Reflection on Balata Camp

This was my second experience on a SOAS Football Beyond Borders project, having been to West Africa last year, but I knew that going to Egypt, Palestine and Jordan would be a very big test for everyone. Drawing on our shared passion for football and for the strong ideals that united us, we all strived to do something positive and genuine for this project.

Of all my experiences in the Middle East, one stands out to me the most. During our stay in the Yafa Cultural Center, located within the Balata Refugee camp in the district of Nablus, we came to meet many interesting people, both young and old. Our days consisted of different activities with the people there, but at least once a day we were able to play either an organized match on a local pitch or an informal pick-up game in the stony alleyways of Balata.

On one cool evening, as the sun was just setting, Sam and I decided to stroll the camp and meet people. Never forgetting to leave without a football, we dribbled along casually, which inevitably led to us into a challenge to play by a group of young Palestinian kids. Sam and I eagerly accepted, splitting ourselves up and letting the boys determine the right balance for teams. One of the boys, definitely not on the shy side, nicked the ball and quickly began the match. Having spent my past summers as youth football coach back in the States, I was inspired by how ‘at home’ I felt just being able to play football amongst kids – though I was slightly discouraged after being nut-megged once or twice.

The meaning that I drew from the experience was inspired by the ability of everyone who was playing to momentarily transcend not only the boundaries between us, but also the sense of plight that overcasts the camp. The children were undoubtedly politically conscious, and I can’t begin to fathom what life must be like living under occupation in a refugee camp, but for what it’s worth, the chance to experience moments of happiness is something not to overlook.

While the political element to the conflict in Palestine and Israel is impossible to avoid, all considerations of conflict and difference seemed distant next to the enjoyment of the game in that moment. In light of the recent turmoil and horrendous violence that has plagued the Middle East, I recognize and accept that some grassroots efforts, such as our recent project, won’t have the necessary impact required to end suffering on the ground. However, one thing that sustains grassroots projects remains true, and that is the need to foster hope and to resist suffering. Embracing humanity and hope is as important as it has ever been, and my experience in the Middle East has only underscored that for me.

The Conflict

When I was at school, we had one lesson about the Israel-Palestine conflict but as it was just one of the conflicts we learnt about no one really thought much about it. We certainly didn't consider it a conflict that was relevant and still ongoing.

Apart from that one lesson, I didn't hear much about Israel and Palestine until I joined the SOAS football team in my second year at university. I went from not hearing about it at all to hearing about it all the time. However I continued to ignore their persistent and somewhat irritating insights and opinions on the conflict as I reasoned that as there are so many problems in the world, it hardly seems justified to harp on about just one of them.

Indeed I suppose I deliberately decided not to learn anything about Israel and Palestine, as it seemed such a 'commercial' mainstream conflict to follow. This continued up until I heard that we were going to actually go and visit both of the countries last September. Even then though, I still decided not to learn or read about the history and reasons for the ongoing problems. This was in large part because I felt that the image that I was presented was more often than not that the Palestinians were a marginalised and abused people, facing incredible oppression. Hence I decided that rather than rely on the media for supposedly 'trusted' information and an unbiased account, that the best option would be to see things through my own eyes and form my own opinion.

Before we had even entered Israel, the dogmatic questioning faced by Omar and Jo (the Lebos on the team) had not entirely endeared me to the border guards. However, in reality the border guards were just doing their jobs and due to the tensions, they were justified in doing their job dutifully albeit to the extreme. When we arrived at the bus stop from where we would get a bus to Tel Aviv, the refusal of the locals to talk to Jo and Omar when they asked them questions disgusted me and unfortunately only hinted of things to come. Throughout our brief time in Israel, I felt uncomfortable and uneasy as Israeli Defence Force soldiers were everywhere. The interviews that Jasper and Matt captured with Israelis in Jerusalem demonstrated some despicable viewpoints, which disgusted me. Presumably however, some similar views must also be held by Palestinians. Indeed since returning from the football tour, I have joined up to some Palestinian groups on the internet and at times their vehemance for the Israelis and opinions also shock me.

