‘We can!’ – women’s football in the Occupied West Bank

Abstract

In this article, I will highlight and discuss the following issues: How do players experience football as a way of normalising crisis during occupation? How do players experience the sense of honour when playing for Palestine? 17 footballers from one of the best clubs in the West Bank, ‘Sareyyet Ramalla’ (Ramallah Sport Club) are interviewed. The article invites each of the players to be a public actor in the context of fragments of her life. The troubled status of their nation forms a backdrop to their personal sense of national identity in a global male-dominated game. Pierre Bourdieu's arbitrary two-sexed model of gender relations and power plays also a role in this article.

Keywords:

• Football
• the Occupied West Bank
• national identities
• the gendering of sport
• qualitative interviews

Introduction

This article focuses on female football players from Ramallah in the West Bank in Palestine. The players are presented in this study as public actors in a larger political context, and as distinctly less distant and less ‘Othered’ than is often the case in Western mainstream narratives of the Middle East (Hesford, 2011; Said, 1984). The purpose is to give them a voice to narrate their personal stories, not as victims of a disenfranchised country, but, rather, as subjects of dignity. The focus here is on national identity (Dart, 2020; Falk, 2017; Hall, 1996; Hobsbawn, 1992; Iorwerth et al., 2014), specifically the importance of the footballers’ individual and collective memories of having Palestinian identities. It is most of all a comment, through the prism of football, on how the Israeli occupation is affecting fragments of a picture of their lives. The problem of living an ‘ordinary life’ in a violent context remains under-researched (Woroniecka-Krzyzanowska, 2014). For the footballers, ways of framing the ordinary in times of crisis are through playing the game of football. The troubled status of their nation forms a backdrop to their personal sense of national identity in tandem with their specific position as females in a strongly male-dominated game. Pierre Bourdieu’s arbitrary two-sex model of gender relations of power (Bourdieu, 1995, 1977, 1991, 1993, 2001, 2006) is also applied in this article to the context of female football in the West Bank. Male football is arguably the most popular form of cultural performance in the West Bank (Dorsey, 2016; Lopez, 2009), but unlike other regions such as Europe, Asia, Latin America and Africa, the Middle East has been the subject of very limited research (Dorsey, 2016), most particularly with regard to gender, although sexist attitudes are included in a few football studies (Erhart, 2016).

In contrast to producing a narrative of the ‘Other’, in this article, I highlight and discuss how female footballers in the Occupied West Bank experience their sport as a way of normalising crisis during occupation and how the Israeli occupation is affecting their sense of honour when playing for Palestine. The paper opens with a short history of conflicts on the West Bank, a short narrative of women’s football in Ramallah, and a theoretical framework, followed by a short description of the sample of the 17 female footballers who were interviewed. The substance of the paper explores women’s football in the area through a lens provided by fragments of sporting stories. Based on the qualitative interviews, the stories are personal and powerful, shedding light on the sporting lives of a unique group of women from a deeply troubled area in the Middle East.

A short history of conflicts on the West Bank

Palestine has never been an independent state. After the British withdrawal in 1948, the year the Israeli State was established, came the Palestinian Al-Nakba – the catastrophe – when Israeli soldiers expelled 711,000 to 780,000 Palestinians from their homeland (Sharoni & Abu-Nimer, 2008; Waage, 2013), and more than 500 Palestinian towns, cities and villages were destroyed (Silwadi & Mayo, 2014). In 1967, Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza, the last fragments of historic Palestine, which Palestine named Al-Nakba.

In 1994, the Oslo process led to the creation of the Palestinian Authority (PA) as a five-year interim body, pursuant to the Oslo Accords between the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and the government of Israel. This process aimed at achieving a peace treaty based on the United Nations Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 on territorial compromise and a solution to the problem of Palestinian refugees in order to fulfilling the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination (Baylis, 1999). However, this in turn sought to internalise rather than resist the occupation (Baylis, 1999; Hever, 2010; Kelly, 2008; Said, 1980; Waage, 2013). Thus, Israel consolidated its settlements. Palestinian suicide bombers began actions in Israel in 1993; these attacks became part of the Israeli legitimation of the ‘Separation/Apartheid Wall’.

There have so far been two major Palestinian uprisings against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. The period of the first Intifada – a grass-roots movement (Baylis, 1999) – was from the end of 1987 until 1993 (Filiu, 2014; Landy, 2013; Said, 1990; Vituello, 1990; Waage, 2013). In their wake, a protest movement evolved, involving a two-fold strategy of resistance and civil disobedience. This was the first Palestine uprising in Gaza and the West Bank under Israeli occupation. The second Intifada started in 2000. Its end date is hard to determine, although most sources seem to state that it was in 2005 (Plaw, 2016). This was a period of intensified Israeli–Palestine violence which the Palestinians describe as an uprising against Israel.

