Morocco’s World Cup success plays out well for Palestine
Rarely has a match in the round of 16 of a World Cup stirred such excitement and celebration as last Tuesday’s at Al Rayyan stadium in Qatar, when Morocco beat Spain on penalties. Morocco qualified for the quarter finals for the first time in the history of the World Cup.
Supporters invaded the streets, cheering to the sound of drums, lighting firecrackers and smoke bombs, and honking car horns. Scenes like these were seen not only in Morocco but also across the Middle East and North Africa, where people of different nationalities gathered to celebrate the first ever Arab team to qualify for the World Cup quarter finals and the only African nation to do so in this tournament.
Those who were present at the stadium were watching the game on TV or scrolling through Twitter and Instagram feeds in the minutes after Achraf Hakimi's decisive goal will have noticed a peculiar detail: waving in the hands of the cheering players was not the Moroccan flag, but the Palestinian one.
It was not the first time that its black, red, white, and green colors appeared during the World Cup. The week before, a Tunisia supporter carrying a Palestinian flag had run onto the pitch during the match between the North-African team and France. However, he received much less attention than the Italian pitch invader who interrupted Portugal vs. Uruguay waving a rainbow flag and wearing a pro-Ukraine and pro-Iranian women's shirt.
Aside from these sensational incidents, displays of support for Palestine have been constant since the beginning of this tournament — and not only from Arab fans. Last week, a video went viral of an England supporter with the St George's cross drawn on his face and a Palestinian flag in his hand shouting “Free Palestine” in Arabic during a TV interview outside the stadium.
The same motto was echoed in another viral video by a Uruguayan fan who was asked by a reporter why she was wearing a keffiyeh, the traditional black-and-white checkered scarf which became a symbol of the Palestinian cause. Not everyone approved. On social media, several users have denounced the Qatari organizers’ double standards for allowing pro-Palestine displays while discouraging pro-LGBTQ+ symbols and Iranian anti-regime protests.
It is not surprising that Qatar is proving to be a welcoming environment for pro-Palestine supporters. While many Arab countries have normalized relations with Israel — most recently, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco — and recent reports suggest that even Saudi Arabia is on the same track, the Qatari leadership keeps repeating that it will not do so until the Palestinian issue is resolved on the basis of the two-State solution envisaged by the Oslo accords of 1993-1995.
This was not always the case: in 1996, Qatar became the first Gulf State to establish commercial and diplomatic relations with Israel and to open an Israeli trade office on its soil. The office was shut down only four years later and the relations between the two countries became much more tense since the Gaza war of 2008-2009.
Today, Doha is among the most vocal in denouncing the abuses committed by the Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank, including through Qatar-owned news network Al-Jazeera. Just a few days ago, the government-funded channel announced the submission of a formal request to the International Criminal Court to investigate on the death of its Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, killed last May while covering an Israeli raid in the village of Jenin, West Bank.
A sign of Qatar’s approach was seen some weeks before the beginning of the World Cup, when the organizers loudly announced the opening of the first direct flights between Doha and Tel-Aviv to bring both Israeli and Palestinian supporters to the stadiums. On that occasion, FIFA president Gianni Infantino said: “Football has the power to bring people together. It transcends all boundaries, crosses all borders.”
Well, not all of them. The last three weeks of the tournament have shown how soccer can also bring out and amplify existing rifts and barriers. Two in particular have emerged strongly.
The first, not so surprising, is the one between Israel and Arab countries. Supporters interrupt Israeli journalists outside the stadiums or refuse to speak with them.
This brings us to the second and certainly more surprising rift — at least for those looking from the outside: the one between Arab countries’ leadership and public sentiment.
A recent poll by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, cited in a Middle East Eye article by Feras Abu Helal, shows that around 80% of the people interviewed in Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia consider the Abraham Accords that prompted a normalization of diplomatic between Israel and respectively the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan to be negative.
This leadership vs. people divide also applies to intra-Arab relations. As Yasmeen Sehran wrote inTime, the celebrations for the victory of Morocco over Spain showed that the pan-Arab sentiment is still alive among people in North Africa and the Middle East, despite the strong and frequent tensions among the governments of their respective countries.
The perfect example was offered by the Algerian people celebrating their “Moroccan brothers”’ success, despite the decade-long dispute over Western Sahara which led to the interruption of diplomatic ties in August 2021.
The Moroccan players will now face Portugal confident that they can count on the support of millions of people scattered across dozens of States — even those that are not officially recognized as such like Palestine. They also know that, independent of the outcome on the field, they will have accomplished — or at least revealed to the world — something that goes way beyond soccer.
— Paolo Valenti
• Griner lands in the U.S. after release from Russia: Following the high-profile prisoner swap between Russia and the U. S., WNBA star Brittney Griner has landed in Texas, after being jailed in Russia for ten months (out of a nine-year sentence) on a minor drug charge. She was exchanged for notorious Russian arms dealer, Viktor Bout, who had been in U.S. custody since 2010.
