CAIRO: Protests have erupted in Egypt over Israel’s attempts to put two Islamic holy places on its list of heritage sites. Students have been the most active, burning Israeli flags and denouncing the move they said will leave Palestinians without any chance for a state. Now, the ongoing battle over public opinion continues to rumble on, this time concerning a proposed friendly football match between the Egyptian Olympic national team and the Palestinians. The match is scheduled to take place in the West Bank, but some religious leaders and activists are crying foul.

The teams will play as part of Palestine’s Land Day celebrations and was requested by the Palestinian Football Association. The celebrations commemorate a strike staged in 1976 against Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory and is likely to see tensions in the area rise dramatically on the day.

The Egyptian Football Association has accepted the invitation to play the Palestinians, adding that its Christian players would visit the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and Muslim players would pay homage to the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. But, here in Egypt, activists and religious leaders are not pleased with the move, arguing that it marks “normalization” with the Jewish state.

“How can they do this, knowing that our Egyptian players will step foot on occupied territory and in Israel itself?” asked Sheikh Mohsen Goma’a, a former al-Azhar cleric who now runs a larger mosque in Imbaba, a poorer neighborhood in Cairo. He questioned if now is the time to play a football match.

“Maybe they should wait and see what happens politically before entering into a match of this kind. There are too many arguments on both sides and here in Egypt to play football when the Jews are doing these things to our Palestinian brothers and sisters,” he added.

The trip is scheduled to begin on March 28.

Among the worries of Egyptians is that the players will be forced to have Israeli stamps in their passports, however a Palestinian official told local Egyptian newspaper al-Masry al-Youm that the players “will not get Israeli visas.” PFA chairman Ameen al-Rajoub added that “the visit to Jerusalem does not mean normalization with Israel. The Israeli occupiers do not want Arabs to visit Jerusalem.”

In a sign of solidarity, some Egyptian activists have supported the idea of the match being played some 100 meters from Israel’s partition, which some call the “Apartheid Wall” and they believe will show the world what is really going on in Palestine.

“We believe that if the match is going to be played anyway, then we need to ensure that it is a time to make public the horrible state that Palestinians are forced to live in,” said Kareem Omar, an Egyptian student turned activist due to his football interest. “We must make the best of the situation if our government doesn’t want to support our wishes.”

Egypt was the first Arab state to sign a peace treaty with the Jewish state in 1979. However, since then, cultural relations between the two nations has been cold, with Egyptian institutions refusing to deal with Israeli filmmakers, scholars and writers due to what they call the ongoing atrocities perpetrated against Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.

The Egyptian Football Association told Bikya Masr that this is a match between Egypt and Palestine and “Israel has nothing to do with it. It is not normalization. We are there to play football and show solidarity with Palestine.”

Despite the claims, Egyptians remain worried over the match and how the country will deal with Israeli involvement in the match, visas and traveling throughout the West Bank.

“Sure, they can say that it is between us and Palestine, but who is in charge there? The Israelis,” said Omar. The young activist said there would most likely be more protests and he would participate if the match isn’t reconsidered or “moved to Gaza, where there would be no contact with Israel.”

BM

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