Uniting the divisions

Twenty-four hours before arriving in England for his team’s decisive match against Newcastle United on Thursday, the chairperson of Hapoel Bnei Sakhnin, Mazen Gnaiem, still had no idea which airport his team was about to arrive at. Indeed, he was rather surprised to discover that London had more than one.

The sudden upgrade from being an obscure Arab football club in northern Israel to an international team playing in the Uefa Cup is still bewildering, and not only for Gnaiem.

Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims around Britain were wondering whether Sakhnin deserved their support as the side plays under the Israeli flag, fields Jewish players, employs a Jewish coach and sings the Israeli anthem before its international matches.

‘As long as in the depth of the heart, a Jewish soul bustles, we haven’t lost our 2 000-year-old hope to be a free nation in Zion,” is hardly a text many Arabs will identify with.

At the same time, Jews were unsure whether Sakhnin can be considered a ‘proper” Israeli club.

And, on top of everything, they played this crucial match on the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashana.

But the club is used to such reactions. At home, says Gnaiem, ‘We are caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. The Israeli establishment refuses to acknowledge us as equal citizens of Israel, and many Arabs tell us that we are ‘Zionists’ because we play under the Israeli flag. I had a debate on an Arab radio station with someone from the Gulf emirates.

”He said he’d be willing to support us were we to play under the Palestinian flag. I tried to explain that just as Palestinian footballers who live in Jordan or Egypt would be playing under the local flag, so do we play under the Israeli flag. He wasn’t convinced.”

Under their Jewish coach, Eyal Lahman, Sakhnin have adopted a defensively minded style that got them promoted to Israel’s premier league for the first time at the end of the 2002/03 season. In May this year, while languishing at the bottom of the league, they beat Hapoel Haifa 4-1 in the national cup final after trailing 0-1 at half-time. More than 25 000 Arab citizens and Jewish neutrals celebrated the club’s victory, which won them entry into this season’s Uefa Cup.

Racist reactions were rare, and came mostly from Beitar Jerusalem’s hardcore supporters, consisting of foul-mouthed Arab-bashers. The animosity between Sakhnin and Beitar is acute. ‘Death to the Arabs” is the most frequent chant on Beitar’s stands; and its owners are proud of their affiliations to the rightwing Likud Party.

‘We received immense support from the Jewish public,” says Sakhnin’s captain, international midfielder Abass Suwan. ‘As for Beitar’s supporters, we ignore them. They hate Arabs, they hate other Jewish teams, sometimes I think they even hate themselves.”

The authorities were quick to realise the public relations value of Sakhnin’s achievement. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon took a short break from masterminding the assault on Gaza to phone and congratulate the team. Yasser Arafat and Prince Hassan of Jordan climbed on the bandwagon.

‘That’s all very nice,” sighs Gnaiem, ‘but what does it help me when I don’t even have a ground to play our home games?”

The stadium is the most painful subject, and a sharp reminder of how they are discriminated against. The football association and the police banned the local shabby ground for reasons of public safety and for the lack of facilities for TV transmission, so Sakhnin has to play its ‘home” matches in Haifa, 50km away. The ministry of housing has promised a measly two million shekels (£250 000) towards a new ground, but the club still needs another nine million.

With a budget of 10-million shekels a year, Sakhnin is the poorest team in the Israeli premier league.

‘It is a disgrace,” says Suwan. ‘The fact that we don’t have a decent ground brings shame not only on us, but on the whole state of Israel. They can use us for propaganda purposes, but they should give us equal treatment in return.”

Avi Danan, one of Sakhnin’s three Jewish players, is slightly more optimistic. He comes from the impoverished northern development town of Beit She’an.

‘When I was playing for Hapoel Beit She’an and we went up to the premier league we also did not have a ground. It took a few years before they got the budget to start building it. Hopefully, we will soon have a ground, too.”

Gnaiem says it is hard to persuade Jewish players to join the team.

‘At first they all say, ‘No, I’m not going to Sakhnin, not to an Arab team.’ And then, once I’ve convinced the player himself, I still have to plead with his wife, his mother, his best friend, until they agree he should try it. Once they yield, they don’t want to leave. When Sakhnin lost four of its sons in October 2000 [killed by police in the second intifada riots], our Jewish players were the first to ring and offer their condolences.”

Danan was not difficult to persuade: his brother already played there and told him about the warm atmosphere. Despite Beit She’an’s reputation as a bastion of Likud, and the fact that most of Danan’s family is orthodox, he doesn’t have any problem with playing in an Arab team: ‘There’s no difference between Jews and Arabs. My parents grew up in Morocco among Arabs, I speak Arabic, and the culture of hospitality in Sakhnin resembles ours.

‘Whenever I drive into Sakhnin I find it hard to leave. People keep inviting me to their homes, to weddings, to family events: I’m surrounded with love. I could have moved on this year but opted to stay. Our chairman, Mazen, is like a father to me.”

Had the Sakhnin experience changed his political views?

‘For me, it has nothing to do with politics,” says Danan. ‘Bnei Sakhnin is the proof that Jews and Arabs can live together.”

After the suicide bombings in Beersheba two weeks ago, Newcastle asked for a change of venue for the return match on September 30. Uefa refused.

‘We are not angry with Newcastle for trying to avoid Israel. We understand their fears,” says Gnaiem.

Danan is the boldest. ‘I’m well aware of their advantages, but if anybody thinks we are coming to Newcastle to appreciate the view and get all excited about standing close to the English footballers we all admire, then they might have another think coming,” he says.

If Danan is slightly worried, it is about being away from his family and his local synagogue in Beit She’an on the eve of Rosh Hashana, the Jewish new year.

‘I know that Mazen is going to take great care that I will get to eat the kosher food I need, and have the best holiday under the circumstances,” he comforts himself, ‘but do you think there’s a Sephardi synagogue in Newcastle?” —