Only former Israeli President Shimon Peres could pull off something like organizing a friendly football (soccer) match between Israeli and Palestinian children just a week after the latest Gaza war.
And only the Palestinian Authority could be so callous as to condemn such a demonstration of peaceful coexistence.
The game organized by Peres wasn’t between just any groups of Israeli and Palestinian kids. The Israelis came from the rocket-battered town of Sderot, and the Palestinians from Hebron, near to where earlier this summer Hamas terrorists abducted and executed three Jewish teens.
The game marked the start of the current year of the “School of Football and Peace,” a campaign by the Peres Center for Peace that brings together dozens of Israeli and Palestinian children for sports and other extracurricular learning activities.
Israel’s “peace partners” in the Palestinian Authority, however, didn’t seem to feel the same.
“Any activity of normalization in sports with the Zionist enemy is a crime against humanity,” insisted Jibril Rajoub, a senior member of the ruling Fatah faction and head of the Palestinian Supreme Council for Sports and Youth Affairs.
In a post to his Facebook page (which was translated by Palestinian Media Watch), Rajoub said it was official policy to oppose and prevent joint sporting events between Israeli and Palestinian children.
A local Fatah spokesman vowed that the party would “settle the account with these reckless people,” meaning the coach and other organizers who had dared to let Palestinian children commit the heinous crime of playing soccer with Israeli Jews.