ARAB
SOCCER IN A JEWISH STATE. The integrative enclave. By Tamir Sorek
241pp. Cambridge University Press. Pounds 48. 978 0 521 87048
In the dying years of the British mandate in Palestine, a nascent
Arab sports culture had emerged, based on a network of urban clubs and
a new Arab-language press covering sports and infusing them with a
nationalist politics. The Nakba of 1948 was so comprehensive in
clearing the Palestinian elites from the urban areas that the small
Arab communities left behind in the new Israeli state, to this day,
have no knowledge or record of their predecessors. This is just one of
the many small but perceptive observations in Tamir Sorek's acute and
poignant survey of Arab football in Israel.. Having wiped Arabic
football out, the Israelis began to rebuild it in the 1950s and 60s.
Under the military occupation and rule of Arabic towns that lasted
until 1966, the Histadrut and other Zionist organizations were allowed
to establish football clubs as a form of social service, and as an
experiment in social integration. Those clubs and the many others
formed since have proved to be phenomenally popular.. Arab Israel has
taken to football as perhaps the one arena of Israeli public life where
the massive weight of inequalities, exclusion and repression is
modulated. With huge support from Arab local government and spectators,
Arab teams have climbed into the top divisions, and have consistently
fielded multiethnic sides. Palestinian identities and insignia are
played down or absent. Local identities are emphasized, even Israeli
identities - crowds will usually chant in Hebrew. Arab players have
starred with the Israeli national team and Arab fans have even joined
the ranks of teams like Maccabi Haifa. However there are limits, even
here, to Israel's capacity to treat its Arab citizens as equals..
Racism and abuse from the stands are widespread, concentrated on the
notorious team of the political Right - Beitar Jerusalem. Arab players
with the national team stand for the national anthem, the "Hatikva",
but unsurprisingly cannot bring themselves to sing a song that so
narrowly equates citizenship and Jewishness. The Islamist movement in
Arab Israel has gone down the route of separation instead. After much
convoluted theological reasoning their leaders have decided to support
an entirely independent Islamic football league. This remains a minor
force in Arab football in Israel, but Sorek wonders how much longer
Israel will persist with a strategy of integration in an environment
increasingly inimical to it..
