As the opening whistle draws near, the billiard boys put their cues aside and cluster around the small TV set. No one exactly joins in "Hatikva." But through the haze of narghile smoke, there is a distinct new hope. "For the first time in my life I definitely want Israel to win," says Omar Haiyadre, who opened Tora Bora just two months ago as one of the very few hangouts for Sakhnin's young men.
"Everyone here is rooting for Israel. It's quite remarkable. I myself always backed France because of Zinadine Zidane. Everywhere, even against Israel, I truly identified with their fortunes. Now, that goal of our Abbas [Suan, the Bnei Sakhnin captain, against Ireland last weekend] has changed everything. We've really begun to feel part of... for the very first time."
Apropos "La Marseillaise" and "Hatikva," Sakhnin's "soccer-kills-politics" teacher/journalist Mahmoud Ghalia a while back broke the following story: Israel Football Association chairman Iche Menachem was very moved when he heard a young Jewish boy and a young Arab girl singing a duet (at a gathering of Hanoar Haoved) of a popular Lebanese song by Wadie a-Safi, "Al-Ard Bit'asi" (the land suffers) about there having been enough bloodshed and war. The FA boss had an idea to approach the Arab teenager to see if she would sing "Hatikva" at Ramat Gan for Israel's World Cup home games.
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Naively, the young singer - Riham Hamadi from Kabul village (near Sakhnin) - thought that the intention was for her to sing that same anti-war song which had caught Menachem's ear. When, however, it emerged that the intention was for her to sing "Hatikva," she and her family politely declined.
The issue of anthems comes up on Sakhnin's Shuhada (Martyrs) Street as a crowd gathers for the annual Land Day march. One demonstrator who identifies himself only as "Soccer Sick" says the young Galilee singer was right: "I support Israel's team all the way, but this is not our song. I've got my anthem `Biladi, Biladi.' Were there a new national anthem in this country that would speak for us all - a song of coexistence - then I'd drop `Biladi.'" It's a consensus view.
On the sidelines away from the demo the debate echoes about how to make more effective their drive to become a full part of Israel and where "Hatikva" leaves Israeli Arabs. Suleiman goes against the grain. "Chutzpah on her part! Had she sung the anthem, it could have brought hearts together."
"A Jewish heart?" interjects Atef.
Suleiman: "We're all human beings, lev yehudi (a Jewish heart) - that doesn't matter. Lev rahmani (compassionate heart) - that's what counts, just as long as it's not a black heart."
But today it's a debate from the past. The national agenda now is not "Arab Israelis and Hatikva" but "Jewish Israelis and `La Marseillaise.'"
"They really shouldn't do that," says 17-year-old Nur Ayoub when the blue-and-white crowd in the Ramat Gan National Stadium jeers at the start of the French anthem.
With the opening whistle for the Land Day demo it's not national anthems but nationalist slogans that bellow out across No. 505, the Trans-Galilee road that bisects Sakhnin. The crowd is mainly young, a generation remembering two of the six of their number who were killed here protesting major land confiscations during the first Land Day demonstration on March 30, 1976.
Given the weight of the day, and even allowing that this is a local commemoration, it's a fairly paltry turnout. Trucks and buses continue to wend their way between the Palestinian, Islamist and Communist flags of the competing groups in the 2,000 strong crowd, avoiding the ubiquitous Che Guevara T-shirts.
Mayor Mohammed Bashir, his back to the memorial (a squat concrete structure which carries an inscription "for the deepening of understanding between the two peoples" and is now bedecked by wreaths), is the only prominent figure to address the rally. It is local remembrance for the dead. The observances remain the same, the demands remain the same, the sense of grievance and deprivation remain the same. "It's depressing that we can't find more telling ways to press our demands," say the demonstrators quietly.
But the purpose of Land Day these days is gradually being transformed by the older powers-that-be: an approach that involves less strident political confrontation and more a belief in rational argument that Sakhnin's land grievances, if answered, would benefit not only Arab Israel, but also Israel as a whole, a nation of all its citizens.
