ABSTRACT
This paper examines the ways in which the players, parents and managers of the Banāt Sakhnin soccer team understand and make palatable their participation in a sport that has been historically ascribed to men. By conceptualizing their participation in soccer as a hobby, the players, coaches and parents create space for imaginative reshaping of Palestinian-ness, while maintaining limits on how far that creativity can go. Building on scholarship that analyses sport as ‘play’, or an activity that stands outside ‘ordinary life’ and a recreational space where alternate or inverted social roles are performed, I examine how conceptualizing women’s soccer as a ‘hobby’ or ‘leisure activity’ creates a space where Palestinian women can safely act outside the prescribed norms of Palestinian womanhood inside Israel. The story presented is based on interviews collected during two years of fieldwork in Israel. It is a story of a team’s enduring passion for soccer in light of ongoing struggle, social expectations and setbacks.
