Arab Soccer in a Jewish State
The Integrative Enclave

This book analyses the political significance of soccer for Arab-Jewish relations.

Tamir Sorek (Author)

9780521870481, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 21 June 2007

242 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.7 cm, 0.53 kg

Review of the hardback: 'The book's nine chapters provide fascinating accounts of how soccer is inextricably linked to Israel's broader social, cultural and political conflicts. Sorek explicitly discusses these relationships often starting or ending chapters with events that run concurrently in Israeli politics and Israeli soccer. His writing refuses to shy away from how sport and politics merge and the accounts provide students and academics with vivid past and present examples of the imbrications.' Managing Leisure

Over the last two decades soccer has become a major institution within the popular culture of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel. They have attained disproportionate success in this field. Given their marginalisation 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, Sorek examines how soccer can potentially be utilised 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 legitimises contemporary inequality between Jews and Arabs in Israel and pursues wider arguments about the role of sport in ethno-national conflicts. Ideal for researchers and graduate students.

1. Introduction
2. Sports, modernity and struggle in Palestine
3. The emergence of the integrative enclave
4. Soccer and municipal 'labor quiet'
5. 'These points are Arab': nationalist rhetoric in the sports press
6. 'Maccabi Haifa is my flag': Arab fans of Jewish teams
7. The Islamic soccer league
8. Sakhnin - between soccer and martyrdom
9. Conclusion.

Subject Areas: International relations [JPS], Social theory [JHBA], Ethnic studies [JFSL], Social groups [JFS]