressing social and economic conditions surrounding the team at all levels.

The national team qualified for the 2023 Asian Nations Championship for the third time in a row, after topping its group in the qualifying tournament for the tournament, while the dream of playing in the World Cup finals still flirts with the Palestinians, but it remains a deferred dream, just as all the dreams that the occupation destroyed for a while.

_______________________________________________

Sources

  • 1- UEFA bans Crimea teams from Russian leagues

  • 2- Palestinian FA wants a Crimea-style solution in dispute with Israel

  • 3- When FIFA Abandons Its Principles for the Satisfaction of Israel

  • 4- 30 Palestinian athletes were wounded by the occupation bullets during the return march

  • 5- Football in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict... a history of hatred, racism, and discrimination

  • 6- CONSTRUCTING NATIONAL IDENTITY: THE MUSCULAR JEW VS THE PALESTINIAN UNDERDOG

  • 7- Sports and Aspirations: Football in Palestine, 1900-1948

  • 8- Palestine in the 1934 World Cup

  • 9- Did the Palestinian national team participate in the 1934 World Cup qualifiers?

  • 10- Do FIFA and Its President Infantino Publicly Declare Their Absolute Complicity with Israel?

  • 11- Hypocrisy and Double Standards: The FIFA Message to Palestine, the World