It is only through these online groups that I have experienced outright hatred for the Israelis. Indeed when we were in Palestine I was amazed at the fact that everyone we met preached peace, a desire for an end to the conflict and oppression and accepted an Israeli state. It was in Palestine that I realised the daily oppression they must face whether it be from the numerous check points, the threat of settlers coming to town centres and the visible settlements at strategic points built on Palestinian land. The wall also seems a bit oppressive.

The Palestinian people really impressed me with their outlook on life and their desire to control their own destiny without Israel controlling them and their movements. Since the tour, I have tried to spread the portrayal of the Palestinian people that I experienced that comes from first-hand experience and not from possibly biased media outlets. This has been somewhat hard though as I have been living in Zanzibar where only a very small minority of the people I have met have even heard of Palestine.

My greatest success so far has been whilst I was in Zanzibar studying Swahili. I had training every day with a team in the Premier League, and before every match we would go and have lunch together. All of the players always ordered Coke, and would offer me a Coke as well. When I refused, they were surprised and asked me why I didn't want one. I proceeded to tell them that by buying Coca-Cola products they support the Israeli state. Unfortunately, however, they had never heard of Israel and Palestine. I therefore embarked on a long explanation about apartheid South Africa and the politics of racism. After an epic 15-minute monologue in Swahili, I concluded '...and that’s why I don't drink Coca-Cola products.' After an unimpressed short silence, I added 'Also - its bad for you before playing football'. Although people kept on drinking their Cokes, this apparently had the desired effect, as the next week the players were only allowed water and juice before the match due to a mysterious 'doctor' concluding that Coke is bad for you before playing football!

While I was originally skeptical about the Palestinian movement, the only conclusion I could reach from what we experienced is that the peaceful movement should be supported to try and bring an end to the Israeli oppression.

Apartheid Israel

Whilst growing up, Israel/Palestine wasn’t on my radar at all. I didn’t pay notice to British politics, let alone foreign conflicts in seemingly distant lands. All I knew was that Israel was the Jewish state, and with Jewish heritage in the family and Tottenham’s visible Jewish community, it seemed like a great thing – a proud nation born out of a horrendous act of genocide.

At my university (Goldsmiths) there were lots of pro-Palestine activists, and a strong solidarity campaign, but I never really looked into it. I didn’t understand the reasons for the conflict, and I never tried to – I always felt that if anything, my ‘side’ should be with Israel. If the issue ever arose I would trot out misinformed statements like “there are loads of Arabic/Muslim states, the Jews need and deserve one too”. I never went much deeper than that, because I didn’t know what I was talking about, but I felt that Israel was probably a good thing.

When I knew that we were going to the region for the next instalment of Football Beyond Borders, I started to actually research the subject, and read a couple of books about it – one general history, and one by Thomas Friedman. After reading these, I realised that I had definitely been misinformed before, and for the first time my sense of justice and humanity made me feel pro-Palestinian. However, I still had a lingering feeling that some Palestinian solidarity movements within the UK bordered on anti-Semitism (which I despise, having read about it after I discovered my great-grandfathers had fled Germany for the UK to escape the Nazi regime, and experienced it in Tottenham). So going into the trip, I was keen to maintain a balance which I felt was often overlooked, and was one of the few members who advocated us playing a game in Israel as well if it was logistically possible.

However, as soon as we entered Israel via the Taba/Eilat crossing, my feelings started to change. I think border guards and police forces across the world are all intrinsically institutionally racist, and never to be trusted or liked anyway, but the IDF at the border took this to a new level, with their policy of open racial profiling meaning that Omar and Joseph (the Arab-looking guys in the team) were immediately separated and heavily questioned, with a further seven of us also held behind for 6 hours and questioned intermittently for no apparent reason other than to punish us for having been to Syria or having non-white skin. The worst part of this experience though was not being held but the obvious contempt in which the non-white members of the group were held, especially Omar and Joseph, who both handled the situation with quiet dignity.

