Sun of Sakhnin: The National team of Sakhnin

"It seems to me a very old quarrel; I suppose it's in the blood, and perhaps will only end with it" - Franz Kafka, Jackals and Arabs

When Bilal awoke one morning from delirious dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a...fan of the Israeli national team, draped in a flag blue and white. "What happened to him?" his wife thought, aghast. For Bilal, it was a dream. He had spent the previous night, March 26th, 2005, at the cavernous National Stadium in Ramat Gan, watching Israel's national team play Ireland's alone among 40,000 Jews. Ireland scored early on, but the slightly drunk Bilal vainly proclaimed that Abas Suan, an Arab who at the time was Sakhnin's captain as well as a national team substitute, would even the score. When he improbably did just that in the waning minutes of the game, the euphoric fans hoisted Bilal aloft in celebration, carrying him out of the stadium and into the night. Hours later, Bilal went to sleep with a new blanket and newfound hope for Israeli society.

He may have been less sanguine had he been watching the game along with soldiers of the Golani unit. Their celebration was short-lived, for when they realized who it was who saved the day, happiness soon turned to anguish and finally gave way to vehement cursing. The equalizer was no longer a source of pride, but rather an insult to their ethnic ego.
Bilal's hangover lasted but a week. As with all dreams, his too was doomed to end. Only a week later he found himself sitting in Ramat Gan again, watching Sakhnin take on Beitar Jerusalem when the Jewish fans unfurled a banner that read, "Abas Suan, you do not represent us". Ever since, national team games have been "just another game" to Bilal.

Looking back today on that week of wishful thinking, Bilal is mildly amused at his own naiveté. He smiles bitterly and says he owes a debt of gratitude to Beitar's fans for waking him up. An Arab seeking to fit in to Israeli society, he explains, needs to do better than 100%. But in a moment of considerable honesty, Bilal also admits that if finding a job in Israel is not easy for an Israeli Arab, it's not exactly Kafkaesque, either, and if Arabs are unable to find jobs other than teaching it's partly because they don't bother looking.
 
***
 
Actually, perhaps ironically, it was a teaching job that I was looking for in Sakhnin. It hasn't worked out yet, and it probably won't, not least because hardly anyone is doing any teaching at all in Israel these days. Middle and high-school teachers were on strike for over 2 months, and on a Saturday in late November (the 17th), a huge demonstration was held in Tel Aviv in support of them. Not far away, in Ramat Gan, another sizable crowd was congregating in order to watch Israel face off against Russia in a qualifying game which held very little significance for Israel.
 
Demonstrations such as the one held in Rabin Square in Tel Aviv are usually held on Saturday nights, often clashing with coinciding soccer games and thus providing a compelling study in contrasts in Israeli society. One such conflict of interests took place slightly over twelve years ago, when Beitar Jerusalem and Maccabi Haifa scored two apiece while a peace rally took place in a square which in the aftermath of that night's tragic turn of events would be renamed Rabin Square. Twelve years to the day, Beitar Jerusalem and Maccabi Haifa were back on the same pitch, playing to a scoreless tie in a game overshadowed by the overture of boos of Beitar fans observing a moment of silence in honor of the late Prime Minister Itzhak Rabin. Twelve years had passed, twelve years during which the violence had been transported into the stadium. The barbarian booing showed just how far Israeli society hadn't come.
 
It was interesting, then, that Sakhninians turned out in droves to watch the game at Abu Abdo's café. But then, in Sakhnin education often takes a back seat to soccer. Schools are quite willing to interrupt classes and bus students to the team's games. Long before the recent strike began, there was only city in Israel in which the first day of school was canceled. The parents here were protesting the dire dearth of classrooms, though nobody seemed to notice the irony of the local soccer team playing its home opener on that same day in a stadium funded by tax-payers' shekels.
 
Still, soccer is uncommonly important to Arabs, moreso than to Jews, and is all the more important when it's the national team playing. In their own way, they were showing solidarity with Israeli society, or at least expressing their desire to fit in to it. In a world in which nationality, as Tamir Sorek points out in his book Playing with Identities, is as much an integral component of one's identity as gender, sports - what with all the striking similarities between nationalism and fandom - come closest to filling that need for those who have no nationality. When Suan scored his momentous equalizer against Ireland and Walid Bdeir tallied the tying score four days later against France, it served as proof that in soccer, if nothing else in Israeli society, Arabs are on a level playing field. As a national symbol uniquely devoid of religious symbolism, it is the rare symbol around which Arabs can rally alongside Jews, a symbol which in their eyes represents the hope of fitting in. And so it's been with great consternation that they've watched Suan and Bdeir grow old and grow out of their national team uniform. When Israel played Croatia last month it was the first time in a long time that there was no Arab on the field, or even the bench. The national team loses 20% of its Arab fans when none of their own take the pitch, Sorek's studies show.
 
But while Jews view the national team in the context of international competition, the Arabs' perspective is focused inward, on the national team as an image of Israeli society. That difference was borne out in the complaint voiced by Abd Rabah, Sakhnin's defenseman, who recently said, "It's impossible that they couldn't find in all the league one Arab player to represent us." Competition, clearly, is secondary to him, and the incidental lack of Arabs worthy at the present time to be considered among Israel's best irrelevant - respect and recognition were foremost in his mind. Wissam the grocer was similarly distraught, and he asked me to sit down beside him so he could provide me with a "parable". The roster of the national team, he argued, should be assembled like Bnei Sakhnin's - a blend of Arabs and Jews. I'm not sure that constitutes a parable, but it was indicative of how he sees the national team - and of how he feels wronged.
 
Judging by the reactions of patrons of Abu Abdo who came out to watch the national team play, they seem similarly conflicted. Against England, the café seemed oddly sterile and there was an awkward uneasiness in the air, only two weeks after I saw tempers flaring and hookahs flying during a Beitar game. Against Russia, fans to my right cheered Israel, while those on my left jeered. "Good for them" one man said as he got up to go, impressed with Israel's sensational 2-1 victory over Russia.
 
But then, if Sakhnin seems less inclined than Arabs in other parts of the country to embrace the national team, it is quite understandable. They don't need a national team with a Zionist anthem that alienates them, or with Jewish fans who shun them. After all, they have their own national team - they have Bnei Sakhnin.