[Peace-discuss] Arab football team makes history for Israel

[David Green]

Arab football team makes history for Israel

By Jonathan Cook in Sakhnin 
Monday 16 August 2004

A mere 2000 fans turned out for the match that Sakhnin
won

A little-known team is making football history as the
qualifying rounds
of the UEFA Cup begin this month. It is the first Arab
team to compete
in a European championship and the first Arab squad to
represent Israel
in an international tournament.

The team, called Bnei Sakhnin, are carrying aloft the
hopes of the
Jewish state.

But as Sakhnin romped home to a 3-0 victory in their
first match,
against the Albanian side Partizani Tirana, in a
sultry Tel Aviv 
stadium
last week, few Israelis were cheering them on. 

A mere 2,000 fans turned out at the national stadium
in Ramat Gan.

Most of Sakhnin's 22,000 residents were loath to leave
the relative
safety of the country's northern Galilee region and
venture into Tel
Aviv, where there is a general mood of hostility
towards Arabs, for the
early stages of the competition.

And Israeli Jews appeared equally reluctant to wave
the Star of David
flag in support of an Arab team.

Coexistence?

However, since Sakhnin earned their place in the UEFA
competition by
winning the State Cup in May against a Haifa side, the
Israeli media 
has
been arguing that the victory reflects a new
atmosphere of coexistence
between the country's Jewish majority and its one
million Arab 
citizens.

After last week's match, reporters crowded around the
club's Jewish
coach as he announced: "This team is making history
and I want to be a
part of it, that's why I came [to Sakhnin]."

In fact, relations between Jews and Arabs have rarely
been worse. The
first annual report by the Haifa-based Mossawa Centre
on racism against
Arab citizens was published last week and documented
hundreds of
instances of discrimination, racially motivated
violence and hate 
speech
by Jews.

It noted that 15 unarmed Arab citizens have been
killed in mysterious
circumstances by the security forces in the past four
years, since the
killing of 13 Arab citizens at the start of the
intifada. It also cited
10 recently passed racist laws and 15 examples of
anti-Arab incitement
from Jewish public figures.

Mossawa's director Jafar Farah observed: "This should
be a signal that
if we don't want to have civil confrontation - if not
war - between
[Jews and Arabs], we have to act."

Racist chants

One of the disturbing trends noted by Mossawa are
racist chants at
football matches, particularly since Sakhnin and
another Arab squad,
Nazareth, qualified for the premier division last
season.

In June the first football fan was convicted of
shouting "Death to the
Arabs" at a match in Jerusalem.


"This is the biggest problem of Sakhnin. Jewish
companies don't sponsor
Sakhnin. No one from the Jewish business community
said: 'Let's take
Sakhnin and make it a symbol for peace, for living
together'"

sports writer Yoav Goren, 
Haaretz newspaper 

Yosef Cohen, aged 33 and a supporter of Jerusalem
Beitar, told police
after his arrest: "I said 'Death to the Arabs' because
that's what I
felt at the time. There was nothing to it, just like
you shout 'Go
Beitar' you shout 'Death to the Arabs'. There's no
contradiction 
between
the two."

Beitar supporters have a notorious reputation for
anti-Arab racism and
prosecutors in the city have promised to crack down.
Six further
prosecutions are in the pipeline.

Sakhnin's recent success has outraged Beitar fans.
They recently posted
an advertisement on the internet announcing "The death
of Israeli
football".

Arab support

In contrast, Sakhnin's exploits have attracted the
attention of 
football
fans in the Arab world, a break with the traditional
ostracism of
Israel's Palestinian citizens by other Arab nations,
which tend to
assume that they have collaborated with the Jewish
state.

Several Gulf states are reported to have offered
funding to Sakhnin, 
the
poorest club in the Israeli premier division.

Certainly, Sakhnin needs all the help they can get.
The only major team
without a stadium, Sakhnin have had to use a scrap of
cleared land 
among
olive groves for training.

No funding

Their municipality, like most other Arab councils, is
deep in the red
after decades of underfunding from the central
government. 

Most workers have not been paid for many months and
the government has
put Sakhnin on a list of eight councils that may be
disbanded.


Arab Israeli fans cheer their team
on at the stadium in Ramat Gan

But worst of all for the club is the fact that despite
their recent
string of successes no Israeli companies want to
sponsor them. 

"This is the biggest problem of Sakhnin," said Yoav
Goren, a sports
writer for the daily Haaretz newspaper. "Jewish
companies don't sponsor
Sakhnin. No one from the Jewish business community
said: 'Let's take
Sakhnin and make it a symbol for peace, for living
together'."

Historical animosity

The antipathy towards Sakhnin from Israeli Jews has
historical roots. 
In
1976 Sakhnin won lasting notoriety when security
forces quelled 
protests
from residents opposed to a wave of land confiscations
that were
stripping the town of its last reserves. 

In the clashes, six unarmed demonstrators were shot
dead by police.

Across much of the Middle East the Sakhnin killings
are commemorated
each 30 March as Land Day.

In Jewish eyes, however, the town was forever branded
a fifth column, 
or
an enemy sympathiser.

Shrinking land

Today, overcrowded Sakhnin is surrounded on all sides
by a military
base, an industrial estate and a string of luxury
hilltop Jewish
communities, which have been given control of the
town's lands.

Despite a population explosion in Sakhnin over the
last few decades, 
the
town's land holdings have shrunk from 9000 hectares to
1000.

The Misgav regional council, which represents some 30
small Jewish
communities surrounding Sakhnin, has a combined
population of 18,000 -
4,000 fewer inhabitants than Sakhnin - but controls
nearly 20,000
hectares.


"...where will Sakhnin find the land to build a
stadium when we haven't
the space for homes, let alone badly needed public
facilities such as
youth centres, recreation areas and proper schools?"

Engineer Kassem Abu Riya,
Sakhnin resident

"Once Sakhnin was one of the most important farming
communities in the
region, and now we don't have room even for gardens,
pavements or new
homes," said Ali Zbeidat, whose own home like many
others in Sakhnin is
under threat of demolition.

He says he was forced to build illegally on his
father's ancient olive
groves after his family used up their land in Sakhnin.
The Misgav
council, which has jurisdiction over the family's
olive groves, refused
him a construction permit.

When 20 plots of land were recently offered for young
families to build
a home in Sakhnin, more than 500 families applied.

Stadium woes

But it is not only private citizens who are suffering.
The local
municipality has been battling Misgav officials for
several years to
free up enough land to build a football stadium.

Misgav had finally agreed to release 40 hectares to
the north of
Sakhnin, but last month the courts scotched the plan
by awarding the
land to a Jewish settlement called Ashbal, set up by a
paramilitary
group of young settlers.

At least UEFA spared Israeli blushes by declaring that
all matches in
Israel would be played in Tel Aviv to ensure visiting
teams' safety.

Nonetheless, apparently worried by bad publicity,
Prime Minister  Ariel
Sharon stepped in to pledge $2 million for a stadium.

The money is all very well, says Sakhnin engineer
Kassem Abu Riya. "But
where will Sakhnin find the land to build a stadium
when we haven't the
space for homes, let alone badly needed public
facilities such as youth
centres, recreation areas and proper schools?"




		
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - 50x more storage than other providers!
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail