MIDEAST: Settlers Aim a Kick at Football

• by Jerrold Kessel and Pierre Klochendler (jerusalem)
• Thursday, December 03, 2009
• Inter Press Service

The latest example of how bureaucracy is being put to use in sidelining any Palestinian aspirations is unfolding in Israeli courts. It involves a tiny patch of land, just 110 by 70 metres - actually, the first national football stadium in the occupied West Bank.

The Palestinian Football Association was planning to dedicate the stadium at the end of this month. 'Was' - because, by order of the Israeli authorities, final construction work has been halted.

Football, so much a symbol of successful national aspirations around the world, is now providing another politically laden symbol in a bigger 'match' - that pitting Israelis and Palestinians against one another.

Bureaucratic bigotry is fast giving the Faisal Husseini stadium another dimension - as a symbol of stolen land, of stolen national aspirations.

The problem comes from those who are objecting to the very existence of the stadium as much as they actually object to the very existence of the Palestinians as a people. They believe that they are the original owners of the land rather than come-by-lately interlopers.

'They' are nationalist Jewish settlers from the settlement of Psagot which was created in the early 1980s when Israel first began engaging in a major settlement drive encroaching on Palestinian towns and villages.

Psagot - literally the summit - sits right on top of El-Bireh, and on the town's land. For them, though, it's the Palestinians who have been living as interlopers for generations in the town of El-Bireh where the stadium is located.

Now, the settlers have decided to do more than just object to Palestinians having the right to plan their own lives and where they play their football. They have petitioned the Israeli High Court of Justice in Jerusalem, arguing that the stadium threatens the future of the development of their settlement.

Until now, the Palestinian national team had been forced to play all its 'home' games away from home, in Jordan or Qatar.

Just last month, with much fanfare, the new stadium hosted its first international, a women's match between Jordan and Palestine. The match was attended by Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and Jibril Rajoub, president of the Palestinian Football Association, a prominent Palestinian political figure who used to head the 'Preventive Security Apparatus' in the West Bank.

The stadium complex covers an area of 11 dunam (almost three acres). France and Germany are paying for the construction of stands. The infrastructure and floodlighting and the scoreboard are being financed by the El-Bireh municipality which owns the land and within whose jurisdiction the stadium is located.

A year ago Sepp Blatter, president of FIFA, football's world governing body which is financing the overall building of the 8,000 seat stadium, laid the cornerstone with Fayyad.

Jurisdiction over West Bank land has long been the cornerstone of legal, political, diplomatic and even armed battles between the Palestinians and Israel, generally over Israeli plans to expand settlements - battles which Israel almost invariably 'wins'.

Who has jurisdiction over the future of the West Bank was also the cornerstone of the 1993 Oslo peace accords. Again to Israel's advantage, the question of who is sovereign in the bulk of the West Bank - designated under Oslo 'Area C' - has yet to be resolved. By Oslo 'Area C' remains under Israeli control until a final peace agreement is negotiated.

That is the basis of the current 'legal' and bureaucratic battle over the stadium. Twenty years prior to Oslo, the El-Bireh municipality submitted for approval to Israel's 'Civil Administration', that is, the Israeli occupation authorities, a detailed plan for the area where the stadium is now located.

Final approval was given seven years later by Israel's National Planning and Building Council and Supreme Planning Council.

The stadium saga did not end there, however. Final, it turns out, is never final in the ongoing settler-Palestinian battles, even when the full weight of world football has endorsed the project, and with Israeli government blessing.

On Oct. 11, Israeli troops, accompanying officials of the 'Civil Administration' arrived at the stadium via Psagot to deliver a stop-work order.

The document claims that work on the stadium stands is being carried out 'without a permit....You are hereby obligated, in accordance with the 1966 City, Village and Buildings Planning Law, to cease activity upon and use of said land, and to raze the building ... and to restore the location to its previous state within 7 days.'

Otherwise, the El-Bireh municipality was warned, 'all legal means will be taken against you, including demolition of the structure, and any means required to restore the situation to its prior state, at your expense.'

It emerges that the land on which the stadium has been erected has the misfortune to be defined as belonging to Area C, 'a political designation, which was supposed to be temporary,' Samih Al-Abed, a former planning minister in the Palestinian Authority and a member of Palestinian peace negotiating teams with Israel told IPS.

El-Bireh provides all services to residents, such as garbage collection, maintenance, renovation and construction, says al-Abed, including those bits of Area C that are within the municipal boundaries.

The question is: why, all of a sudden, now with the project near completion, has Israel suspended the work and threatened to undo the whole internationally-backed endeavour?

It appears to be all because of the settlers.

The Psagot settlement, assisted by Regavim, a settler advocacy group, petitioned the High Court last month to order the Israeli defence minister and the Civil Administration to tear down the stadium.

At the court, the petitioners raised the specter of 'ten thousand inflamed Palestinians rising up after a game and venting their anger and/or frustration and/or frenzy on nearby Psagot.'

Regavim defines itself as an 'apolitical movement dedicated to preserve state lands and national land resources.'

The court approved an interim injunction freezing further stadium construction. It is due to re-address the issue within the coming week.

El-Bireh officials are convinced that the objection to the stadium is riddled with ulterior motives. They see a connection between the construction freeze on the stadium with another Israeli government construction freeze - the partial freezing of settlement activity announced last week by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The Palestinian Authority is refusing to return to the negotiating table with Israel so long as Israel does not totally freeze all settlement building including in occupied East Jerusalem.

Says Samih al-Abed: 'This is typical Israeli pressure: There's nothing accidental about the timing. It's as if they are saying 'Either you go back to negotiations or we punish you. We'll do whatever we can to disrupt your lives'.'

European diplomats are aghast. 'This could become a major diplomatic issue between Germany and Israel,' one German official is quoted in the Tel Aviv daily Haaretz. 'Just imagine - an internationally-financed project being torn down. It would definitely turn into a political scandal.'

© Inter Press Service (2009) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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