For Palestinian women soccer players, a field is a dream

It's a chilly late afternoon in Bethlehem. Along quiet streets, grocers are hastily packing away vegetable stalls; colorful Christmas decorations glint in shop windows. And, on a steep hill at the edge of the Bethlehem University campus, a group of 12 young Palestinian women are braving the cold for a precious once-weekly ritual: soccer practice.

The women, between the ages of 14 and 22, make up the majority of the Palestinian Territories national women's soccer team, which meets on an improvised concrete soccer field every Wednesday, rain or shine. Currently, they are working hard in preparation for their next tournament, despite lingering questions over whether they will be able to attend.

"We hope," says Samar Araj Mousa, Bethlehem University's athletic director who founded the team in 2003, "that we will play at the second Arab Women's Football Championship in Abu Dhabi in January." Tight travel restrictions and severe financial difficulties may keep the team from competing for their homeland.

The girls, under the eagle eye of volunteer coach Emil Hilal, a sports teacher at a nearby high school and a one-time local soccer star, form a line on the playing field, their breath billowing clouds in the cold air. They begin ducking, weaving, dribbling, and shooting, as Mr. Hilal yells instructions. An excited cheer goes up as goalkeeper Nadeen Khaleeb throws herself fearlessly to the ground, successfully defending her makeshift goal posts.

"They're doing their best," says Hilal, "but they don't have the facilities or the equipment to be as good as they could be."

While the Palestinian Authority pays for the national men's soccer team, which trains abroad in Egypt with salaried players, the women's team mostly fends for itself. Continuing governmental and local authority financial shortages make it increasingly unlikely that money for a women's soccer team, even a national one, will be a priority soon.

But the hurdles are not just financial. Several girls have been hurt playing on the concrete practice field.

The only real soccer field in the West Bank is in Jericho, just 18 miles away, but largely inaccessible due to a string of stringent Israeli military checkpoints. For some, the strain of travel is too much: The team's former coach resigned last year after returning from the West Asian Women's Football Championships in Jordan. Detained and interrogated for hours at the border by both Israeli and Jordanian authorities, he found the experience too traumatic to repeat.

"The girls," says Ms. Mousa, "sat crying at the border, knowing they'd missed their game." Fortunately, they were able to reschedule the game for the next day.

So why, despite the manifold difficulties, is soccer the girls' game of choice?

For Mousa, it's a combination of factors. "It's good for their health," she says, "for their stamina and their endurance. They also make strong friendships, and it teaches them principles of sportsmanship. And," she adds, "soccer represents their only chance to go abroad."

But for most of the girls on the team, a mix of Muslims and Christians, soccer is more than a form of exercise or a way out of the West Bank: It's a way of life.

"Football has been my passion since I was small," says team captain Honey Thaljieh, a Bethlehem University graduate in business administration. "First I played with my brothers on the street, then on boys' teams at school."

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