BE'ER SHEVA - They set off from Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and the West Bank. Some came via coach, others by car, on a two-hour trip (excluding checkpoints) to the football pitch just yards from Turner Stadium. The ad-hoc meeting brought together more than 200 people: children, parents, brothers, sisters, grandparents, guardians and Inter Campus Israel and Palestine coaches - a proper mixed community of Israelis, Palestinians and African and Filipino refugees.
It sounds hard to believe, something confirmed by our local coordinator Yasha. On the back of the successful previous visit and with the pull of the first-team match against Hapeol Be'er Sheva, he decided to organise a tournament between project sites. The turnout was much bigger than expected, with parents also getting involved in an adult competition.
The Israeli children of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv joined their Palestinian counterparts on the pitches of Be'er Sheva. Some of the latter train in East Jerusalem, in the Beit Safafa neighbourhood just around the corner from the Wailing Wall, Holy Sepulchre and Temple Mount, others in the villages of the West Bank. Alongside them, the parents contested a low-tempo match, full of bulging stomachs and clumsy movements. They even started their game before the kids because the excitement was too much!
Many of the adults had already crossed paths at the end of training when they came to pick up their kids, albeit without ever talking to one another - at best a cursory greeting as they looked each other up and down. Yet there are few things more important for a child than their parents' example. That's why it was fantastic for the kids to see their folks play alongside their team-mates' parents on a November evening in the Holy Land. Win, lose or draw, they all spoke the same language of football.
It was great to see the famillies - key figures in any society - buying into the same values as their children. The wall that divided them, like the one that splits Jerusalem from Bethelem, is gradually coming down thanks to the power of sport, football and Inter Campus. These values are now shared by their families, in their sweaty shirts after playing football together, with their arm around their new friends.
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