Sport, especially football, plays a positive role in Palestine, by not only bringing solace to individuals during difficult times but also aiding in transforming and building communities living under brutal military occupation.
Successful Palestinians living in the diaspora often initiate projects meant to uplift their communities in the homeland and Dubai-based Palestinian businessman Abdullah Yacoub, motivated by his love for his homeland, felt it imperative to share in his material success by doing something positive to lift the spirits of his people as well as to support them in their present plight, beginning with the village of Budrus, where his roots lie.
Villages such as Budrus find themselves on the “seam line” and are most affected by the proximity of the separation wall which divides Palestinian communities and also creates numerous obstacles in their daily lives.
“There are two things important in life that bring people together in love and peace and help them to be open to each other: sports and music,” Yacoub says. “I have established and funded The Border Village League for the past three years and in so doing, given the Palestine youth the opportunity to play football as well as helped to remove several obstacles that border communities face, namely a lack of interaction between each other and a lack of a football pitch. Budrus, to this day, lacks football pitches for the village youth to use, despite the presence of available land which the Occupation denies us to utilise. We also provide the players and coaches with all they need to play football; uniforms, boots, footballs, nets, etc.”
Yacoub emphasises that he wants to encourage youth to play and compete, so as to send a signal to the world that there is a country and a people who have lost their land and who have been cut off from each other by a separation wall “but through our Border Village League we provide them pitches to play on and hold competitions”.
The Border Village League was officially launched in 2013. The first villages chosen to participate in the inaugural event were Al Midya, Budrus, Shuqba and Kibbya with Na’alin Sports Club providing the use of their football pitch — the only full size pitch in the immediate area. The Palestine Football Association supported this new competition and the local Red Crescent Society sent along a medical team for the duration of the tournament.
It was a resounding success, Kibbya won against Budrus on a penalty shootout. In the spirit of the game, when the Budrus team returned home, the entire village showed up to cheer their arrival.
The trophy bears the name “Ostaz Yacoub Cup” but Yacoub readily attributes the success of the competition to all those involved and driving it in Palestine. “The competition owes much to the efforts of community leaders such as Shaikh Mohammad Morrar from Budrus, who has been instrumental in bringing the sports club officials together regularly to make all arrangements for the competition.”
Shaikh Mohammad Morrar explains: “The most significant obstacle we encountered was that most of the teams had very little experience. It was quite a challenge preparing the teams. Also, the competition is held in seam line communities, far from the major cities, and facilities are far from adequate. For instance, in the eight communities now participating in the league, only Na’alin has a full sized football pitch, but in wet weather it is not playable and night games cannot be staged as lighting has yet to be installed.”
Regardless of the obstacles and challenges, Morrar fondly recalls the most memorable aspect of the first competition — getting the players from each community to play as one team. “Some villages had internal problems and had two teams, but the tournament helped these communities to unite and participate as one team, making people in their communities very happy to see this.”
The past year saw an expanded competition, which pitted eight Western Ramallah seam line communities against each other over 3 months, with Na’alin winning in a close encounter with Deir Kades, taking part in the competition for the very first time.
The long-term goals of the Border Village League are include expanding the competition by adding eight teams from Qalqilya and Tulkarem; have two levels of competitions — junior and senior; women’s teams, which may take time due to the conservative nature of the rural communities, but the organisers consider it a firm goal, supported by the Palestinian Football Association; and to establish in each cluster of four seam line communities participating in the Border Village League a full-sized football pitch with all-weather playing surface, changing rooms and a grandstand.
The concept is to have each academy serving four communities by virtue of sharing the facilities and to achieve all of this foreign sponsors would be most welcome.
Yacoub is nevertheless satisfied that regardless of the difficulty of communication between villages and bringing them all together, the competition is pursued each year. “Increasingly we find families attending the games to cheer their teams on, the local boys follow the competition closely dreaming of the day they can represent their community, and seam line communities that have not interacted much with neighbouring towns and villages are now developing closer relationships. Most importantly, some communities which did not have unity, have now through the Border Village League obtained greater internal cooperation and understanding.”
Yacoub hopes to contact football clubs globally, explaining to them that Palestine supports its youth and “we not only need material support but also moral support to make competitions such as The Border Village League successful”.
Yacoub notes with much satisfaction and a measure of optimism, “I am very happy to see the results of our simple initiative in setting up the Border Village League and it is my desire to see the competition expand to new communities, bringing greater unity and cooperation among seam line communities, to provide healthy and safe activities for village youth and in the long term to bring more awareness of the plight of these marginalised Palestinian communities.”
Yacoub, who played football at school and made the first team, has done what many Palestinians in the diaspora generally do — contribute in a positive way to the daily life of their people, and in his case he has provided the youth in seam line communities with healthy activities through football and promoted a spirit of community in the towns and villages involved in the competition.
Rafique Gangat, author of Ye Shall Bowl on Grass, is based in occupied Jerusalem
