The one who was the first captain of Palestine, now in FIFA integration projects, explains her experience to EL MUNDO: she hid in an ambulance to avoid the Israeli ‘checkpoint’
Toxic people look at the sun but inside it is always night. Honey Thaljieh was born under this torrid sun, although never of justice in the Middle East, which this morning gives a small truce to the World Cup on the Corniche in Doha. The night took the lives of her loved ones in the West Bank occupied by the first and second Intifadas, but the girl born in Bethlehem in 1984 was going to find a tool with which to free herself from all barriers. Woman, Arab, Palestinian and Christian, she faced all the contradictions of her community, the prohibitions of her family, the talk that she would never marry among her neighbors, and the ‘checkpoints’ , Israeli army controls. First captain of the Palestinian women’s team, the only thing that stopped her career were injuries, not the conventions of her world, although, as she explained in conversation with EL MUNDO, that allowed her to prepare, to be the first woman to obtain a FIFA Master and Work for the organization in the development of integration projects.
Ask.- You smile a lot for everything that has happened.
Response.- They all tell me. The truth is that I have always been like that. When I return to Bethlehem now and see so many girls and boys playing soccer, the one who smiles is my father. Before it was different.
P.- Why?
R.- My family did not want me to play. He forbade me, but I went back and forth to the street, even if I had to play with children. The neighbors said that I would never marry. He embarrassed everyone. I don’t blame them. I grew up in a patriarchal society. Although she was a Christian and not a Muslim, soccer was a man’s thing. As a woman and an Arab, she was even worse, because she threatened all the stereotypes. Finally, as a Palestinian in an occupied land, you found all possible problems in streets full of soldiers, with shots, barricades, fires, bombs… All these conditions made up my identity, turned into a jail, a prison. I asked myself: Why should identity determine your life? When he wanted to play football and couldn’t, he would say to me: Why wasn’t I born in Switzerland instead of Palestine?
P.- Cmo escap?
R. – I didn’t escape. I am a woman, I am an Arab, I am a Palestinian and I am a Christian. Simply, I was freed thanks to the strength that football has given me throughout my life.
P.- So you keep all your identity.
R.- Of course, with even more force, with pride, but without implying a prison. People from outside often ask me the same thing, if I wear a bikini or drink alcohol, even though I am a Christian, not a Muslim. They are the typical ones. Arab identity goes far beyond whether or not Muslims drink alcohol.
P.- But it is difficult to think, for example, of a women’s World Cup in an Arab country. Do you think it would be possible, like the one we live here in Qatar?
R.- why not? I do. You are from Spain, where until very recently Real Madrid did not have a women’s team…
P.- Certain.
R.- I think the problem of women’s soccer in the Arab world is not strictly religious, it’s cultural, and that happens in many other places. Sometimes the problem is simpler: a father who forbids his daughter to play, and that continues to happen in all cultures. We still live in patriarchal societies. The world is not perfect.
P.- This World Cup is an example. We have seen many protests in defense of human rights.
R.- Much has been said in a negative sense and little has been said about the positive of bringing a World Cup to Arab culture. Football has a force that must be harnessed, it can help improve people’s lives, bring about change. I have experienced it in mine.
P.- Now he explains it where he has the opportunity.
R.- I travel the world with projects. Some time ago I also did it in your country, at the Arab House in Madrid.
P. – How easy is Palestinian to cross the world?
R.- I don’t think anyone has lost as many connections at airports as I have because of waiting to show a Palestinian passport. Hours and hours.
P.- At least they are no longer the ‘checkpoints’.
R.- The worst day for that was when I had to take the high school exam, a very important day for all students in Palestine. It is an anecdote that I have often explained. She was very nervous and it was a day, during the Intifada, of many problems and controls in the streets. There was no way to get through, so I flagged down an ambulance and asked if he could hide me inside. Upon entering, it was full of other students. We arrived very nervous, tense, the exam went wrong and many of us began to cry. The professor raised his hand and quoted Yasir Arafat. We Palestinians are like mountains, he said. Not even the wind moves us.
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