Kick-starting peace
Back in April 2008, we included an article in CVIP called “Aussie Rules to the Rescue” where 30 boys from different cultural backgrounds such as Orthodox Jews, Ethiopian immigrants, Palestinian Christians and Muslims as well as Sudanese immigrants competed in the 3rd International Cup to celebrate the 150th Anniversary of the Australian Football League or Aussie Rules.
Although the Israeli-Palestinian footy team did not come home with the trophy (loss against PNG and Nauru; and won against China and Finland), it did however, plant the seed of peace and trust between the different young men.
Tanya Oziel, the Director of the Australian arm of the Peres Centre for Peace, said: “This was always about using sport as a way of breaking down barriers, and I believe we managed to do just that. It was an unbelievable bonding experience. The players were crying when they separated. They were devastated to leave each other. It was an amazing journey. It worked, and people saw it.”
Now that it’s all over, the team – 13 Israelis and 13 Palestinians who never knew of code before January this year – have returned to either side of the separation between Israel and the West Bank. But the players understood they were not being trained for new sporting careers, or that the team was a long-term prospect. Rather, they were using the sport to learn – not about a far-flung indigenous code but about their so-called “enemies” at home.
Gal Peleg, one of the Israeli players, recalls the challenges the team faced: “We needed to overcome a lot of obstacles and barriers along the way, starting from learning a new game, a hard game, and we don’t have any AFL ovals in Israel or Palestine, so we needed to play on soccer fields. Some of the players needed to travel three or four hours for every training session. Then they have to get a visa and permits for every training session, go through checkpoints: they all are volunteering for this and taking time out of work or study just to be here.”
Oziel has no doubt that the initiative was successful. She points to Yonatan Belik, who is about to be conscripted into the Israeli Defence Forces. Before he joined the Peace Team in January, he had never met a Palestinian. Now he calls the Palestinians he played alongside his friends. “The Palestinians I have met through this project are normal people who love sport and this is a great way to introduce the two cultures”, Belik says. “My feelings toward Palestinians have already started to change, and I feel more connected to them.”
Reference: Kick-starting peace, Dan Goldberg, Rhapsody, Issue 5 October – November 2008, p.15