Huddled under a makeshift tent, Hani and his friends sat glued to the screen of a laptop. Wrapped in their winter jackets, the six football fans ardently followed the decisive game between their national team and Hong Kong in Doha on Monday, Jan.22.
It was a must-watch for any real Palestinian football fan. If the team secured a win, they’d get their first-ever ticket to the AFC Asian Cup Round of 16.
“The connection was pretty good compared with the two previous games,” reported Hani Aburezeq on his social media. Aburezeq has been documenting his daily life in Gaza amid the Israeli bombardment.
He was supposed to travel to Qatar to cover the games live, as he did last year during the World Cup. Instead, he finds himself among the nearly two million displaced persons who had to flee to the south of the enclave.
“Thank God we weren’t bombed in Khan Younis that evening,” Aburezeq added. “During the national team games, we can forget about everything that’s going on here.”
‘Our only escape’
Accepted into FIFA in 1998 and the Asian Football Confederation (AFC), the Palestinian Football Association (PFA) is not to be confused with its predecessor, the Mandatory Palestine Football Federation which was founded in 1929.
It was under the latter’s aegis that the first Palestinian national team made it to the FIFA World Cup in 1934 and 1938. But in 1948, this entity was taken over by Israel and renamed the Israel Football Association (IFA), which has been a member of the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) since 1991.
Hence, Palestinian football was forced to set up a new association. After several decades of negotiations, it moved in the 1990s to East Jerusalem, from which it coordinated the West Bank Premier League and the Gaza Strip Premier League.
Sami Abul Hussein, general secretary of the PFA’s Gaza branch, is in charge of the latter. On Jan. 22, he was glued to his smartphone, watching Makram Daboub’ team win 3-0. It was the fallback solution that he did not have the time to get used to, particularly since his house was targeted at the start of the war.
“This victory made us happy and proud,” Hussein said. “Missing this game was out of the question for us. Sport is the only escape we have left in Palestine.”
The deep attachment that football fans in Gaza have for their national team is particularly evident in the mention of these two names: Mohammad Saleh from Gaza City (not the Egyptian star playing with Liverpool) and Mahmoud Wadi from Khan Younis. Both players were able to join the squad that flew to Qatar because they happened to be outside the enclave on Oct. 7, since they both play in the Egyptian league.
Ibrahim Abuimeir, Khaled Nabrisi and Ahmad Kullab were not so lucky. Although they were initially on the list of players that would take part in the competition, they had to give up their places since it was impossible to obtain a pass from the Israeli authorities amid the war.
“They are alive, at least I hope so, as I have not received any news to the contrary,” Susan Shalabi, vice-president of the PFA, told L’Orient-Le Jour.
Tasked with the heavy burden of registering the names of the dead among the players on the Gaza and West Bank teams, she refused to consider the countless “missing” players that the PFA knows nothing about to be dead.
“It’s very difficult to get accurate information and to communicate with our colleagues on the ground because of the communication breakdowns, especially since our offices were destroyed,” she added.
‘Conflicting feelings’
These long periods without news are now part of Wadi’s and Saleh’s daily life. The latter could not hold back his tears after the final whistle was blown, announcing the first-ever victory of the ‘Lions of Canaan,’ (another nickname of the Palestinian national team) in the Asian Cup which they are taking part in for the third time, after having participated in 2015 and 2019.
“There were a lot of conflicting feelings in our heads after this victory,” Wadi told L’Orient-Le Jour.
“There was pain because we hadn’t known for several days whether our loved ones were well or not. But there was also joy, because we managed to put a smile on the faces of those suffering on our land, even if it was only for a few minutes,” he said.
While he and his teammates aim to fly the colors of their flag high, it is often difficult to turn a blind eye to the war. “Against Hong Kong, I sometimes found it hard to concentrate fully on the game,” said Wadi, who, like his teammate, lost many cousins and friends in the war.
“When the game stopped, I couldn’t stop thinking about my family, wondering whether they were watching us on TV or not,” said Wadi, who plays with Pyramids Football Club, a club in Cairo.
Strongly supported by the rest of the team and the coaching staff, the two Gazans traveled directly from Egypt to the team’s training camp in Jordan in early November.
In contrast, their teammates in the West Bank and East Jerusalem had to patiently make their way through the King Hussein Bridge at the border crossing with Jordan, the only possible exit.
With land borders blocked, it was not until the Jordanian authorities intervened that 16 of the 26 team's players, who were called up by Daboub, the team's Tunisian coach, could finally travel to Amman.
“This is far from the first time that our preparations have been chaotic,” said Wadi. “Every time we need to gather, we never know if the whole team will be able to make it, because even before the war, no one could ever be sure that they would obtain permission to enter or leave the territory.”
A study carried out by Visualizing Palestine, a Canada-based data collection institute founded by Palestinians, noted that no fewer than 56 Palestinian footballers have reportedly fallen victim to human rights violations between 2007 and 2018. Out of these players, 23 were killed and nine had their limbs amputated.
In December 2022, Ahmad Atef Daraghmeh, who played with Thaqafi Tulkarem football club in the West Bank Premier League, was shot dead during an Israeli army raid in Nablus.
Gaza’s Health Ministry has stated that more than 26,000 were killed and 65,000 injured in the enclave since Oct. 7, and Shalabi says amongst the casualties are “dozens” of footballers.
While all sporting competitions have been suspended until further notice in the Palestinian territories, Daboub’s men were hoping for a longer stay in Doha. But it was a challenging game. They lost against the tournament’s host and defending champion Qatar at the al-Bayt stadium on Monday evening.
They face the same fate as their fellow Palestinians. Upon leaving Palestine, no one ever knows when they can return.
“I found out that I am wanted by the Israeli police. This means that if I go back, I’ll be arrested,” said Ahmad al-Rojob, a team staff member. “Why would I be arrested? Because I shared videos of what’s happening in Gaza on social media,” he said.
This article was originally published in French in L'Orient-Le Jour. Translation by Joelle El Khoury.