• Mexico considers asylum for Peru’s Castillo: Peru’s impeached former president, Pedro Castillo, is seeking asylum in Mexico after a judge ordered Castillo to be detained for seven days on allegations of “rebellion and conspiracy.”
• Croatia is Schengen’s newest member: Croatia, which has been part of the European Union since 2013, will officially join the EU's border-free zone known as Schengen on January 1, the same day as it joins the euro. Meanwhile, Romania and Bulgaria, EU members since 2007, were shut out of Schengen membership because of opposition from Austria and the Netherlands over concerns on illegal immigration.
• Russian shopping malls attacked: Fire engulfed one of Russia's largest shopping mall this Friday, in Khimi, in Moscow’s suburbs. According to Russian authorities, one person has died and the mall’s structure collapsed.
• Japan, UK and Italy building joint jet fighter: Italy, Japan, and the UK are merging their fighter jet development project to put a new craft into operation by 2035. The project is Japan’s first major defense collaboration beyond the United States since World War II.
• Celine Dion reveals neurological condition, cancels European tour: Céline Dion has revealed that she is suffering from stiff-syndrome, a rare neurological condition that affects one out of a million, forcing her to postpone European tour dates and putting her future career in question.
• Japan’s “dish of the year” is frozen: The Gurunavi Research Institute, which crowns a new dish every year in Japan to highlight evolving food trends, has declared that the new winner this year is frozen food. According to the Institute, with the pandemic and increasing take-out-orders, a large number of restaurants have started to freeze their dishes.
Saudi business daily Al Eqtisadiah features a front page Friday on the visit to Saudi Arabia by Chinese President Xi Jinping to meet with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud. The daily calls relations between the two countries a “strategic partnership.”
$858 billion
The U.S. House of Representatives approved a bill for for the defense budget to hit a record $858 billion next year, $45 billion more than proposed by President Joe Biden.
Frozen in time: a rare look at life in Mariupol under Russian occupation
Russian occupation authorities promised to rebuild housing in Mariupol by winter, but in reality, thousands of people face the cold in largely destroyed houses and apartments. Mariupol residents told Vazhnyye Istorii about how they are surviving as winter falls.
🏙️💥 Russian troops shelled Mariupol for more than two months straight, and fully occupied it by May. It is still unknown how many people have died in the city of approximately half a million people in peacetime. Up to 90% of high-rise buildings and 60% of private homes have been damaged or destroyed. Nevertheless, there are still about 100,000 people in the occupied city. Many of them have no electricity, heat, water, or sewage. People live without utilities, with tape covering broken windows, and are freezing in their homes in the absence of promised aid that Russia has failed to deliver.
❄️ Andrei Zonder is the head of House 66 apartment block on Morsky Boulevard, where 50 people now live: “The apartments are all frozen, the water is icy, and it is hard to wash hands in it. Today my neighbor showed me that the skin on her hands is cracking. Before June, we were given humanitarian kits from the ‘United Russia’ (political party), sugar, pasta. But since June, they've only been giving these kits to children from 0 to 3 years old. I survive on subsistence food. Sometimes the residents share some food. You don't know what you will eat tomorrow.”
🇷🇺🇺🇦 “Nobody cares what happens in politics. They don't watch the news, and they don't follow the fighting. They don't see who is advancing or retreating. They want to survive, and they want to restore at least a normal livelihood. Right now, it's inhuman. The city is destroyed, and people are doomed to extinction. I'm sitting at home; my feet and hands are freezing cold. That is why such questions are irrelevant here. If you ask about Ukraine or Russia on the street, people will say, ‘Does it matter now’”
➡️ Read more on Worldcrunch.com
“Death is a natural part of life.”
— After reports were confirmed of the death of a migrant worker at a World Cup facility, Nasser Al Khater, chief executive of the 2022 World Cup in Doha, seemed to brush off ongoing concerns about worker safety. When asked about the death by Reuters, he said: “We’re in the middle of a World Cup. And we have a successful World Cup. And this is something you want to talk about right now?” Al Khater said. “I mean, death is a natural part of life, whether it’s at work, whether it’s in your sleep. Of course, a worker died. Our condolences go to his family. However, I mean, it is strange that this is something you want to focus on as your first question.” The conditions of foreign workers in preparation for the World Cup has been one of the main criticisms of the Qatari organizers.
American basketball star Brittney Griner after her release from Russia following a prisoner swap. Griner had been arrested in February and detained in a penal colony for drug smuggling. She touched down in the pre-dawn hours local time Friday in San Antonio, Texas — Photo: Fsb/TASS/ZUMA
✍️ Newsletter by Emma Albright, Renate Mattar and Anne-Sophie Goninet
