ramallah | A portrait of the two most prominent Palestinian leaders — current Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and former President Yasser Arafat, who died in 2004 — hangs in the conference room of the Palestinian Olympic committee headquarters. The background is a panorama of the Dome of the Rock in the Old City of Jerusalem, which Israel and the Palestinians both claim as a capital.
National flags and photos of national leaders would be commonplace in any country’s Olympic office. But as Palestinian delegation head Hani Halabi sees it, and as the Dome of the Rock photograph indicates, the Palestinian presence at the London Olympics is not just about national pride. It also highlights the ongoing conflict with Israel.
Halabi says he is proud, for example, that Palestinian judoka Maher abu Rmeileh, 28, is the first Palestinian ever to qualify on his own for an Olympic event. But he is even happier that Rmeileh is from Jerusalem.
Four other Palestinian athletes, two men and two women, will join Rmeileh in London: swimmers Sabine Hazboun and Ahmed Mostafa Gebrel and sprinters Baha Alfarra and Woroud Sawalha.
Rmeileh qualified for the Olympics on his own by competing in his sport. The other Palestinian athletes, by contrast, will reach the Games via a special invitation from the International Olympic committee reserved for countries whose athletes have not been able to qualify for events. Palestinians have been competing in those spots since 1996.
Sawalha, 22, does not have medal hopes, saying that she needs “more years” to train, but said that she is excited to go to London to “represent my country and see another world.”
Spats between the Israeli and Palestinian committees have occurred ever since the Palestinian delegation announced its participation in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. Israel objected to the Palestinian athletes’ walking under a banner that read “Palestine,” on the grounds that there was no recognized state of Palestine. The International Olympic Committee dismissed the complaint.
This year, Israel has lobbied heavily — and unsuccessfully — for a minute of silence at the Games to commemorate the murder, by Palestinian terrorists, of 11 members of the Israeli delegation at the 1972 Munich Games. Halabi said he had “no comment” on the issue.
Israeli delegation head Efraim Zinger said the Israeli Olympic committee has tried to use the Olympics to foster cooperation between his team and the Palestinian one. Israel offered joint training facilities and staff to the teams, he said, and the Inter-national Olympic committee “praised our effort and cooperation.”
But, he said, the Is-raelis got no response from the Palestinian side.
“It’s a shame, because we believe that through sports the young generation can get to know each other better than during day-to-day life,” he said.
Halabi dismissed the notion that sports could bring Israelis and Palestinians together. For him, preparing for the Games has brought the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into sharp relief.
“We are in the occupation,” he said. There are “no facilities, no coach, no moving for the players from town to town — from Jerusalem to Ramallah, from Ramallah to Bethlehem.” Halabi said that due to restrictions on Palestinian freedom of movement, the first time the entire delegation met was when the athletes and coaches arrived at London’s Heathrow Airport July 20.
Zinger said the Israeli Olympic committee has been responsive to every Palestinian complaint regarding freedom of movement, doing its utmost to ensure that Palestinian athletes can train without limitations.
“When there were problems like that in the past we managed to work it out, and since then we haven’t heard any complaints,” he said.
Even as he eschews using the Israeli Olympic team’s gyms, Halabi lamented his athletes’ subpar training facilities. As such, while star Israeli judoka Arik Ze’evi expects to win a medal, Halabi has modest goals in mind for Rmeileh.
“I hope to see him carry the Palestinian flag in London,” Halabi said. “He is a good fighter in judo. Maybe he will [do well], but a medal is very difficult.”
Even when it’s offered, Halabi said, he refuses any cooperation with the Israeli delegation. “There are more than 6,000 Palestinians in their prisons,” he said about Israel. “With the occupation and the prisons, I cannot train” with Israel.
For her part, Sawalha would be happy to train with Israelis. “The whole thing is about sport and nothing else,” she said.