Gaza conservatives win the battle to cancel girls football match
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Raven Ruma
- . December 7, 2022
- . Update: December 7, 2022 3:31 pm
Religious Gaza conservatives have won the battle for the cancellation of a football match for young girls in the Gaza Strip, a Palestinian exclave on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea.
Religious conservatives described the football match as an attempt to “replace the hijab with shorts.” According to Arab News, the football match for girls aged 9 to 12 from the Rafah Services Club and the Rafah Youth Club was cancelled due to pressure from religious conservatives. Scholars and clerics called the match a “moral disgrace.”
The match was scheduled for Thursday. Hani Abu Kush, a board member of the Rafah Services Club, said that the match was for young children who were not professional soccer players.
Majdi Al-Maghrabi, one of the hard-liners in Rafah, reportedly announced the cancellation of the match. Al-Maghrabi wrote on Facebook, “We were informed that the match was cancelled at the request of the governor of Rafah.”
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Al-Maghrabi said that the match “aspires to lead our girls to replace the hijab with shorts.” Al-Maghrabi accused the Fatah member Jibril Rajoub of running a “sabotage project for women’s sports.”
However, some people objected to Al-Maghrabi’s comment. Some people said those football players were just children.
Abu Kush reportedly said that the lack of funding prevented the club from forming women’s teams in the Gaza Strip. Abu Kush further said that women players from Gaza Strip are not part of the Palestinian national team.
Alaa Al-Amour, a female football coach, reportedly told Arab News, “The clubs in the Gaza Strip are not interested in women’s teams.” Al-Amour said that women players usually wear modest kits that do not violate the traditions of the Gaza Strip.
Earlier this year, the decision to impose the hijab on secondary school students in the Gaza Strip was rejected by students and their parents.
