JERUSALEM -- Those of us who, like millions all over the world, on Wednesday watched the live broadcast from Seville, Spain, had to pinch ourselves to believe it. There, at La Cartuja soccer stadium, a ''Match For Peace'' was played between a joint Israeli-Palestinian team and a local Andalusian one.
This was another project of the Peres Center for Peace, whose founder, Nobel Peace Prize winner Shimon Peres, believes that soccer can promote peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Indeed, when Israeli player Klemi Saban scored a goal close to the end of the first half, Israelis and Palestinians in the crowd joyfully waved their respective flags together.
The city of Seville has manifested its commitment to peace in the Middle East not only in its soccer stadium. In March it hosted the Second World Congress of Imams and Rabbis for Peace. Invoking the ''Master of the Universe, the Compassionate and All Merciful,'' the Muslim and Jewish leaders called upon their co-religionists ''to respect all human life, dignity and rights, to promote peace and justice.'' Furthermore, they expressed the ''urgent need for truthful and respectful education about each other's faith and tradition in our respective communities and schools,'' and called upon those responsible ''to promote such essential education for peaceful co-existence.'' Without being a rabbi, let alone an imam, I would sign this wholeheartedly.
Back home, however, in the real Israel/Palestine, things look much bleaker. Indeed, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has just met with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas after a long period of frozen relations. Olmert even surprised Abbas when, before the TV cameras, he kissed him on both cheeks. The beleaguered Palestinian leader seemed like he could have lived without such a gesture, which put him in an awkward position vis-a-vis his people.
Anyway, he was looking for much more meaningful gestures, namely the release of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. Olmert promised to look into it, and it seemed like a deal of a goodwill was cooked up just before the coming Id al-Adha, the Islamic holiday marking the end of the year.
Yet the Palestinians, masters of shooting themselves in the foot, blew it again. Back in the summer of 2005, after the withdrawal of Israel from the Gaza Strip, they could have started a nation-building process there, thus proving to the world that they were worthy of a sovereign state. Instead, without any provocation, they started shelling the southern Israeli city of Sderot with Kassam rockets, thus triggering angry Israeli reprisals.
Recently, with the assistance of Egypt, a hudna (truce) was brokered, but again, the Palestinians violated it. Why? Because. True, the main Palestinian factions, Fatah and Hamas, adhered to the truce, and this time it was ''only'' the Islamic Jihad, a small extremist terror group backed by Iran, which kept firing rockets toward Israel. Untypically, Israel showed great restraint, trying to preserve the truce, but all its appeals to the Palestinian authorities to control their dissidents were met with impotent shrugging of shoulders.
On Wednesday, when the Israeli-Palestinian team in Seville was preparing for the game, a salvo of Islamic Jihad rockets hit Sderot again, severely injuring two kids. This almost pushed Israel over the edge, with angry voices calling for an iron-fist approach toward this endless aggression. It might bring the end of the fragile truce, with no Palestinian prisoners to celebrate the holiday with their families, and it's all the Palestinians' own doing.
Why can Palestinians and Israelis play soccer together, but when it comes to the real world, they have to grab each other's throat? Maybe because on the Palestinian side, some players want to play outside the rules, and their mates don't bother -- or don't dare -- to restrain them. Furthermore, there is no referee around, to call the violators to order: The United States is too busy in Iraq to engage in another arena in the Middle East.
The Israeli-Palestinian team in Seville, by the way, lost 3-1 to the better Spanish team. But if Israelis and Palestinians listen to the wise words of their rabbis and imams and educate themselves toward mutual respect and tolerance, and if the Palestinians get their act together, then the hope for peace is definitely not lost.
This article was first published in The Miami Herald on December 29, 2006.
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The opinions expressed herein are the author's own personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect those of the Israel Democracy Institute.