‘Losing three years set us back 20’: Palestinian football’s future in peril
The suspended Palestinian league is squeezing a generation of footballers, with little certainty for the future. Sheikh Jarrah, Occupied East Jerusalem — It’s nearly three
The suspended Palestinian league is squeezing a generation of footballers, with little certainty for the future. Sheikh Jarrah, Occupied East Jerusalem — It’s nearly three years since Mahdi Hijazi last played a professional game of football, with the war on Gaza sinking the domestic Palestinian league into limbo. The 23-year-old now spends his days on the sidelines of a series of football pitches adjacent to the Israeli police headquarters in Sheikh Jarrah in occupied East Jerusalem. The area has faced rounds of evictions of Palestinian families by Israeli authorities over the years, to be replaced by Israeli settlers. Hijazi, who played for the Palestinian national team and travelled abroad with Hilal Al-Quds, Jerusalem’s most decorated club, can be seen handing out refreshments to the players, desperate to hang on to the game he loves in any way possible. “Football is in our blood. Winning, losing – football is beautiful, it’s life… we breathe football,” he told Al Jazeera. “For three years, there’s been no sporting activity at all. Things are hard, you keep yourself in shape through workouts at the gym… Our only concern right now is to get back to football.” Hilal Al-Quds has been a part of Hijazi’s life since birth. His grandfather founded the club, and he came up through its ranks as a youth to compete for the first team, playing games across Asia. But the Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel on October 7, 2023 – and the subsequent genocide in Gaza – has changed everything. Nobody knows when the Palestine Professional League – suspended since the war on Gaza began – will return, putting the future of Palestinian football in peril. When the salary disappears Palestinian football squads were typically stitched together from players across the West Bank and East Jerusalem, but an Israeli military offensive in the occupied territory has made travel there exceedingly difficult. Officials say that a surge in settler attacks and the closure of West Bank roads by the Israeli military, which were used to shuttle Palestinian footballers from one match to another, has made the domestic game impossible to play anyway. For Palestinian players, the suspension of the Palestine Professional League has been catastrophic. Khaled Abu Dalu, 36, a former national team player, has run a leading youth academy in Jerusalem for the past decade, with many of its players going on to compete at professional level. A footballer in the professional league might previously earn the equivalent of $2,000 to $3,000 a month, while national team players could make as much as $7,000.
“Some of my former players who were stars, all of that, are now out of work, taking some lowly job. There’s nothing that does justice to his career,” coach Abu Dalu said. Hijazi said the suspension of the professional domestic league has seen many players in the prime of their careers quit football and work any job they can find. “The money was good, [but] today, it’s gone. A lot of friends have gone into construction – one became a barber, one a mechanic, one’s in a supermarket, one works in a bakery,” said Hijazi. “As footballers, at the end of the month, we knew a salary was coming, [but] now, there are people who are married, who have kids, who have no income.” Hijazi himself has found a new living buying and selling cars, but there are other challenges the players and support staff face beyond the suspension of the league. West Bank players who have neither the relative mobility a Jerusalem ID brings, nor a permit to work inside Israel, have suffered most. Mustafa Owais, 35, a former professional player before the war, described the tragic story of one former teammate from Bethlehem, with much of the governorate under the direct control of Israel. “His only job was football [but] after the war, he started working two days a week in the West Bank — the whole week he makes 100 ($34.24) or 200 shekels ($68.47), and he’s married, has kids, a family,” Owais told Al -Jazeera. Another former teammate who once earned $5,000 a month playing football now scrapes by on $500, he said. ‘A person wants to do the thing he loves’ Some players, desperate for opportunities to play football and support their families, have even made the uneasy decision to join clubs in the Israeli Premier League. “At the end of the day, a person wants to do the thing he loves, regardless of our political views… so, he heads to the Israeli league, until the Palestinian league comes back,” reasoned coach Abu Dalu. Abdul Fatah Arar, a veteran coach who has won multiple Palestinian league titles and managed the Palestinian powerhouse Taraji Wadi Al-Nes, a club based near Bethlehem, lists the number of domestic players who over the years have sought opportunities abroad. He estimates that 70 to 80 players have gone to play in Libya, about 10 in Egypt, half a dozen in Jordan, and a handful more to Qatar, Kuwait, Malaysia and Indonesia.
The BriefWire