GAZA CITY, Palestine
The Israeli authorities have stopped several players from Gaza’s Ittihad al-Shejaiya football team from leaving the Gaza Strip via Israel’s Erez border crossing to play a scheduled match in the occupied West Bank.
Ittihad al-Shejaiya is slated to play the final match of the Palestinian Football Cup against West Bank-based football club Ahli al-Khalil on Sunday.
In a Friday statement, Ittihad al-Shejaiya said its members would not leave the blockaded strip until the entire team was allowed out of the coastal territory.
Earlier this week, Ahli al-Khalil players entered the Gaza Strip for the first time in 15 years for a scheduled match with Ittihad al-Shejaiya.
Due to the Israeli travel hindrances, however, the match – which ended in a goalless draw – was postponed until Thursday.
Thursday’s final was the first Palestinian match to be played in the Gaza Strip since 2000, when the Second Intifada – a Palestinian popular uprising – erupted against Israel’s decades-long occupation.
Although the uprising ended some five years later, the Gaza Strip has continued to groan under a tight Israeli-Egyptian blockade – first imposed in 2007 – that has deprived the enclave’s roughly two million inhabitants of most basic needs, including food and medicine.