Cab drivers are another bad measure of a country’s levels of tolerance and respect. But both drivers who took us from the border to the Bus Station were particularly contemptible racists, spewing their hate from as soon as we stepped in the car. In addition to this, we were also pretty sure that we were being followed to the bus station by the IDF, who presumably were checking or story. All of which added up to create a really unpleasant first impression of Israel. It was the first time for me personally that I had felt so uncomfortable and unpleasantly about a place I had visited.

Throughout our short time in Israel, the contempt in which Muslim or Arabic people were held was clear for all to see – with Joseph and Omar garnering nasty looks, and with some Jewish Israeli’s refusing to speak to Joseph, give him directions or answer his questions.

Then came the most obvious symbol if Israeli Apartheid – the wall. As British citizens in an Israeli bus we breezed through, but this is obviously not the case for Palestinians – when we told our hosts in Balata and Farkha that we were going to Jersualem to see the old city, for example, they all told us of how envious they were, as they had never been allowed to go.

On the Palestinian side of the wall, the divide between Palestinians and Israeli’s was even more evident than in Israel itself. This was evident not only in the clear divide which the wall signified, but also in the architectue of the space, which was once again visibly Middle Eastern, making the weird North American/European mesh of Israel seem even more out of place – as if a medium-sized American County and a large Belgian city had both been dropped simultaneously onto the land from a great height., smashing and mixing into one generic ‘Western’ place as they landed.

After just a few days in Nablus, we then experience a small slice of Apartheid first-hand, as we were denied access to ancient Samaria by an IDF roadblock on the hill. We had forgotten our passports, and anyway had a Palestinian driver. When Joseph went to speak to the soldiers at the roadblock, who told him to wait for a short time, when we would then be let through. Speaking in Hebrew, they then joked to themselves that they would make us wait for an hour or two before denying us entry. Unbeknown to them though, our driver understood Hebrew, and thus turned us around, saving us the humiliating wait.

And so after just two days in Israel/Palestine, the evidence of Israeli Apartheid was smacking us in the face. In Balata and Farkha, we also experienced the sudden turn from enjoyment to panic and worry which Palestinians must feel far too often, as the IDF came through the area late at night. Although we could barely begin to empathise with the lives of our hosts, the small slice of life in Apartheid Israel that we experienced was more than enough evidence that the way that our generation reacts to the injustice faced by Palestinians on a daily basis will more likely than not define how future generations judge us.

Physical Poverty in the West Bank

Though I thought I was going to Palestine with an open mind and ready to learn, my first experiences had to wash away the dead wood before they could create their own impressions. The polarising, essentialising Western media may well be at the root of these misconceptions.

By the most widely-used definitions of poverty – which are also the most superficial – the people of the West Bank are not amongst the poorest in the world. From the lack of homelessness to the reliable provision of water and electricity, the observed Palestine stood at odds with the painted picture (although Gaza, of course, is a different story). But further still, I witnessed a society that held university education in high regard, that saw the pursuit of truth as an end goal in itself and a society more politically and historically aware than that of my home country. These are not things that I had been able to learn through a British media coverage which paints all Palestinians as either menacing terrorists or helpless victims.

When I was talking to Abla, a Palestinian woman who hosted us in the West Bank, she told me a fitting phrase in Arabic, which translates as: ‘You don’t know what is happening on the other side of a wall’. Referring to a better-hidden physical poverty, a more private and acceptable suffering, this was a sharp reminder that my impressions did not necessarily tell the whole story. Indeed, when we smelt the stench of sewage from an Israeli settlement polluting a Palestinian water source, we clearly witnessed just one of the physical hardships of occupation. Despite this, absolute poverty was not the root cause of the passionate desire for change held by all the Palestinians we met. Rather, it was their lack of freedoms and self-determination.