The Palestine Authority (PA) on the West Bank performs many state-like functions on behalf of the occupiers. Thus, Palestine might be seen as an incomplete or quasi-state that is not able to exercise full state power, although the PA’s role as a police force of the occupation includes the legitimate use of force against its own citizens.

This complex arrangement of occupation and control in the West Bank presents the backdrop for describing and explaining the position of men’s and women’s football.

Thus, this paper highlights the lives of female footballers in a non-state (or incomplete-state) nation, too rare in sport studies (Field, 2014; MacLean & Field, 2014). In the case of Palestine, there is potential for a reorientation of our understanding of some important elements of this incomplete state, for challenging the conventional gendering of organised sport, and for recognising the authentic sense of agency achieved by the female football players central to this study.

Women’s football in Ramallah with reference to female agency, Israeli occupation and FIFA

Sport arguably plays a crucial role in the construction and confirmation of national identities (Hobsbawn & Ranger, 1983), cemented by the regular and far-reaching visibility of major international sporting competitions held between nation-states (Field, 2014; Iorwerth et al., 2014). As a result, the idea of an ‘imagined’ national community seems like a reality during international sporting competitions (Hobsbawn, 1992; Iorwerth et al., 2014). But when applied to the situation on the West Bank, it is problematic.

The Palestine Football Association (PFA) was admitted to FIFA in 1998 (Khalidi, 2013). Ironically, in the context of international football, Palestine is treated as an authentic nation state by FIFA. Palestinian national football teams are organised within the West Asian Football Federation (WAFF). In previous publications, von der Lippe (2014a, 2016) has argued that Israel is undermining the development programme of a Palestinian male national football team – a key reason why men’s football in The West Bank and in Gaza is struggling and not cooperating. To date, these issues have not been explored in relation to the development of the women’s game, because in 2014 no Women’s Football League existed in Gaza. According to Khalidi (2013), women are forbidden to practice football there.

There is very limited research in this area. Palestine is considered to be a male-dominated country, and according to the Islamic law of Sharia, male members of the family control actions of female members (Pfister, 2010). In a publication by Giess-Stüber et al. in 2011, the focus is on religion, cultural traditions and football as a space of well-being and freedom in the lives of the women`s national team of Palestine in 2005–2006. Support from the PFA and media increased when the team made its mark in Palestine abroad (Giess-Stüber, 2011). In the autumn of 2008, a first league women’s football championship was held, organised by the PFA, which has responsibility for the women`s national team, included travel costs (Shalabi, 2019). The Palestinian women`s team played their first game in the West Bank against Jordan in 2009 (Dart, 2020). At that time ten of the best players lived in Bethlehem, four in Jericho, one in Hebron and one in Gaza. The first official football match in the Palestinian Women’s League took place in Ramallah on February 10, 2011 (Dart, 2020) – two teams, Diyar Bethlehem and Sarayyet Ramallah, competed in this historic event. Both teams had Christians and Muslims among their members. Christians are a small minority in the West Bank although their percentage in Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus, was 35–40 percent in 2011. The father of the captain of the Ramallah team paid the travel costs.

The 17 players of Ramallah FC, who were interviewed, have all competed in national and international competitions. Their highest value is not placed on winning abroad, which is the ‘normal’ criterion of success in countries that are not occupied. Their success is the ability to travel abroad at all. These footballers could possibly be categorised as people of the middle-classes of the West Bank, due to the fact that most of their fathers own their place of living and that most of them have a regular income as shop owners or small businessmen. The fathers of the Ramallah players in particular support their interest in football (in spirit, and likely financially), in part because it gives them opportunities that they would otherwise not have, whereas non-sporting friends and teachers are proud of them when playing inside and outside the West Bank. Their supporters see them as possible heroes.

But uncharacteristically, in relation to the norms in Western sport, male players from the West Bank face greater difficulties than their female counterparts. Israel is conducting a collective punishment by prohibiting male footballers from Gaza to participate in competitions (Khalidi, 2013). Men are also unable to represent Palestine abroad without facing obstacles and refusals. Several of their best players have been killed by IDF (Israel Defence Forces) or banned from travelling (von der Lippe, 2014a, 2016). In contrast, players on the women’s team are so far allowed and enabled to travel abroad to compete against foreign teams, although with delays. It is only the very best players on the women’s national team of the PFA who are able to represent Palestine abroad in prestigious events. Due to the reputation, prestige and cultural status of the Ramallah FC women’s team, in 2015 the Bank of Palestine started to sponsor the best players. The situation for the women from the West Bank who are in the national team poses questions about whether, for the moment, they are seen as the ‘first sex’ of Palestinian football, because national identity is so important to these people in a non-free occupied country.

