The Palestinian football team is striving to make a name for itself. In this first of a two-part series, Moina Fauchier-Delavigne describes what it's like to play for Palestine The Palestine football team would like nothing better than to send its would-be nation to the World Cup. But along with that difficult goal, the players must also cope with things few, if any, international squads come up against: checkpoints, border crossings and home games that are played away. This week Palestine will play in another qualification game for the 2006 World Cup. In the first qualifiers, the team did amazingly well. They managed to bury Taipei 8-0 in February and more remarkably, they tied 1-1 with the much more experienced Iraqi team which finished fourth in the recently concluded Athens Olympics. By March Palestine was leading its Asian Group 2 before losing 3-0 to Uzbekistan. It now must win the return match against Uzbekistan to reach the next round. D-day is this week in Doha, Qatar, as the Palestinian team cannot play any international game at home. In Ismailia, Egypt, where the team set up a summer training camp in preparation for the qualifiers, the atmosphere is subdued since only half the Palestinian squad stands on the field. Will the players from Gaza be able to get to Egypt and train? "They still couldn't get through the border and leave Gaza," explains the Austrian coach Alfred Riedl to the players. He adds quickly, "They may come today or tomorrow." The sentence is repeated each morning. Everyone is willing to continue hoping. Today in Ismailia, Riedl and his players are worried. Israel closed the Rafah crossing on 18 July preventing people from coming in and out of Gaza. The Gazan players are thus trapped -- less than 200 kilometres from Ismailia. In Gaza, they keep training but without a coach. Meanwhile, on the Egyptian side, in the Olympic village right next to the Suez Canal, another part of the Palestinian team trains twice a day: at eight o'clock, before it gets too hot, and in the late afternoon. Thanks to permission obtained by FIFA, the players did eventually arrive. But it was too late to travel to Hungary, as was planned, so a two- week training camp that was scheduled there was cancelled. It's all part of the downside of Palestine football. Nothing like a national professional league exists in the occupied territories and what used to be the league championship was cancelled in October 2000 because of the Intifada. In 1998, FIFA, soccer's international governing body, accepted Palestine as a member and allowed it to enter international competition. FIFA gives the PFA $250,000 a year. Many Arab countries also help out. For years Egypt has been allowing the team to practice in the country free of charge. Qatar has at times offered plane tickets to the team. Saudi Prince Faisal Bin Fahd Bin Abdul-Aziz, Saudi Arabia's Football Association president, helped the team rejoin FIFA. Individuals help. Tayseer Barakat, a Palestinian travel agent living in Kuwait, succeeded in persuading a dozen of his colleagues and friends to donate money to the team. "Reading in the media about the team I found out they needed a coach and better preparations," Barakat said. "As a businessman I knew that meant financing." The group of daring businessmen therefore decided to give this risky project money to fund the 2004 qualifications. Faris Abu Shawish, chairman of the Palestinian Football Association (PFA), remembers what it used to be like. "Not long ago, we were used to seeing the team lose. They would go to Egypt and lose 5-0, 6-0 or go to Qatar and lose, or go to Saudi Arabia and lose. "Then we went for the first time to the Pan-Arab Games in Jordan in 1999 and won the bronze medal. Nobody expected such a success. When the team returned, tens of thousands of people were waiting at the airport, shouting and singing. Since then, everybody has been following the national team. Even women, who usually don't care about football, watch our games on TV." This year, there is even a team of international filmmakers monitoring the team's exploits. The players come mainly from Gaza and the West Bank but also from the large Palestinian diaspora: Syria, Lebanon and even Chile, which has the largest Palestinian community outside the Middle East with more than 400,000 expatriates. Each player joined the team for various reasons: career opportunity, money, getting back to his roots or simple curiosity. "I began to play because it was a good opportunity for me, but after two years with the team, I do it also to give joy to the Palestinian people," Argentinean-born midfielder Pablo Abdallah told Al-Ahram Weekly. Abdallah is, along with four other South American Palestinian teammates, the backbone of the team. On this year's team, five out of 11 players were born in South America. Francico Alam, a left back from Chile, recalls: "Last year, it was even more impressive. We were nine from South America. We arrived at the airport for a match in Qatar and the people were asking us, "Why don't you speak Arabic if you are on the Palestinian team?" "I don't like the fact that most of the players are from outside," Mohaned, 17, a supporter of the team, said from Ramallah. "I would rather that most of them come from the West Bank." In Jerusalem, Magdi, a teenager working in a shoe store with a Beckham poster plastered on the window feels the same way. "I watch all their games but there are too many players from other countries." The players' origin doesn't bother the sponsors or the coach who take into account that the Palestinian population is more numerous outside than inside the country -- five million to three million. This multi-cultural Palestinian selection has a Tower of Babel look. As Riedl explains in English what the next training session will entail, one of his assistants from Hebron translates into Arabic, while the Chilean Palestinian striker, Roberto Kettlun, narrates the Spanish version to his colleagues of Latin American background. Then, a few minutes later, you can hear a perfect West Coast accent. "Guys, you have to follow! You have to step up, man!" It is the midfielder Murad Farid shouting. Farid, who was born and raised in New York, is the most recent signing. The start of the second Intifada in September 2000 hit the team hard, just returning the international competition. It generated new security measures for the Palestinian players, restricting their movement within the area. Moreover, in plenty of places in the world, holding a Palestinian passport does not necessarily mean automatic entry into nations. Riedl, a former coach of Vietnam, explains: "they check our visa 10 times at airports and several European countries don't allow us in at all. In July, Germany failed to give us the necessary visas for us to go to a friendly competition." Still, there appears to be at least as many ups as there are downs. "It is amazing to see the colours [of our flag] outside our land," says Bader Mekki, general-secretary of the PFA in Ramallah. "It is also a great challenge for the Israelis and their checkpoints. We are saying, 'We are here, we can reach Spain, Chile, the whole world.' "Like Arafat, Jerusalem and the refugees, our national team is one of our symbols."
