The Predicament in Palestine

It is a tale of two territories. In a recent "Dispatches" piece in World Soccer, James Montague contrasts the fate of football in Gaza and the West Bank.

In Fatah's West Bank, Jibril Al Rjoub, Palestinian Football Associaton [PFA] president, has "arguably overseen the most successful period in the West Bank's history," with game attendance regualrly reaching 15,000-20,000.

Alternately, in Hamas-controlled Gaza, football is dying a slow, painful political death. After Hamas took control of the area in 2007, they seized the top football clubs, seeking to use football as means to acheive their political ends. In particular, Ibrahim Abu Salim, the vice-president of the PFA notes Hamas' military wing continues to persist in their attempts "to have control and channel the minds, the thinking, of the youth" through football.

If political infighting between the Palestinian factions has thwarted regular competition, it has not hampered the desire of players, coaches and fans to organize their own games with some help from the United Nations Development Programme.

One of those games was the Gazan championship between Al Shate Sporting Club, a mixed team of Fatah and Hamas association that represents the 80,000 refugees in the camp of the same name, and Al Salah, a new, Hamas aligned team. The match ended 2-0 in Al Shate's favor. For a brief moment, the players successfully removed the beautiful game from the throes of political manipulation and returned it to the people, specifically the people of Al Shate refugee camp, who triumphantly commandeered the trophy from the players and paraded it around in the streets.

For that day, Al Shate were champions of Gaza and the "reality of life in Gaza melted into the background."