The research presented in this article, and to a certain degree that of Griess-Stüber et al. (2011), deals with the problematic political situation of Palestine as a result of the Israeli occupation. The loss of land after 1948 and the absence of self-determination have been described as a national catastrophe, a trauma (Falk, 2017) and a crisis in prolonged indefinity (Woroniecka-Krzyzanowska, 2014). The complex relationships between sport, colonisation, and modernity are crucial for understanding sports in historic Palestine and occupied Palestine (Sorek, 2007). Although international sporting competitions are mostly held between nation-states (Iorwerth et al., 2014), often sports associations also exist in non-state nations with organisations that are performing state-like functions, such as the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank.

Theoretical framework: national identity and the gendering of sport

Hobsbawn (1992) and Iorwerth et al. (2014) have been occupied by the fact that national identity takes shape through imaginative traditions that the community shares, and that differentiate it from other nation-states (see also Broch, 2016; Spillman, 1997). The unsettled situation of the Palestinian people since 1948, whether under occupation or in the diaspora, is linked to the absence of unifying central Palestinian national institutions, which could provide for education, research, libraries and state archives (Butenschøn, 2007; Khalidi, 1998). The first important periods of the shaping of Palestinian identity included, according to Khalidi (1998), the years of British Mandate (1923–1948), culminating in the first war between the Arab states and Israel from May 1948 onwards. This period cost the Palestinians their majority status in Palestine and is known as the Al-Nakba. Until the emergence of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) in 1964, it could be argued that the image of a Palestinian identity was fading away (Butenschøn, 2007; Khalidi, 1998). Golda Meir, Prime Minister of Israel from 1969 to 74 is quoted as saying: ‘There was no such thing as Palestinians… They did not exist’ (Khalidi, 1998, p. 181).

What was left in the occupied territories (the West Bank and Gaza) seemed first and foremost to be the memorials of Al-Nakba. The most important memory for people in the West Bank and Gaza does not seem to be of celebration, but of sorrow. National heroes during war and serious conflicts differ from those in times of peace. Thus, Palestinian heroes in the West Bank and Gaza are those who have openly opposed Israeli occupation, including suicide bombers of both sexes and people who have attacked Israeli soldiers, in contrast to sport stars, film stars, singers or poets who have achieved international awards in more peaceful countries. In the West, most war heroes have been men, whereas in the occupied areas of Palestine, there is greater equity between the sexes. In 2008, approximately seventy Palestinian women were numbered as having been involved in suicide bombing attempts in Israel (Schweitzer, 2008). In the occupied areas women are often seen as courageous nationalists along with men against the military giant, Israel.

For Hall (1996), identities are constructed within a discourse produced in specific historical and institutional sites with specific practices and strategies. These identities, Hall argues, are constructed through relationships to the Other; that is, the identity is juxtaposed to the Other in relation to what it lacks, to what it is not. Hence, Hall argues, the making of a national identity tends first and foremost to draw on what a nation lacks and second what it celebrates. The construction of Palestinian nationhood by any means is opposed by Israel. However, in spite of their lack of freedom, the loss of their land and living under occupation, Palestinian people in the West Bank (and Gaza) find ways to celebrate nationhood and heroes. Therefore, they seem to have a contradictory image of the ‘otherness’ of their closest neighbour, while dreaming of a better world and the end of the occupation. Sport is seen as effective in playing a crucial role in the construction and confirmation of national identity (Dart, 2020; Hobsbawn & Ranger, 1983), also for those without a national, independent state (Dart, 2020). International sport in particular is one avenue where this can happen, where live audiences and sports media fans desire victories and eulogise nationhood. Representations of nationhood are everywhere: national flags flying, national anthems playing, national athletes competing in national uniforms, are all presented by the media as sports news.

Although football remains the most popular sport for men in the occupied territories (the West Bank and Gaza), Palestine lacks large numbers of male sporting heroes. The Israel authorities refused to issue travel permits for half of the men's squad to participate in the 2006 World Cup qualifying matches and in 2007 and 2008 they were also prevented from travelling to play other international fixtures (Dart, 2020). As we will see later, the women’s narratives are expressions of a deep quest for national identity and the end to Israeli occupation, normalising crisis through the experience of football and they have huge pride in representing their country abroad and receiving recognition and acclamation as national heroes when they return home. The question arises about whether and to what extent the general absence of the best male footballers from Palestine who represent their country abroad contributes to, or detracts from, emotional and positive aspects of women’s football.

