One team, two peoples: the Peres Center squad at Festival 06
In Berlin in 2006 the Peres Center for Peace fielded a team of Israeli and Palestinian players. The story of that team and the sports programme behind it.
Most teams at the streetfootballworld festival 06 represented one city or one country. One represented two peoples. The Peres Center for Peace, listed under Tel Aviv, “Israel/Palestine”, brought a mixed team of Israeli and Palestinian players to Mariannenplatz in July 2006. Press reports of the tournament singled it out, alongside the American team that played against drug abuse.
The organisation behind the team
The Peres Center for Peace was founded in 1996 by Shimon Peres, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate who later became President of Israel. It is an independent, non-profit, non-governmental organisation, and its aim is to further Peres’ vision of people in the Middle East building peace together through economic cooperation, development and direct contact between people.
The centre works across many fields: agriculture and water, business, civic leadership, culture and the arts, medicine and health care, and sport. Today it is called the Peres Center for Peace and Innovation and is based in the Peres Peace House in Ajami, a largely Arab neighbourhood of Jaffa.
The Twinned Peace Sports Schools
The sports side of the centre’s work is the Twinned Peace Sports Schools programme. It brings together Israeli, Palestinian, Jewish and Arab boys and girls to play sport together: football, basketball, wheelchair basketball, cricket, table tennis and even Australian football.
The principle is in the name. Schools or communities are paired across the divide, and children train and play side by side. A team at an international tournament is the most visible result of that work, but the real work is the weekly training in which children from both communities meet as teammates.
Berlin, 2006
The Peres Center team was listed among the two Asian participants at Festival 06, together with Learn & Play: Street Football Future from Kabul. Like every team, it played five-a-side matches of twelve minutes with players aged 16 to 21.
There is a reason the team stood out. The festival had been created in memory of Andrés Escobar, and Germany’s Foreign Office described its purpose as a “clear sign against violence, xenophobia and racism”. A squad in which Israeli and Palestinian young people wore the same shirt was the most direct expression of that message anyone could field.
The sources available to us do not record the team’s results or individual players, and we have not been able to identify them independently.
Recognition
The Peres Center’s sports work was recognised several times in 2010:
- the Wingate Award for Best NGO in the Field of Peace and Sport;
- the Peace and Sport Award (Monaco) for Best NGO;
- the Global Sports Forum Barcelona award for Best Project.
The limits
The centre’s work has its critics. The author Witt Raczka questioned the organisation’s effectiveness, and like every coexistence project in the region, its programmes operate within a conflict they cannot solve on their own. Sport can create a space where young people meet; it cannot by itself change what happens outside that space. That honest limit applies to much of the football for development field.
FAQ
What was the Peres Center team at Festival 06?
A mixed team of Israeli and Palestinian young people, entered by the Peres Center for Peace, which played at the streetfootballworld festival 06 in Berlin in July 2006.
Who founded the Peres Center for Peace?
Shimon Peres, in 1996.
What are the Twinned Peace Sports Schools?
The Peres Center’s programme that brings Israeli, Palestinian, Jewish and Arab children together to play sports including football and basketball.
Conclusion
The Peres Center team was one of the clearest images of what Festival 06 stood for. To see how other projects used football for peace, read about sport for development and peace or browse the full list of teams in the Festival 06 archive.