State,sport and resistance: A case of Palestinian sports clubs in the West Bank

Abstract

The article explores the intersections between sport, state and resistance in the context of military occupation and independence struggle. Based on a year of fieldwork in the local sports clubs in the West Bank, it analyses how sport may be used as a tool of resistance and state-building on the community level. For decades preceding the establishment of the Palestinian Authority in 1994, sport and youth centres were important sites of socio-political mobilization and took an active part in the national effort to build structures independent from the Israeli occupation. Following the Oslo Accords, state-building became institutionalized and outsourced to the emergent central institutions of the Palestinian Authority. The article analyses this transition from the perspective of local clubs that went from being active actors of state-building through sport to being subjects of the Palestinian Authority’s efforts to consolidate its state-like powers. To understand how local sport activists made sense of these changes, the distinction between a bottom-up and a top-down approach to state-building through sport is made. The article aims to contribute to the ongoing debates on the use of sport in the service of nation state, by investigating the case of state-building through sport in the context of military occupation.