In the past, the Palestinians haven’t had much support for home games because all their home games were ‘away’ – hosted outside their own territory, mainly in neighbouring Jordan, because of the precarious security situation and the lack of adequate infrastructure at home.
But on Sunday they played a friendly against Jordan at the newly-built stadium at Al-Ram just outside Jerusalem, the first in the territory to meet the requirements for international play set by FIFA.Palestine has been affiliated to FIFA since 1998 FIFA financed the construction of the stadium,which features a synthetic lawn and 6,000 seats and is named after Faysal Husseini, an east Jerusalem Palestinian leader who died in 2001
Video of Blatter at the inauguration here..
The game ended in a draw but the unifying power of sport in general and of football in particular is most evident again.