This made the role of charity in the West Bank appear particularly ludicrous. The aid industry is often criticised for its short-sightedness, tokenism and hypocrisy, but nowhere bears this out more than the village of Farkha in the West Bank, where a public square stands built with USAID funding, whilst the village’s inhabitants are held up at IDF checkpoints on their way to work and university, and see new Israeli settlements being built weekly on once-Palestinian land.

Jerusalem, and a forgotten side to my youth

I am the son of an Irish Catholic and a Sri Lankan Chinese Catholic. This unforgiving cocktail (no oxymoron intended) would suggest a very regimented and doctrinaire upbringing; in many ways this suggestion would be correct.

Christmas and Easter were huge celebrations in my household and Sundays were always reserved for a trip to the church and then to the football pitch for the inevitable Sunday league mud-fest. Stories of Jesus were to be my first encounter with the land of Israel/Palestine, (or what was called Judea in Jesus’ time). Stories of healing, teaching, betrayal and sacrifice would be the major themes that would mark my first conceptualisation of this terminally troubled land. At school and at home, the public and the private of a young boys life would have these themes, which in turn would be linked to such historic and legendary places like the Sinai, Bethlehem and Jerusalem.

Then puberty hit like a freight train, and although I was never a bible-bashing zealot, there was a noticeable transformation in my priorities, as “God” became “goddesses” and communal wine turned into, well, just wine. These years can be seen to have been marked by endless hedonistic nights with alcohol in a park (and as I got older, a nightclub) - however, politics also started to grab my attention, and maturation in that sense also accompanied my adolescent years. My politics were, in retrospect, defined by standing for justice, and fighting the corner of the poor and downtrodden. Discrimination on any grounds turned my stomach at a very young age.

At the time I believed that these morals had come from the works of Plato, Marx, Lenin, John Pilger, Noam Chomsky, Arthur Miller and all of these other A-level favourites. The secularisation of my politics, I believe, was beginning and my altruism was defined by this process I was living through. The war in Iraq is bad. Why? Because Chomsky says it’s an imperialist plot to grab Iraq's oil. Bush’s negligence in regards to those in New Orleans is bad. Why? Because a New Left Review article states that poor blacks in the southern states fall at the bottom of America's socio-political totem pole. When I decided to back Joseph and carve out an ideology for the tour to Egypt and Palestine my ideas were still, I believed at the time, guided by these secular humanistic values. As I entered Jerusalem however, something awoke inside me.

The stories of Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a Donkey, the last supper, Judas’ betrayal and the sacrifice at Calgary had happened on this land. I say 'stories' because that’s what they are to me, however that does not take away from the eerie ghosts that awoke within my consciousness. For a long time I have called myself an atheist, and rejected the singular and corrosive ethical narrative espoused from the Vatican, but I have not taken stock of the irreversible effect these stories have had upon how I view myself and the world. At the centre of the faith I had held on to so dearly for so many years is the idea of social justice - something I didn’t know when I was six, sixteen or six months ago. Even reading the works of liberation theologists from Northern Ireland and Peru did not sway me into believing in this concept. However, I have since taken stock of visiting such a poigniant destination like Jerusalem, and this has enabled me to acknowledge that the idea of social justice was planted in my head at an early age via the story of Jesus, and has transcended my rejection of his story as fact and divinely ordained. Without this personal history, I cannot say that my politics would be what they are today, and I cannot say whether I would have devoted my time to the last three tours in the way I did.

As I write this, I have been offered a place at an internship in Jerusalem which begins in three months. It researches human rights abuses against Palestinians in the city and surrounding areas. Jerusalem, the city which in many ways initiated my political journey, will see me return in order to continue it. The philosophy that was unconsciously implanted in me by its most famous dweller is the genealogical driving force for my decision to return and fight for the rights of the Palestinians.