The gender order in sport

It is well documented that from the late nineteenth century in North Western societies men were considered to be more suited by nature than women to take part in organised, vigorous sports, such as football (Hargreaves, 1994; Messner, 1992). Furthermore, most published works by historians and sociologists of sports are written by men about male sports. Even when women are the focus of attention in sport, past narratives present the unified conception of women as distinctly different from, and subordinate to men (Hargreaves, 2000).

Bourdieu (2006) underlines that in modern western societies the dominant symbolic and social understanding of gender derives from an arbitrary two-sex model, rooted in interpretations of what it means to have sexed bodies. The strength of this notion of sexed bodies is legitimated by ‘(…) a relationship of domination by embedding it in a biological nature that is itself a naturalised social construction’ (Bourdieu, 2006, 23).

Sexed bodies are categorised as either masculine or feminine, and therefore masculinities and femininities are symbolically constructed as a dichotomy. This implies that abilities, behaviour and attitudes of men and women are associated with their sexed bodies and conceived as natural, rather than arbitrary cultural and symbolic constructions (Bourdieu, 2006). The idea of natural gendered bodies reflects a relationship of power – masculinity being the dominant gender, legitimised as superior to femininity. Male dominance as a power structure is in a way shaped by hard-coded symbolic and social hierarchies, consisting of more or less arbitrary norms, orders and duties and, according to Bourdieu (1993, 2006), sport, conceptualised as a ‘field’, is a competitive structure or site of struggle, which is difficult to change:

The social order functions as an immense symbolic machine tending to ratify the masculine domination on which it is founded. (Bourdieu, 2006, 9).

As national and international sports are normally single-sex events, rooted in biological differences, in which women and men do not normally compete against each other, masculinities and femininities are not often seen as a construction, but just as sex differences between men and woman. As Connell has pointed out:

(…) sport has come to be the leading definer of masculinity in mass culture. Sport provides a continuous display of men`s bodies in motion. (Connell, 1995, p. 54)

For people who compare the participation of both sexes in traditional male sports such as football, women are consistently regarded as the second sex (Pfister et al., 2002, 2013; Scraton et al., 1999; Skogvang & Fasting, 2013). According to Hovden and von der Lippe (2019), a basic and scarcely problematised sex difference is often taken for granted; most men are stronger and quicker than most women and are valued more. The gendering of sporting fields may differ in different countries, but the gendering of football is consistent in its treatment of the women’s game as secondary and inferior to men’s football concerning money, sponsors, coaches, venues, media coverage, and FIFA interest (von der Lippe, 2010). Research in the West reassures us that hegemonic masculinities and stereotyped dynamics of the gender order continue to be reproduced in the twenty-first century (Bernstein & Kian, 2013; Broch, 2016; Theberge, 2000). This investigation of women’s football in the West Bank aims to comment on whether or not it follows a similar pattern.

Methodology – qualitative Interviews

One of the best known and successful teams on the West Bank since 2014 has been Sarayyet Ramallah, described here as Ramallah FC (Football Club). By 2015, most of the best players were living in or close to the town of Ramallah. Seventeen female footballers who were playing for the first team of the Ramallah FC were the subjects for the research interviews. Some of them were on the national team in 2014.

Initial interviews were conducted with all 17 players from the Ramallah FC while they were in Trondheim (Norway) in June 2014 for a friendly, unofficial competition. I conducted follow-up interviews in April 2015 in Ramallah to gain an even deeper understanding of their experiences. The data and analysis resulting from these interviews provided a picture of their lives through the prism of football during a sustained period of occupation. The female footballers’ narratives are intrinsically personal but understood and enhanced through the inclusion of cultural and historical material voiced by ‘distant others’ from a broader political context. The crucial importance of the context for the interviews was that the young footballers were warmly welcomed and a friendly ‘conversational space’ was created for them to tell their stories to another person (Elliot, 2005). My approach to qualitative interviewing and analysis reflects a recognition of, and respect for, the football players as active agents. The interviews focussed on social interactions in historical and political contexts, taking into account individual family backgrounds, sporting involvement, and education. The attention was on the joy of playing in the West Bank and abroad. Other key themes were as follows: Their best memories, either at club-level or when playing for the national team, how they experienced a win, and how and when each player started to play football. Towards the end of the interviews, they were telling me about other events and emotions concerning occupation and crisis. Most interviews lasted about half an hour or less. For each player, the fragments of a narrative were structured into a story with a beginning and an end.

