Learn about the history of the Palestinian struggle for freedom, equality and justice by exploring major events in the history of their oppression on this day of the year.
15 October
SAUDI FOOTBALL NORMALISATION WITH ISRAELI OCCUPATION
On this day in 2019, the national teams of Saudi Arabia and Palestine compete during a World Cup 2022 Asian qualifying match in the West Bank town of al-Ram on 15 October. Many Palestinians and their supporters opposed the Saudi decision to play for the first time in the West Bank rather than in a third country, since Saudi players need to apply for Israeli permission to enter the West Bank, thus normalizing the military occupation. The Saudi position is a break in the norm for Arab sport teams.
تطبيع كرة القدم السعودية مع الاحتلال الإسرائيلي
15 أكتوبر
في مثل هذا اليوم من عام 2019، تنافس منتخبا السعودية وفلسطين خلال مباراة تصفيات كأس العالم 2022 في مدينة الرام بالضفة الغربية في 15 أكتوبر. عارض العديد من الفلسطينيين ومؤيديهم القرار السعودي باللعب لأول مرة في الضفة الغربية وليس في دولة ثالثة، حيث يحتاج اللاعبون السعوديون إلى التقدم بطلب للحصول على إذن إسرائيلي لدخول الضفة الغربية، وبالتالي تطبيع الاحتلال العسكري. الموقف السعودي هو كسر للقاعدة بالنسبة للفرق الرياضية العربية.
The Saudi football authority said it had agreed to play in the West Bank for the first time at the request of the Palestinian Authority (PA). Jibril Rajoub, the head of the Palestine Football Association, thanked the kingdom and dubbed its move “historical”, while Yasser al-Mashal, Saudi Arabia’s footballing chief, expressed gratitude towards the PA for its warm reception of the national team. “I am here representing more than 20 million Saudis,” al-Mashal said. “I have visited many countries but I did not feel this level of love, appreciation and welcoming except in Palestine.”
Palestinian activists, however, decried the Saudi team’s arrival to the occupied territories as an act of normalising relations with Israel. In a statement last week, the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction (BDS) movement...said that at this particular time, it can only regard the visit “in the context of normalisation”, citing a decision by the Saudi team in 2015 refusing to enter the country.
“In the context of the dangerous official normalisation of the Saudi regime – along with the UAE, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar and others – with Israel and the growing normal security and political relations between them, [the visit] is part of the attempts to liquidate the Palestinian cause through the so-called Israeli-US deal of the century,” the statement said, referring to Washington’s long-delayed plan for peace in the Middle East.
"Raise the Yemeni flag"
"Palestinian activists called on football fans who attended the match to raise the Yemeni flag to express their solidarity with the country’s population suffering from the effects of a deadlocked war between a Saudi-UAE-led military coalition and Houthi rebels, now in its fifth year."
4-minute video of Palestinian football players calling for boycott of the Israeli team before it came to Scotland in 2020