The land issue tears at every heart in Sakhnin precisely because they no longer have the land.
Back at city hall, Ibrahim Khaleileh, another city father, lays out the grievances on a map of the hills and valleys surrounding the town. "All this was once Sakhnin," he says, pointing to a broad swathe of purple - large tracts of land that were confiscated during the '60s, '70s and '80s. Sakhnin is now urging the land be returned so that its city boundaries will more or less double from the present 9,600 dunams.
An especially-appointed Interior Ministry commission (considering the Sakhnin case for over a year) has sent its recommendations to the new interior minister, Ophir Pines-Paz. "Given the negative approach of our neighbors in the Misgav Regional Council, which now has control over that land, I'm not overly optimistic," says Haleileh, "however good the intentions and whatever the political inclination of the current minister."
This is, after all, both Land Day and National Soccer Day, and the concern is that the Jewish side is playing defensively, keeping the ball [the land] at their feet and is striving, right up until the final whistle, not to the let the other side into the game.
Mayor Bashir reports from a recent meeting in Jerusalem "much more encouraging news" about one specific patch of ground. With the state budget now safely passed, senior officials in the Prime Minister's Office have promised another NIS3 million in addition to the NIS 7 million already transferred, "on express order" by Ariel Sharon, for completion of the first half of a revamped Sakhnin stadium. "We'll be ready for the dedication in August with, we hope, the prime minister as the honored guest," says the mayor.
"All very fine," says Haleileh, "but completing our ground renovation doesn't really come to grips with our acute land predicament. One critical factor, often ignored, is that for years we've been party to the building of this state."
Talk of "contribution" inevitably brings all conversation back to "that goal" - the last-gasp equalizer by Abbas Suan, described by his club spokesman Mundar Haleileh, "as literally a goal for equality."
"A shot against racism," "a volley into the Jewish Israeli camp," "a magical shot that could yet transfigure the whole Arab-Jewish relationship in this country" are just some among the host of graphic descriptions of "that goal." It's why the "Hatikva" debate is now relegated by a different issue: Arab pride in the "contribution" their man has made in making "the Jewish heart" feel proud.
As the second half gets under way at Ramat Gan, there's intense pride of another sort within the modest Suan home of the modest national hero. Just three minutes into the half, despair threatens. "What a terrible mistake by our goalie," says Ahmad, one of the six Suan brothers. This is a fervent extended soccer family, a passion that's no less intense for all that Abbas is not himself in the critical match against France.
"Hold thumbs all of you at home. All is not yet lost," exhorts Channel 10's Meir Einstein. "We're holding all right, holding hard," responds an uncle. Abbas' wife is the most passionate viewer in the electrified home crowd which, as one, leaps to its feet when Walid Bdeir heads home another Israeli equalizer. There are just five minutes to go. "Bring on Abed Rabbah! (Sakhnin's other man in the national squad). He'll do what Abbas did in the last game," is now the jocular pleading aimed at national coach Avraham Grant.
Before being called again to national duty, both Suan and Rabbah have a Sakhnin duty: tonight they play their National League rival, their erstwhile national rival, Betar Jerusalem. What delights Sakhnin right now is not - as Israeli Jews assume - that they are having to grapple with double allegiance, their support, as Arabs, of Israel's national team. Rather, it's about the way that Betar Jerusalem supporters are having to grapple with what is for many of them a doubly difficult loyalty predicament - their debt to Abbas Suan, the Arab hero of Israel, whom they used to dismiss nastily as "not part of us".
"It's lovely to see how the Jerusalem fans now herald Abbas," chuckles Hamad Abu Saleh, but will they still be praising him when he scores a hat-trick against Betar?"
"Abbas' answer to those racist catcalls when he last played in Jerusalem for Israel was not `that goal' against Ireland," chips in Ibrahim Badarnah. "It will be the two goals he scores against Betar! For us, that is as much cause to sing `Hatikva' as when Israel plays Ireland or France in the World Cup.
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