The invisibility of ‘whiteness’, whereby being white is not regarded as a particular lens through which the world is viewed and experienced, was often taken as normal and neutral by academics of the Western world (Spalek, 2005). The difference between me, the researcher, and the ‘white skinned Arab’ female footballers was first and foremost age, education and the fact that they were living in an occupied country and experiencing occupation every day, and I was living in Norway, one of the richest countries in the world. Only one of the players used a headscarf. The fact that the interviews started in Norway, before and after football matches, in a warm and non-threatening setting, surrounded by some Norwegian families that hosted the players for a week, was a logistical and emotional benefit for both me, the interviewer, and the players.

Most players came from stable and relatively economically-comfortable homes. Out of 15 fathers of those on the national team in 2007, only one was unemployed, one was in prison and one was dead, whereas half of the mothers were housewives (Giess-Stüber, 2011). Both parents of the 17 women footballers were gainfully employed in 2014 except for two, in contrast to the parents of the male footballers in Gaza (von der Lippe, 2014a). None of the men’s mothers were working outside their home areas, and just a few of the fathers.

All the 17 female members of the Ramallah FC who were interviewed for this study in 2014 and 2015 were students or school-girls at the time between 14 and 24 years old, and most of them are Christians. This is in contrast to the population of the West Bank. In 2012, 80–85% of its population was Muslim, only 1–2.5% Christian and 12–14% Jewish (https://www.fn.no/Land/Palestine).

The father of one of the players had been instrumental in forming the Ramallah team and had also paid for a coach and travel costs for the best players. Nearly all of them had started playing street football at the age of 8–10 with the boys from their neighbourhood and later on at school.

In recent years, football became much more than a simple leisure pastime for all the 17 players who were interviewed. In brief, it was an essential part of their Palestinian identity.

I conducted, recorded and transcribed the interviews, and they were recorded with the informed consent of the interviewees. A translator was not used, because all of them spoke English. However, a few of them had to get some help in relation to technical questions about football. The fact that an interpreter was not needed was of great advantage. We created a face to face communication between two interesting and interested agents, and a relaxed mode of expression occurred directly. If needed, quick follow-up questions were asked. Although most of the women from the West Bank were students and a few of them still school-girls, they were able to classify their experiences and express their feelings freely, in part because most of them had previously been interviewed by sports journalists.

The interview questions regarding national identity during occupation and crisis were divided into two thematic categories:

1. How do the players experience football as a way of normalising crisis during occupation?

2. How do the players experience the sense of honour when playing for Palestine?

To secure their anonymity, the names of the players are replaced by numbers

How do the players experience football as a way of normalising crisis during occupation?

For the people living in violent and insecure conditions ‘ordinariness’ takes on new meanings (Woroniecka-Krzyzanowska, 2014). Daily efforts to manage the crisis create a steadfast need by the interviewed to play and compete in football like other sporting people. In order to do so, they must travel on the only roads the occupiers allow them to use, because of the Nakba. Furthermore, they might be stopped at any time by Israeli soldiers, and they have to wait as long as the soldiers wishes on the checkpoints; therefore, the competitions are normally delayed.

Thus, the footballers ways of normalising their lives consists of all these necessary elements of routines of travelling, memories and the love of playing. During the interviews, these experiences were constantly associated with their football lives.

During the first Intifada (1987–93) people had to suspend their ordinary lives (Woroniecka-Krzyzanowska, 2014), because of the temporary abnormality of that crisis (Scheper-Hughes, 2008). No 3 was born just after the first Intifada in 1994 and told me about how her father encouraged and supported her interests in football;

He is so proud, whereas my mother was sceptical at the beginning. Before a match he often says: “Play football, enjoy the game and forget the occupation for a while.” I love that.

The Israeli occupation creates a lot of trouble for citizens of the West Bank, although difficult everyday experiences might be replaced by a short-term feeling of freedom while playing football. Thus, the traditional embodied form of capital on the basis of peak sporting performances, does not count. The joy is the ability to be to play at all. Her father does not seem to regard women`s football as a heretic practice; a break with the ordinary order of football as a man's game and producing a new common sense (Bourdieu, 1991). He took it for granted as if it was ‘the natural world’ of 2015 (Bourdieu, 1977; von der Lippe, 2000). For him it was self-evident that both sexes are playing.

