SHEIKH JALAH, Occupied East Jerusalem — It’s been nearly three years since Mahdi Hijazi last played a professional soccer game, but the Gaza war has brought the Palestinian domestic league to a standstill.
The 23-year-old now spends his days on the sidelines of a series of soccer fields adjacent to the Israeli police headquarters in Sheikh Jarrah in occupied East Jerusalem. For years, the area has faced the eviction of Palestinian families by Israeli authorities, who have been replaced by Israeli settlers.
Hijazi, who played for the Palestinian national team and toured abroad with Jerusalem’s most decorated club, Hilal Al-Quds, can be seen handing out snacks to players and desperate to continue playing the game he loves in any way possible.
“Football is in our blood. Win or lose, football is beautiful. It’s life itself… We feel the breath of football,” he told Al Jazeera. “We have had no sports activities for three years. Although it is difficult, we are keeping fit by training in the gym…Our only concern now is to return to football.”
Hilal Al Quds has been a part of Hijazi’s life since birth. His grandfather founded the club and he grew up from a young age to play in the first team across Asia.
But the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, and the ensuing massacre in Gaza, changed everything.
The future of Palestinian football is in jeopardy as no one knows when the Palestinian Professional League, which has been suspended since the start of the Gaza war, will resume.
When the salary is gone
Palestinian soccer teams are usually made up of players from across the West Bank and East Jerusalem, but Israeli military attacks in the occupied territories have made it extremely difficult for them to travel to Palestine. Officials say a surge in settler attacks and the closure of roads in the West Bank by Israeli forces that Palestinian soccer players use to travel between games would have made matches impossible in the country anyway.
For Palestinian players, the suspension of the Palestine Pro League was devastating. Former national team player Khaled Abu Dar, 36, has run an influential youth academy in Jerusalem for the past decade, many of whose players go on to compete at the professional level.
Professional league soccer players previously earned the equivalent of $2,000 to $3,000 a month, while national team players could earn up to $7,000.
“Some of the former players who were stars are now unemployed and doing menial jobs. Nothing can do justice to his career,” coach Abu Dar said.
Hijazi said the suspension of the country’s professional leagues has caused many players in the prime of their careers to quit soccer and take whatever job they can find.
“The money was good, but today it’s gone. Many of my friends got jobs in the construction industry. One became a barber, one a mechanic, one worked in a supermarket and one in a bakery,” Hijazi said. “As football players, we knew that at the end of the month the paycheck would come in, (but) now some of us are married, we have kids, we don’t have any income. ”
While Hijazi himself has made a new living by buying and selling cars, there are other challenges facing players and support staff beyond the suspension of the league. Athletes from the West Bank, without the relative mobility afforded by Jerusalem ID or work permits in Israel, suffer the most.
Mustafa Owais, 35, a former professional player before the war, told the tragic story of a former teammate from Bethlehem, a city largely under Israeli control.
“His only job was football (but) after the war he started working two days a week in the West Bank. Throughout the week he earned 100 shekels ($34.24) or 200 shekels ($68.47), he is married, he has children, he has a family,” Owais told Al Jazeera.
Another former teammate said he once earned $5,000 a month playing football, but now gets by on $500.
“People want to do what they love.”
Some players, desperate for a chance to play soccer and support their families, have made the uneasy decision to join clubs in the Israeli Premier League.
“At the end of the day, people want to do what they like, regardless of their political views…That’s why they are heading to the Israeli league until the Palestinian league is revived,” coach Abu Dar reasoned.
Abdul Fattah Aral, a veteran coach who won multiple titles in the Palestinian league and managed the powerful Palestinian club Taraji Wadi Al-Nes based near Bethlehem, cited a number of domestic players who have sought opportunities abroad over the years.
He estimates that 70 to 80 players went to Libya to play, about 10 to Egypt, six to Jordan and several more to Qatar, Kuwait, Malaysia and Indonesia. These countries classify Palestinians as local players rather than foreign players, making their contracts cheaper. “Other players of course don’t have a chance, so they disappear,” he said.
Hijazi said even if a player finds an overseas team to play with, the transition is not always easy.
“It’s different for a player who has been idle for a long time to go abroad now. He needs to first return to the league, regain his passion on the pitch, and then only think about going abroad,” he said.
One of Hijazi’s former teammates from Hilal Al Quds made the difficult decision to move to Libya shortly after the birth of his first child on October 7, 2023. After being away from work for a long time, he eventually joined a club in Libya, but decided it was too dangerous to leave his home in Tripoli at night and returned to Palestine.
For women, the decline is even steeper.
The women’s national team managed to regroup, giving Palestinian athletes hope of competing at international level.
In April 2025, the Palestinian national team, mainly from their own country, defeated Jordan in the final of the West Asian Football Federation (WAFF) Women’s Championship to win the title for the first time.
Laila Atamneh, 18, from East Jerusalem’s Beit Hanina neighborhood and a member of the under-20 women’s national team, said the players remember who they are playing for: “There are people rooting for you in Gaza. It has given us a spirit that we didn’t have before.”
“The war may have been a curse in many ways, but I feel like it brought out the best in the national team,” she said.
Still, the Palestinian clubs she played for in the past have disappeared due to the crisis, and she knows of no other women of her age still playing in Jerusalem.
“It’s not easy to keep going when you don’t see a goal in what you’re doing. Where can you go next with your talents? They can’t see the next step,” she explained. “It all comes back to training. Without training, you’re not going anywhere.”
disappearing generation
The longer the West Bank Premier League is suspended, the more damaging it will be, especially for the young players who should start replacing the current professional group.
“Every year we lose a generation,” said Khalil Hamed, a former player and current coach at Abu Dar’s football academy. “The generation that was supposed to be on the rise is disappearing. Take for example the players who are 18 years old today. Two years ago they were already in the first team and could have been the stars of the team, but now they have given up.”
Abdel Fattah Aral, who has contributed to the development of the West Bank Premier League since its creation in 2008, said that none of the young players he coached in 2023 will still be playing soccer.
“They’re old. Some have disappeared. We don’t even know if they’re working in Israel. In football, it’s three years, four years – that’s a generation,” Aral said. “This is a period from World Cup to World Cup.”
Aral expects to see a scaled-down version of the league after the summer break. Mustafa Owais said if football were to return, players would be paid just 500 shekels ($171.18) a month, and maybe no salary at all. But the club is in bankruptcy after Palestinian Authority funds have been frozen by Israel and local corporate donors that once funded the team have dried up.
If there is a revival, it will likely return to its early 2008 status. “Sports went back 20 years. In three years we went back 20 years,” he said.
Aral has a more optimistic outlook on the future of Palestinian football. Youth academies popping up in West Bank villages and towns run by former players and national team veterans could be the seeds of a future resurgence, he said.
“I cannot say that three years have ruined our project. No, as Palestinians we will not give up,” he said. “We started from zero and reached the highest point.”
After Friday morning’s training session on Sheikh Jarrah’s mini-pitch, Owais, Hamed and several other former professional players watched over a group of under-12 boys practicing at Abu Dar’s academy.
Coach Abu Dar believes there are 10 really talented players in the first group, but worries that the longer the league remains stagnant, the fewer opportunities children will have to play professional football.
“By the age of 18, if the opportunity doesn’t come, he’s going to be like the rest of us: either become a coach or quit,” he said. “If they go to Europe, they will play for any club. God willing, they will find better opportunities than we have seen so far.”
