How Palestine is winning the World Cup

In an act of breathtaking bravura, Moroccan right-back Achraf Hakimi shaped as though he was going to thump his penalty into the bottom corner of the net and, as Spain’s goalkeeper dove out of the way, sent a mockingly gentle chip down the goal’s centre.

With that, Morocco had achieved the greatest result in their history, beating Spain — the overwhelming favourites and, all the sweeter, a former colonial power — and progressing to the quarter-finals of the FIFA World Cup, the first Arab nation to get that far in the competition’s history.

It was a joyous, unrepeatable moment, the kind that can only happen at the World Cup. And to mark it, the team clustered around the flag of Palestine.

There has been a great deal of discussion of protest leading up to and during the Qatar World Cup. Iran’s team declined to sing its own national anthem in response to the repression of women in its home country. A handful of European teams announced they would give their captains rainbow armbands in support of LGBTIQA+ rights in a country that imprisons people for their gender expression or having same-sex relations.

Those teams backed down when threatened with sanctions on the pitch, although England has continued the anti-discrimination gesture of “taking a knee” before matches, and Germany pointedly covered their mouths in the team photo before their first game.

Elsewhere, Senegal’s Ismaïla Sarr celebrated his goal against Ecuador by covering his eyes and pointing an imaginary gun to his head, apparently a comment on international silence on atrocities afflicting Africa, particularly the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

But the most persistent and visible subject of protest has been Palestine — certainly compared to any other major sporting event. Tunisian fans raised a huge “Free Palestine” flag during their game against Australia. An England supporter’s interview with an Israeli journalist went viral after his team beat Senegal 3-0 and he exclaimed: “It’s coming home! But more importantly, free Palestine!”

Professor Fethi Mansouri, Director of the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, said the resistance was partly a question of demographics: this is the first World Cup held in the Middle East, and Doha has a huge population of expats from around the Muslim world — North Africa, the Levant Arab countries — for whom Palestine is a major political issue.

“The immediate reason is simply situational,” agreed Challis Chair of International Law at Sydney University and UN adviser professor Ben Saul.

“Israeli reporters rarely encounter Arabs outside Israel, but the World Cup has enabled greater interaction, and provided a visible global platform for Arab protests.”

The build-up to the tournament was marked by several controversies — apart from the state of LGBTIQA+ issues in Qatar, there are the horrific conditions in which the stadiums were built, resulting in allegedly thousands of deaths of migrant labourers.

Some, including FIFA president Gianni Infantino, accused European media of “hypocrisy” over its almost universally bad coverage. Indeed, there are no major calls to boycott the Australia portion of next year’s women’s tournament, or the next men’s World Cup held in Canada, the US and Mexico, none of whom have spotless human rights records.

“European nations are in no position to lecture on workers’ rights, given the great barriers they’ve put up for people fleeing persecution from those same regions or indeed seeking employment opportunities,” Mansouri told Crikey.

“That is not to say the UAE or Qatar don’t need to improve migrant working conditions, they absolutely should, but there are many people from Bangladesh, or Pakistan or North Africa working in Qatar who would love to work in Europe instead, but are completely blocked and denied such opportunities.”

Saul said this feeling of western double standards is also aggravated by the “textbook enforcement of international law” that met “Russia’s annexation and occupation of Ukraine”.

“In contrast, the US and some western allies run a protection racket for Israel — its annexation of Palestinian and Syrian territory, 55-year occupation of Palestine, illegal settlements, war crimes and possible apartheid — including by opposing any efforts at international accountability or recognition of Palestinian statehood,” Saul said.

This comes following a jump to the religious right at government level in Israel, as well as the Abraham Accords “normalising” relations between Israel and regimes in some Arab states. Saul and Mansouri said this shows the disconnect between average citizens in many Arab states and their leadership.

“These acts of solidarity with the Palestinian people show that the Arab masses, even if their oppressive regimes have ‘normalised’ their relationship with Israel, as is the case with Morocco,” Mansouri said. “They are saying ‘we very much reject this normalisation and want to show our solidarity with Palestine’.”