The Palestinian athletic community has slammed a number of Palestinian footballers, who earlier this week joined Israeli players in a trip to Spain where they on Tuesday played against Barcelona at Nou Camp Stadium in Barcelona.
The trip was organized and financed by the "Peres Center for Peace" and designed to promote peace between Israelis and Palestinians. More than 70 countries, 127 television channels and a potential audience of more than 400 million were able to enjoy the match.
The joint Israeli-Palestinian team lost 2-1 to the Spanish champions. The match was held to raise money to help improve the lives of Israeli and Palestinian children. More than 31,000 people attended the event, raising some US$120,000.
The Israeli-Palestinian team, which was coached jointly by an Israeli and a Palestinian began the match with eight Israelis and three Palestinians in the line up.
However, Palestinian officials told PIC that the event constituted an "unacceptable and deceptive form of normalization between the occupied and the occupier." "The Israeli occupation is an act of rape, Palestinian athletes, like all Palestinians, are constantly harassed and prevented from traveling outside their places of residence in the West Bank, the world should come and see the ugly reality here, not be duped by the artificial rosy picture in Barcelona," said Jamal Muhesin, Director-General of the Palestinian Ministry of Youth and Sport.
Muhesin accused the Peres Center for Peace of "trying to deceive the world by giving a false impression that things are alright between Palestinians and Israelis." "This so-called peace center is trying to normalize an inherently abnormal situation. There can be no real normalcy between the tormentor and the tormented, between the persecutor and persecuted. The Israeli occupation is an act of rape."
Officials from the Palestinian Olympic Committee, which supervises sports activities throughout the Palestinian occupied territories, distanced itself from the event. "We are against this activity. Israel is killing our children tormenting us on a daily basis and reducing our towns and villages to isolated ghettos. We must never take part in propagandistic activities aimed at blurring reality here," said a spokesman of the committee.
Abdu al Nasser al Sharif, a sports official from the southern West Bank said normalization between Israel and the Palestinians would encourage normalization between Israel and the Arab world. "The Arabs would argue that 'we can't be more Palestinian than the Palestinians themselves' and eventually Israel will remain occupying our land and holy places while everybody is normalizing with her as if everything is normal." "We are shooting ourselves in the foot."
Muhesin said his ministry would conduct a thorough investigation into the circumstances surrounding the joint Israeli-Palestinian trip to Spain.
A spokesman for the Peres Center for Peace, Alon Beer, told PIC that the trip to Spain by the joint Palestinian-Israeli soccer team was coordinated with the top echelon of the Palestinian Authority, including PA President Mahmoud Abbas and National Security advisor Jebril Rajoub. He added the joint soccer team's trip to Spain was organized jointly by the Peres Center for Peace and the Abu Shukr Center Sport Center in Ramallah.
The "peace team" included five Palestinian players, including Jamal Hadaydeh from the northern West Bank city of Tulkarm and Osama Abu Alia from Jericho as well as Mussa and Ali Aluara.
