Goal Dreams at Al Hoash

The film screening at Al Hoash curated by Lara Khalidi and participating artist, Yazan Khalili, was the 2006 documentary, Goal Dreams, directed and produced by Maya Sanbar and Jeffrey Saunders. The film tells the story of the Palestinian National football team as it prepared for its first round match against Uzbekistan in the 2006 World Cup.

The saying that truth is stranger than fiction is never truer than in a case like this. The Palestinian 'National' team consisted of players from Chile, Kuwait, Lebanon, the USA, Gaza and the West Bank. Despite the commitment of the Austrian coach Alfred Riedl, and the passion of businessman Tayseer Barakat in driving the project the enormity of the task ultimately defeats them. There are problems trying to unify a team who don't have a common language and where translations into and out of Arabic, English and Spanish are not always reliable. Trying to make cohesive styles of play among team members who have grown up in different continents is another difficulty. But the biggest difficulty of all is the fact that the whole team never actually manage to arrive. After three attempts to cross the unpredictable 3-stage border from Gaza into Egypt, only five of the Gazan team members are allowed through despite special permits. When they do finally arrive it is only a week or so before the match and after only a few days training  they hear that close friends in Gaza have been killed in Israeli attacks. 

As well as having to train abroad, when they do finally get to play their 'home' game it's in Qatar. There is zero possibility of playing it in Palestine because it doesn't exist even if the national team do. So they had to borrow a stadium from the Qataris instead.

It is a film that encapsulates the real and present complications of anything national and Palestinian. The diaspora and its talents is entrenched in other places and completely globally spread. As more and more time drags on in the absence of any agreement there is less and less to return to that can be unified to create a national future. The international political rhetoric also drags on unchanged for decades ensuring that the ultimate result is a permanently open goal for Israel.