No 1 has played in Jordan, United Arab Emirates, Japan, Italy, Qatar, China-Tapè, India and Bahrain, representing either the club or Palestine. She stated that:

It’s hard to show and express our feelings in general, because of the occupation, restrictions and limited opportunities. So, we have to show the world what Palestine can do through and in football. It is right to play women’s football. Football is team work, a language for us to express our feelings, our Palestine cause and how occupation is affecting us.

Together with her team colleagues, no 1 presents football as a legitimate women’s sport. ‘It is right to play women’s football’ was an uttering charged with social meaning linked to the feminist belief in gender equality and in opposition to the strength of the masculine order and their determination that it should be unquestionably acceptable for women to play. She believes that football is still first and foremost regarded as a man’s sport in the occupied territories and needs support and legitimation. Thus, No 1 negotiates her individual female sporting abilities in relation to the context of occupation and her interest in the game (Francombe-Webb & Palmer, 2018).

She and several of the others are also concerned about the delays on military checkpoints on the Palestinian roads to matches. They prevent Palestinians from going to other Palestinian villages or cities (Khalidi, 2013):

We are waiting from 5 minutes to 2 hours, and never know how long. (…) Now, we have real difficulties everywhere, because of the three young missing settlers, who are not found yet. We are waiting and waiting. Israel thinks Muslims have killed them. Everything is dependent on the political situation.

The Israeli military announced later that they had been found. During peak political crisis delays are longer than what seems to be ‘normal’ situations.

No 14, born in 1999, is another of the female footballers who was able to express strong feelings and frustrations and thus create a non-violent defence-wall of reflections:

The Israelis are trying to play with our feelings and think that we will go down, but we are able to think. We cannot manage (they are believing), but we can! Whatever they did and do, we will not go down and we will defend our land.

Actors` agency may transform meanings of routines to overcome political crisis they cannot control (Billig, 1995). No 14 seems here to remind herself of her nationhood in daily football routines.

The checkpoints where the Israeli military controls all Palestinian cars are some of the very few places where larger groups of people are able to gather.

This narrative is about a special checkpoint gathering, no 14 also talked of her experience of the death of a friend, almost as if it is a part of everyday life for people in the area:

My friend in the Ramallah club was killed by the Israelis near Ramallah in a checkpoint on Al-Nakba day. We went there to remember the day. We were about 200 people. And the day after, two more were killed. We have a video, which shows how he was shot. (She is showing it to me). It is the first time I have seen a dead body. I am writing a text because of this.

Most of the inhabitants in the West Bank have relatives in Gaza.

No 14 elaborated about how people lived under constant stress dealing with awful events such as shootings and bombings and about her shock at the response of some Israelis who treated the deaths of Palestinians in an inhumane and trivial manner. She explained that when Gaza was bombed severely in 2014, some of the footballers helped those who were afflicted, not through football, because Israel does in reality not accept any cooperation through sports:

Last year (…) we brought water, found clothes and helped them with money (…) I am very sad to hear that some Israelis were just watching the war as if it was a show.

I asked no 14, ‘What does such an attitude do to you?’

I turn very sad and I pity them (…) Whatever they did and do, we will not go down and we will defend our land.

‘How would you defend your land?’

By studying and learning and playing football. Then, we can make other people know and see what we are feeling.

This player, like the others on the team, believes that non-violent football is an activity of protest and survival in defence of Palestine. The slogan for Palestine footballers is passive resistance (Giess-Stüber, 2011). This seems to be their ideal of a Palestine football identity, and the only strategic one, if they wish to travel abroad.

Israeli occupation is a reality of everyday life for every member of the team, an ongoing Al-Nakba process and crisis, expressed as a personal experience or through narratives about their families and friends. The fact that they helped other Gaza citizens during the war in 2014 indicates that these West Bank football players also see themselves as inhabitants and citizens of Gaza with a common collective memory of being Palestinians in spite of the Israeli politics of separation. The Israeli occupation is undoubtedly linked in their thinking about, and experiences of, playing football. It is in effect both a pleasure and a palliative.

How do the players experience the sense of honour when playing for Palestine?

For no 11, who was born in 1998 and was also a student, her first words about football, were as follows:

I just “looooove” football. When I am down and are drowning in negative thoughts and feelings, I go out and play football, either alone or with any person I can get hold of, then the good feeling is taking hold of my body again (…) My dream is to play on the national team with success, to play for Palestine, for our country, for our people and for people in other countries to show that we can.

According to Elling et al. (2014), international sport events may lead to small, short-term eruptions of feelings of national sporting pride for those living in free countries. For no 11, the dream of playing for Palestine is tremendously important motivation to play football and not a short-term feeling. In a country where she might be arrested if she celebrates the flag of her nation, playing on a national team is likely to be a more serious matter.

