Arab Soccer in a Jewish State

Cambridge University Press
9780521870481 - Arab Soccer in a Jewish State - The Integrative Enclave - by Tamir Sorek
Frontmatter/Prelims

Arab Soccer in a Jewish State

Over the last two decades, soccer has become a major institution within the popular culture of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel, who have attained disproportionate success in this field. Given their marginalization from many areas of Israeli society, as well as the ongoing Israeli–Palestinian conflict, such a prominent Arab presence highlights the tension between their Israeli citizenship and their belonging to the Palestinian people. Bringing together sociological, anthropological and historical approaches, Tamir Sorek examines how soccer can potentially be utilized by ethnic and national minorities as a field of social protest, a stage for demonstrating distinctive identity, or as a channel for social and political integration. Relying on a rich combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, he argues that equality in the soccer sphere legitimizes contemporary inequality between Jews and Arabs in Israel and pursues wider arguments about the role of sport in ethno-national conflicts.

TAMIR SOREK is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and Israel Studies at the University of Florida.

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Cambridge Cultural Social Studies

Series editors: JEFFREY C. ALEXANDER, Department of Sociology, Yale University, and STEVEN SEIDMAN, Department of Sociology, University at Albany, State University of New York.

Title in the series

JEFFREY C. ALEXANDER, BERNHARD GIESEN AND JASON L. MAST, Social Performance

ARNE JOHAN VETLESEN, Evil and Human Agency

ROGER FRIEDLAND AND JOHN MOHR, Matters of Culture

DAVINA COOPER, Challenging Diversity, Rethinking Equality and the Value of Difference

KRISHAN KUMAR, The Making of English National Identity

RON EYERMAN, Cultural Trauma

STEPHEN M. ENGEL, The Unfinished Revolution

MICHÈLE LAMONT AND LAURENT THÉVENOT, Rethinking Comparative Cultural Sociology

RON LEMBO, Thinking through Television

ALI MIRSEPASSI, Intellectual Discourse and the Politics of Modernization

RONALD N. JACOBS, Race, Media, and the Crisis of Civil Society

ROBIN WAGNER-PACIFICI, Theorizing the Standoff

KEVIN MCDONALD, Struggles for Subjectivity

S. N. EISENSTADT, Fundamentalism, Sectarianism, and Revolution

PIOTR SZTOMPKA, Trust

SIMON J. CHARLESWORTH, A Phenomenology of Working-Class Experience

LUC BOLTANSKI, Translated by GRAHAM D. BURCHELL, Distant Suffering

(list continues at end of book)

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Arab Soccer in a Jewish State

The Integrative Enclave

Tamir Sorek

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CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
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Cambridge University Press
The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK

Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York

www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521870481

© Tamir Sorek 2007

This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without
the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 2007

Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-0-521-87048-1 hardback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for
the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or
third-party internet websites referred to in this book,
and does not guarantee that any content on such
websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

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In memory of my beloved brother Alon (1985–2006)

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Contents

List of tables		page viii
List of figures		x
Preface and acknowledgments		xi
1	Introduction	1
2	Sports, modernity, and struggle in Palestine	14
3	The emergence of the integrative enclave	31
4	Soccer and municipal “labor quiet”	57
5	“These points are Arab”: nationalist rhetoric in the sports press	81
6	“Maccabi Haifa is my flag”: Arab fans of Jewish teams	102
7	The Islamic Soccer League	128
8	Sakhnin – between soccer and martyrdom	150
9	Conclusion	183
Appendix 1: Interviews with functionaries		192
Appendix 2: Research design of the countrywide survey		194
Appendix 3: Main findings from the countrywide survey		197
Appendix 4: Research design of the survey in Sakhnin		204
Appendix 5: Explanations for chapter 4		206
Bibliography		208
Index		221

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List of tables

3.1:	Ticket sales for the second division in the 1997/8 season	page 51
3.2:	Percentage of Arab men aged 18 to 50 who participated in various modes of soccer consumption	52
4.1:	Support of Arab and Jewish municipalities for various sports	60
6.1:	Do you consider yourself a fan of a team in the Premier League?	103
6.2:	Do you consider yourself a fan of a team not in the Premier League?	103
6.3:	When the Israeli national team plays against a European national team, whom do you choose to support?	122
8.1:	Percentage of interviewees who chose each identity as one of three identities of which they are proud to be part	153
8.2:	The relation between attendance in the local soccer stadium and the choice of various identities as source of pride	161
8.3:	Involvement in soccer and voting intentions	180
8.4:	Attendance at the local soccer stadium and voting intentions	181
Appendix
1:	Interviews with functionaries	192
2:	Research design of the countrywide survey	194
3:	Main findings from the countrywide survey	197
3.a:	Factor analysis of soccer consumption by the media	198
3.b:	The contribution of each variable to the probability of choosing each identity as a source of pride (standardized logistic coefficients)	199
3.c:	Attendance at local games and pride in Palestinian identity	200
3.d:	Attendance at Premier League games and pride in Palestinian identity	200
3.e:	Logistic regression model predicting participation, voting for Zionist parties, and voting for Arab parties in the 1999 parliamentary elections in Israel	201
3.f:	Variables predicting at least one attendance at an official soccer game	201
3.g:	Percentages of interviewees who choose different identities as source of pride by attitude toward the Israeli national team of soccer	202
3.h:	The differences between Maccabi and Ha-Po‘el fans in Arab localities	203
4:	Research design of the survey in Sakhnin	204
4.a:	Logistic regression model predicting participation in 1999 election in Sakhnin	205
4.b:	Logistic regression model predicting voting for a Zionist candidate in the 1999 election in Sakhnin	205
5:	Explanations for chapter 4	206
5.a:	The ratio of support for local sports associations as predicted by various demographic attributes of localities	207

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List of figures

3.1:	Percentages of Arab teams in adult IFA divisions, 1977–2000	page 50
4.1:	Voting patterns among young Arab men in Israel	78

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