Palestinian children's football pitch faces Israeli demolition ultimatum

A Palestinian children's football club in the occupied West Bank faces imminent demolition despite an international campaign to save it. Its supporters say it provides a rare sporting opportunity for young Palestinian players.

But Israel insists it's been built without the necessary permits.

In this deeply divided land so much is contested; from the identities and faiths of the people who live here, to every inch of the ground they stand on.

Recently, that has come to include one small patch of artificial turf laid down under the shadow of the giant concrete wall that isolates Israel from much of the occupied West Bank.

In the context of the 7 October attacks, the two-year war in Gaza and the fragility of the current ceasefire, there are without doubt far more pressing issues.

But this is a story freighted with symbolism and one which has drawn outsized international attention because of its connection to that other world religion - football.

On the day we visit, a group of Palestinian children are lining up to take penalty shots in the winter sunshine.

The construction of the pitch began here on the edge of Bethlehem in 2020, and today it provides a place to practise for more than 200 young players from the nearby Aida refugee camp.

The cramped and crowded streets contain the homes of the descendants of Palestinian families who were forced or who fled from their homes during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.

On 3 November last year, as the children made their short walk from the camp for that day's training, they found a notice pinned to the gate of the football field declaring it to be illegal.

The notice was followed soon by a demolition order.

"We don't have anywhere else to play," 10-year-old Naya told me, wearing a Brazil shirt with the name of the footballing legend Neymar emblazoned on the back.

"We are building our dreams here," she said. "If they demolish our field, they will demolish our dreams."

I asked another young player, Mohammed, what his reaction was when he heard the news that the club was earmarked for destruction.

"I was upset," he told me. "This is a field I really care for."

The community has fought back, posting videos on social media, launching a petition attracting hundreds of thousands of signatures, and receiving messages of international support.

The club says that after representations from a lawyer it was recently given a seven-day reprieve.

But that extension expired on Monday, leaving it with a difficult choice.

As is common practice in such cases, the club owners must either demolish the pitch themselves or wait for the Israeli authorities to do it forcibly, after which they'll be presented with the bill.

The looming presence of the wall, which runs along the length of one of the touchlines, is just one of the many complex layers that underpin the Israeli occupation of the territory that Palestinians want as the basis for a future state.

Militarily, Israel exerts control over the entirety of the West Bank.

But administrative control – its day-to-day governance – is divided between a patchwork of Palestinian-run areas and Israeli-run ones.

The maps on which those distinctions are based were drawn up as a key part of the Oslo Accords, signed in the 1990s by Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO).

The West Bank was split into three categories of territory.

Areas A and B were pockets of land over which the Palestinian Authority was given civil control.

In those marked as Area A, Palestinians were also given nominal security control.

Area C – more than 60% of the total – was to remain temporarily under full Israeli control.

The idea was that it would eventually be gradually transferred to Palestinian self-rule as the negotiations continued.

While that never happened, with both sides blaming each other for the failure of the peace process, the maps remain the basis for much of how the West Bank is governed today.

Bethlehem itself is designated as Area A.

But the maps show Israel exercising Area C civil authority over much of the surrounding countryside, right up the city's edge.

Israel began building its concrete barrier in the early 2000s in the face of a wave of deadly suicide bombings and other attacks carried out by Palestinians which killed hundreds of Israelis.

Critics claim that today, as it has grown in length, the wall has become a tool for punishing many thousands of ordinary Palestinians, separating them from their workplaces, dividing their communities and effectively annexing parts of their land.

But what's now in contention in Bethlehem is a tiny, narrow patch of ground on the Palestinian side of the wall.

For the residents of the Aida camp looking for space to build a football field, it was just large enough to accommodate their needs.

But for Israel it remains – and is marked on the maps – as part of Area C, even though the construction of the wall has left it marooned on the Bethlehem side.

Satellite photos show that the space was vacant in 2019 and then, year by year, the pitch can be seen beginning to take shape, fitting in snuggly right up against the wall.

The demolition order argues that it was built without the necessary permissions on a plot of land over which Israel still asserts full civil control.

For Palestinians, there is no small irony in the fact that they're being denied the right to build a small football pitch on the boundary of their city, inside the wall that fences them in.

While turning down permission for their buildings and demolishing existing ones, Israel continues to approve the construction of vast new Israeli settlements across Area C, which are considered illegal under international law.

Last September, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu signed an agreement to push ahead with a major and highly controversial settlement that will house 20,000 Israelis.

Located between occupied East Jerusalem and the already existing settlement of Maale Adumim, if completed it would effectively cut the West Bank in half which, Palestinians say, will all but destroy their aspirations for nationhood.

The Israeli government agrees.

"There will be no Palestinian state," Netanyahu said at the signing ceremony. "This place belongs to us."

Some of his ministers speak openly of the full annexation of the West Bank.

In Bethlehem, the football club – which claims it did receive verbal permission in 2020 for the pitch – believes the threat of demolition is about far more than planning law.

"The Israelis don't want us to have any kind of hope, they don't want us to have any opportunity," Mohammad Abu Srour, one of the board members of the Aida Youth Centre, told me.

The idea, he suggested, was to make life deliberately hard.

"The moment that we lose hope and opportunity we are going to leave. This is the only explanation for us."

We approached the Israeli body that manages civilian affairs in the West Bank for comment.

Although the demolition order was issued on its behalf, we were referred instead to the Israeli military, which oversees its work.

The IDF gave us the following statement.

"Along the security fence, there is a confiscation order and a prohibition on construction; therefore, the construction in the area was carried out unlawfully," it said.

As they wait to see what happens next, the children of Aida hope that the international attention might be enough to sway the authorities' minds.

But for now, as the wider conflict grinds on, the future of one small football pitch is hanging in the balance.