No 8 was born in 1990 and is one of the oldest players. Her best memories were of being in the Palestine national team playing a 7-a-side game against Bahrain at an Arabic tournament in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, and then qualifying for an Olympic Tournament in 2007:

I scored a goal from the defence-line. That was my first goal on the national team. It was just fantastic. I felt an internal joy, difficult to express. Since then I am called the “sniper” – a soldier who always hits his goal; “madfa’jeyeh” (Arab expression). On scoring I could see nothing. My score changed the game (…) and all the players rushed towards me and gave me a hug and I went down on the field with all the others upon me. What a feeling!! I will never forget it.

This reaction is a typical way of behaving in football after a feeling of success with team-mates. But to be nicknamed ‘the sniper’ was uniquely linked to the political situation in Palestine and to her personal experiences. It was undoubtedly an honour for her and reflects her strong sense of pride to be a Palestinian and to publicly represent her country.

She is also reflecting on how they are treated as footballers:

Two weeks ago, The Bank of Palestine started to donate money to the six best clubs in the Women’s League. We are so proud, because I see this as a sign of respect.

Travelling abroad and media attention seems to be a gateway for the ‘weaker sex’ to obtain some sort of football capital, legitimised by donations from the Bank of Palestine. In the field of football, symbolic capital, for example accumulated prestige or honour (Bourdieu, 1991), is one of the most important properties, because it is allowed to be converted into another. Here, a minor sum of money for their bank.

No 13 was born in 1992 and has like most of the others been playing in Jordan, Tunis, Abudabu and Qatar, and unlike most of them in Malta, as well. Her best memory is:

3-4 years ago we played in a tournament in Amman (Jordan). We won the championship. What a wonderful feeling of winning, a fantastic report in the media, and most of all, Palestine won and the name of our country became visible.

She is afraid that the world is forgetting the existence of Palestine, because the name is no longer on an ordinary map in the Western countries. Therefore, naming the unnameable is important to her and all the others who are playing abroad.

No 15 was born in 1998, and according to the coach is a very promising left leg player. She has a dream:

Our national, women’s football team is going to be so famous that our country, Palestine, is on the world map of sport. Then, everyone gets a feeling of who and what we are.

No 8 has a FIFA coach certificate, is married, studying for a master’s degree in finance (MBA) and working in a non-profit organisation as project coordinator. She says:

2014 was a very good year for me. I was appointed captain on the national team in a match against Qatar (…) I felt like mountains peeled off my back: I am the captain on a Palestine national team – really – it’s a reality!

The captain of a team has a special status. When no 8 at last inhabits this position for the national team of Palestine, she speaks out to tell the interviewer about the unique moment when she was chosen: understood as kairos, a victorious rhetorical situation (Andersen, 1995).

The captain gives preference to playing for Palestine:

I have got a lot of offers to play on other teams in Jordan and Bahrain, but I choose Ramallah.

She could have been playing on a better national team and won international championships – notably, Jordan has an excellent team in the region. However, she chose to play for Palestine and Ramallah. For her, winning international matches was less important than having exposure as a team specifically from Palestine, and having ‘permission to narrate’. She explained that:

We are celebrating our nation during the flag parades.

For free countries, success in sport is important (Elling et al., 2014; Goksøyr, 2013; von der Lippe, 2010) especially in major competitions and most countries are able to send their best athletes to qualify for the Olympic Games and Football World Cups. Palestinian people from the occupied territories are prevented from doing so, and during both the two Intifadas, all sports activities in their home country were stopped and lives were lost. But all those who have played for Ramallah FC and the national team express their pride in representing Palestine, and, together with their sense of national belonging, all of them feel a strong bond with their colleagues in both teams.

The female footballers represented in this study are the first generation of ‘official’ Palestinian football girls and women. According to no 1 (born in 1993 and a student of business), about 70% of people from the West Bank accept women’s football today, whereas five years ago only 30% favoured the women’s game. Like other females in other countries, they are challenging old traditions and are meeting both support and criticism. This contributes to a strengthening of the bond between them. They are also seen as very good representatives of Palestine, in particular because they focus on education. They desire to be respected as players and not as politically-active females outside sports or even possible suicide bombers. They undoubtedly enjoy the life of football and the respect they have generated at home in Palestine and abroad, reflected in the sponsorship donated by the Bank of Palestine, mentioned previously. However, in common with all inhabitants of the West Bank, they are unable spontaneously to take a taxi or bus to visit friends or family without being asked for an ID or stopped by military police. Their leisure choices are few. As a result, football practices and competitions enable them to cultivate and enjoy female friendships and a sense of national belonging.

