By Paul Nicholson
January 23 – A Chilean fist division club has opened up the Israel/Palestine football debate on a different continent, but with the same entrenched political positions coming to the fore.
Santiago-based Palestino, the name of the club that is the team of choice for many football fans of Palestinian descent and was founded in 1920 by Palestinian immigrants, has been wearing a shirt for the opening games of its new season that shows a map of Palestine before the creation of Israel.
This has sparked complaint, including from the Latin America branch of the Israeli Foreign Affairs Ministry, who took the matter directly to Chilean trade and government officials, and the president of the Ñublense club who is Jewish.
Jewish organisations complained that the design implied that all the land was Palestinian. But Palestino FC remained defiant, stating on it Facebook page: “For us, free Palestine will always be historical Palestine, nothing less.”
The National Association of Professional Football of Chile has now fined the club $1,300 and demanded that the image is removed from the shirt. Palestino president, Fernando Aguad, said that “we accept the resolution and we will change our uniform”.
The tribunal looking into the situation said in its ruling: “The association is removed from religious and political activities, in general, and anything else which does not have a direct relation to its objectives and to sport…Consequently, the association prohibits any form of political, religious, sexual, ethnic or racial discrimination.”
Chile has about 300,000 nationals of Palestinean descent, reckoned to one of the largest groups outside of the Middle East. There are an estimated 20,000 Jews in the country.
The dispute very quickly escalated beyond football. Itzhak Shoham from the Latin America branch of the Israeli Foreign Affairs Ministry, and who met with Chilean trade officials, told The Jerusalem Post: “While Israel is striving to generate a positive environment to advance toward a two-state solution, it seems inappropriate to use sport for political ends.”
Patrick Kiblisky, the club president of Ñublense, who made a formal complaint to Palestino, said: “The figure 1 was replaced by a map of the historic Palestine, before the United Nations resolution of Nov. 20, 1947, which established a Jewish state and an Arab state…Israel, is a symbol for the Palestinian people. These circumstances mean that its use constitutes a political matter.”
In response to the debacle, the Palestinian Federation of Chile said: “We reject the hypocrisy of those who blame this map, but they talk about the occupied territory as disputed territory.”
Palestino became a professional football club in 1950 and has won the Chilean league twice. It is currently sitting third in the second division.
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