Palestine, the team that plays despite the bombs, the checkpoints and exile

Barcelona"Playing for the Palestinian national team was an adventure," says Roberto. Tito Bishara (Santiago, Chile, 1981), a player who wore that jersey. Fifteen years ago, Palestine began recruiting professional footballers who were sons or grandsons of Palestinians to improve their level, and Bishara signed up. His ancestors were Christian Palestinians from the West Bank who had emigrated to Chile, a country with a significant Palestinian community and a powerful football club, Deportivo Palestino. "I was warned it would be difficult. When you landed in Tel Aviv and the Israeli soldiers saw you were there to play for Palestine, they made your life impossible. They controlled everything, made you undress in a small room, wasted your time... Once, when I returned, they brought me a photo with the president of Palestine for no other reason than to harm me," he recalls.

The Palestinian national team has arrived in Barcelona to face Catalonia as part of a tour that has taken them to the Basque Country, where they lost 3-0 on Saturday before more than 50,000 people in a day of protest. Palestine had never played against European opponents before. These matches have a strong propaganda component – nothing new – just as the Basque national team did during the Spanish Civil War or the Algerian National Liberation Front team in the late 1950s. Palestinians have also used football to defend their cause, playing friendlies for decades when they lacked an official team. However, in 1998, Palestine was admitted as an official federation and made its official debut with a friendly loss against Lebanon, which they celebrated as a victory. The creation of the Palestinian National Authority in 1994, thanks to the Oslo Accords, opened the door to the official recognition of Palestinian sport, both at the Olympic level and in the case of football. And Palestine has already qualified for the final stages of the Asian Cup. This year they went further than ever before in the qualifiers to try and reach the World Cup, although they were eliminated after a controversial penalty against Oman in the last minute of the match, which denied them a place in the final round. A good performance, given that they always play abroad, as security reasons prevented them from playing in Palestine.

Two leagues

Before becoming official, the Palestinian national team played friendly matches. But in the 1970s, much of the Palestinian football effort was focused on competing in Israel, and international pressure led to the Israeli Football Association's expulsion from the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) following a vote proposed by Kuwait. Consequently, Israel ended up playing in European leagues. This confederation finally accepted Palestine in 1998, during those 1990s when peace seemed possible. It was then that the national team and local tournaments were organized. The dream was a unified league, but two separate leagues were chosen instead: one in the West Bank and one in Gaza, since communication between the two territories was very complicated, requiring travel through Israel. These problems also affected players like Mohammed Saleh from Gaza. "More than once, the national team called you up, and you couldn't go because Israel wouldn't let you reach the West Bank; they stopped you at checkpoints and wouldn't let you through..." he explained. In the qualifiers for the 2010 World Cup, for example, Israeli authorities prevented the players of the Gaza national team—then almost 50% of the squad—from leaving the territory, causing Palestine to forfeit an official match in Singapore. "In the early years, we always had to play abroad for security reasons and because we didn't have a decent stadium. We were able to inaugurate one in 2011, thanks to FIFA funding. That day was a huge celebration," recalls Bishara, who remembers that 1-1 draw between Palestine and Afghanistan before more than 1,000 fans. Of the squad that will play in Barcelona, ​​only two players play in the West Bank league. The Gaza league has not existed for years due to the war. According to the Palestinian Football Federation, almost all of Gaza's sports facilities have been destroyed by Israel. Most have signed with foreign clubs or are children of the diaspora, like Yaser Hamed, whose father is Palestinian and mother Basque, and who was born near Bilbao. Hamed has also explained the difficulties he faces when he wants to go to Palestine and has to land in Tel Aviv, because Palestine doesn't have an airport. Lately, the Federation has avoided these problems by sending the players directly to Jordan, since they aren't allowed to play home games there either.

Every player has their own story. Some, like Mohammed Saleh, have lost family members in Gaza. Others walk a tightrope in a very complicated situation, like Ataa Jaber, an Israeli citizen who played for the Israeli youth national team. Jaber is part of the Arab-Israeli community and chose to play for Palestine, which has led to insults and calls for his passport to be revoked; a similar case to that of Ahmed Taha, a Palestinian international who plays in the Israeli league for FC Kafr Qasim, in a predominantly Arab city within Israel. Never before had a professional Israeli player represented the Palestinian national team, nor had any player provoked attacks from the Israeli Minister of Sports and Culture, Miki Zohar: "A footballer who plays in a league in the State of Israel can represent an entity that does not recognize its right to exist," he complained. As always, football remains political.

Nothing new, really. Football arrived in the Middle East shortly before the First World War when the Ottoman Empire controlled the territory, but it wasn't seriously organized until the British took control of Palestine at the end of the conflict. The British Empire allowed the territories it controlled to have an official football team, so in 1928 the first Palestinian national team was formed, intended to unite the entire population under the British flag. That first team played in the qualifiers for the 1934 and 1938 World Cups, suffering defeats each time, and fielding only Jewish players. Indeed, in the 1920s and 30s, local football already reflected the tension between the different communities. Only one Arab attended the federation's founding meeting. The rest were Jews, better organized, as they were usually people from Eastern Europe who had emigrated and had already played football in their home countries. The Palestinian Federation's directors would always be Jewish, imposing Hebrew as the official language, which resulted in the marginalization of the Palestinians, who would eventually create their own federation without official recognition in the 1930s. Football, which often serves to unite, here only served to further divide.