World Cup 2022: Morocco, pride of Arab world and standard bearer of Palestine

The journey of the Atlas Lions at the World Cup is celebrated from Gaza to Algiers, a joy on which the question of the Palestinian cause is attributed, omnipresent in Doha. A rare moment of jubilation and unity in a region that knows crisis on crisis.

by Benjamin Barthe, Eric Collier (Doha, Special Envoy), Louis Imbert (Jerusalem, correspondent) , Laure Stephan (Beirut, Correspondence) and Célia Zouaoui (Algiers, Correspondence)

Doha souk merchants miss business every day, they who have not anticipated, like everyone else, the incredible journey of the Morocco team and its historic qualification for the semi-finals of A world football world, the first of an African team. The first of an Arab team too. Their stocks of red and green jerseys and flags are not enough to satisfy the countless new supporters of the Atlas Lions, as much to say all the Arab world, which has endowed this team and which everywhere celebrates its journey, of Muscat , the capital located in the east of Oman, Agadir, in western Morocco.

Faisal Abbas, editorial director of the Saudi English -speaking daily Arab News, discern, behind this popular fervor, “a feeling of fraternity that is expressed”. “For the first time for a long time, the Arab peoples have been putting their differences aside. Myself, I am not a big football fan normally, but, for a few days, this passion is contagious,” observes the journalist. More cultural than religious according to Mohammed Al-Masri, the Jordanian director of the Arab Center for Political Research and Studies in Qatar, this new “Arab pride” also defended the Palestinian Cause in standard.

The Palestinian flag is indeed omnipresent in Qatar, in conversations on the terrace, in the streets and even in the stadiums, with the tacit agreement of the Qatari authorities and the president of the International Football Federation (FIFA), which To his selective indignation about the presence of political messages in the World Cup enclosures. Not quite a surprise, according to Mr. Al-Masri, whose recent study shows that 78 % of those questioned by him in a dozen countries responded favorably to the mention “The Palestinian cause concerns all Arabs, not only The Palestinian people “.

In Doha, Moroccan players have brandished the Palestinian standard after their victory against Canada, the 1 ^er December. Then the whole team set around this flag on the lawn of the Stade Education City d’Al-Rayyan, after eliminating Spain on penalties on December 6. A whole symbol, after the Cherifian kingdom signed, in 2020, a diplomatic standardization agreement with Israel, an occupying power of the Palestinian territories since 1967.

Scenes of Damascus 2>

Palestine, this stateless nation, a member of FIFA since 1998 but unskilled, is lived as the 33 e team of the 2022 World Cup, carried by Moroccan victories. It is therefore with joy, and a touch of surprise, that the Palestinian population discovered the privileged place occupied in Qatar by its national colors, symbols of unity and resistance. Throughout the competition, the Panarabe al-Jazira chain largely covered these solidarity demonstrations. And, in Doha, the Qatari authorities have been benevolence towards this cause, they who did not join the so -called “Abraham” standardization agreements, following the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Sudan.

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