Female football players as active agents under occupation and crisis: concluding analysis

The focus of this article is on national identity. It gives some fragments of a picture of women’s lives through the prism of football during occupation and crisis. Global sports contain the potential for creating a world in which people from a great number of cultures and nations become known to each other. The female footballers from the West Bank have been able to travel to other countries and to play against and mix with those who have different backgrounds, religions and cultures. Their sense of self and belonging is consolidated and enhanced by their footballing experiences, in contrast to all the best male footballers selected to play for the national men’s team who have fewer opportunities (von der Lippe, 2014a, 2016). Research on groups living in insecure and violent conditions exposes categories like ‘crisis’ and ‘ordinariness’ (Kelly, 2008). During the occupation most Palestinians try to live what passed as ‘ordinary lives’. So did the footballers.

Two questions are posed in this article:

How do the players experience football as a way of normalising crisis during occupation?

How do the players experience the sense of honour when playing for Palestine?

The joy of female football and the kudos of playing internationally, contrasts with the frustrated nationhood of occupation, colonisation and the feeling of surveillance nearly everywhere. In this condition the ‘ordinary’ gives such purchase, because it allows concrete experiences linked to distant aspirations (Kelly, 2008). No 15’s dream is to put the national women’s team of Palestine on the global map of sport, whereas no 14 refers to the players’ abilities to manage life in spite of crisis. This opposes the language of gendered victimisation of the ‘Other’ and is at odds with the dominating order of things. Their agency is a ‘we’ who are occupied, under surveillance, denied freedom, nationhood and a normal everyday life. It is the we of a collective Al-Nakba narrative, who are, according to Said (1984) and Landy (2013), so far denied permission to narrate and oppose the material conditions that hinder this permission. It is, however, both the we as footballers and the we of all the citizens, who will not go down in the face of control, hardship, and violence perpetrated by the Israeli occupiers with whom they are in an asymmetrical power relation.

Despite the various possible Israeli, military actions, Palestinians continue to steadfast loving their sport, that which gives them pride and dignity as legitimate inhabitants of the land (Woroniecka-Krzyzanowska, 2014). Thus, the footballers have created a form of symbolic capital, a recognised power (Bourdieu, 1991) and specific strategies of responding both individually and collectively to adversity in the occupation`s many different manifestations.

Their subjective centre, the zero point of their existence, has to deal with dangerous and changing daily routines in a world permeated by the possibility of life-threatening situations. Grasping autonomy and agency through football, is, therefore, life-enhancing. They share an allegiance for the Ramallah FC and for the national team with deep-seated emotions and passions and a sense of belonging, as well as a sense of honour and privilege. Their strong desire to represent Palestine abroad is rewarded with pride and happiness when they are greeted at home as heroines. It was obviously very important for them to have the opportunity to tell their stories, to be able to speak openly about their backgrounds and with pride about being Palestinian. Ironically and contradictory, although women’s football is generally understood as less important as the man’s game, when they go abroad, they can grasp some autonomy and raise the Palestinian flag. In terms of Israeli security, a group of peaceful Palestine female footballers on the national team is viewed as non-threatening.

In everyday life on the West Bank, the Ramallah female footballers are insignificant, but their football skills have brought them recognition and kudos. The women footballers, however, stand perhaps as the only and official ‘footballers of the nation’ at a time of the absence of all the best players of a Palestinian men’s team in important international events. They are not successful players by the normal standard of winning international cups, but their possible first sex situation in Palestine is linked to the occupation, crisis, honour and prestige, including recognition by the Palestine Football Association and the Bank of Palestine.

An agent’s habitus is, according to Bourdieu (1977), an active residue of past experiences which function to shape thoughts and actions. Thus, we could conjecture that the seventeen female footballers from the Ramallah Football Club embody an ‘Al-Nakba habitus’ – thinking and taking actions shaped by past histories and experiences. In everyday language, they are characterised here as a group of intelligent young women with a burning desire and determination to play football ‘against all the odds’. And that their competence of football skills contributes to the shaping of their lives in positive ways, which gives them a sense of escape and freedom from the dangers and frustrations of Israeli occupation. They play football because they choose to do so, for the love of the game, and as a way of saying to the world when they travel abroad, ‘We are from Palestine’.

Abbreviations
FIFA	=	Federation Intrenationale de Football Association
PLO	=	the Palestinian Liberation Organization
PA	=	the Palestinian Authority
WAFF	=	West Asian Football Ferderation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).