2005-0621-Neighorhood soccer

By Ira Sharkansky

Last evening a neighbor came to me with a mission. There are Arabs playing football (soccer) in the school yard that is next door. Something must be done. Now they are making noise. Eventually there will be a killing.

I tried to calm him. Jewish football players also make noise. My apartment is right up against the fence between our building and the school yard. His apartment is some distance away. He never complained to me about the noise made by Jewish football players. I complained about the noise some time ago when the community center kept the lights on after 10 p.m., and football continued into the wee hours. For my neighbor, it is not the noise but the Arabs.

I explained that the school yard does not belong to the neighborhood, but to the municipality. In all likelihood, the Arabs currently playing came from the nearby neighborhood of Isaweea, which is part of the municipality. Some of the Jews who play there come by cars. They, also, are likely to live outside of the neighborhood. Moreover, there are Arabs of the age of the football players living in our neighborhood, so who knows.

I told him that last weekend I saw Arabs and Jews playing football together. I also saw an ultra-Orthodox Jew in ear locks, fringes outside his long black trousers, long sleeve white shirt and black skull cap playing alongside bareheaded males in shorts and t-shirts. I suggested that if he wants to see good football, he should come when the Arabs are playing.

I could not convince him to leave well enough alone. There might be trouble, but there also might be positive opportunities via sport. To protest Arab football players without a good reason would provoke a counter-demonstration. The local press would brand our neighborhood a spot aspiring to apartheid. We are a democracy with rights and rules. Those traits are essential to the message we convey to ourselves and the international community.

I commented that my neighbor's enthusiastic support for the Labor Party and his vitriolic opposition to Likud seemed strange in conjunction with his view about who should be playing in the school yard. I tried to be reasonable and light hearted, but my social skills were not up to it. He left angry at me.

There are few places for Arabs to play in their own neighborhoods. I have argued with Arabs that poor facilities reflect their boycott of Jerusalem politics. If they voted in local elections they could control up to one-third of the municipal council and get more than football fields for their neighborhoods. They respond that they have a national mission to oppose the Jewish regime in Jerusalem that occupies their neighborhoods. Okay. In politics you get what you vote for. You don't vote, you don't get.

We see lots of Arabs in the neighborhood super market, bank, post office, and waiting at the bus stops. Arab kids and adults (and sometimes Russian immigrants) look for goodies in the garbage dumpsters. There have been terrorists incidents, including fatal bombings in and alongside the neighborhood. Not all our neighbors are peace loving. But most encounters pass without notice. It is not unusual to see Jews and Arabs talking about who knows what.

Some time ago a children's playground on the other side of our building attracted Arab as well as Jewish children. Some neighbors were incensed. One suggested turning a Rotweiler loose on the kids from the wrong neighborhood. Eventually there was vandalism. In some views, no doubt that it was Arabs who did it. Complaints went to the municipality and the response was simple: remove the playground equipment. Now there is nothing for Jews or Arabs.

The same may occur in the school yard. The community center across the street holds the key, and will be asked to lock it up. Jews and Arabs, the religious as well as the secular, will have to go elsewhere.

Sharkansky is a member of the political science department at Hebrew University in Jerusalem