England fans join Football for Peace Party in the Park in Tel Aviv

On Friday March 23, the day before England’s crucial European Nations qualifier in Israel, volunteer staff and students from the University of Brighton are running a Football for Peace (F4P) tournament for Jewish and Arab boys and girls in a park in downtown Tel Aviv.

The Tel Aviv tournament, which is supported by the British Council, The British Embassy in Israel, the Israeli Sports Authority, and The (English) FA, will involve 160 boys and girls playing in 16 mixed teams. Each team will play in professional English club strips donated by English teams at the request of England fans’ associations and on the day will be supported colourfully and noisily by hundreds of England’s travelling faithful, representing a full spectrum of English league and non-league clubs.

The University of Brighton’s Professor John Sugden, one of the founders of F4P, is very excited about the tournament:

“This is a fantastic opportunity for us to raise the profile of what has grown to be one of the biggest cross-community programmes in Israel. There will be huge media interest in England’s vital qualifier. Having the F4P festival the Friday before the game, supported by England’s fans with their flags and mascots, will give us the chance to show a really positive side to English football and its fans, as well as send a strong message that there is a genuine willingness in Israel for different communities to work toward reconciliation and peaceful coexistence through sport”.

The event takes place in the riverside Hayarkon Park (www.tel-aviv-insider.com/park-hayarkon.php), beginning at 12 noon and finishing at 3pm with an awards ceremony presided over by Britain’s ambassador to Israel, Simon McDonald. The tournament will be the centre piece of a large and friendly Fans’ Festival which has been planned by the Tel Aviv municipality in the build up to England’s crunch game.
Football for Peace (F4P), a sport-based co-existence project for Jewish and Arab children, has been running in towns and villages in the Galilee region of Northern Israel since 2000. The work of F4P builds upon the experiences of South Africa and Northern Ireland in that it seeks to make grass-roots interventions into the sport culture of Israel and Palestine while at the same time making a contribution to political debates and policy development around sport in the region.