This is a conversation with Lifta Club, and documentary filmmaker Liam O'Hare about Aida Refugee Camp and Lajee Centre, a grassroots creative and cultural organization that supports Palestinian rights and the struggle for justice.
Liam O'Hare is an award-winning investigative journalist and filmmaker, breaking major stories for publications such as The Independent, Al Jazeera English, The Guardian, the Sunday Herald, and Channel 4 News.
This is a transcribed conversation hosted by Noor Ahmed, founder of Lifta Club, and documentary filmmaker Liam O'Hare about Aida Refugee Camp and Lajee Centre, a grassroots creative and cultural organization that supports Palestinian rights and the struggle for justice.
Lifta Club: Hi, Liam.
Liam O’Hare: Hello Noor, how are you doing?
LC: I'm good. So Liam, I want to ask you a few questions. I know you're very busy, so I wanted to ask you about Lajee Celtic and also your involvement with them, because I know that you've been involved with them for maybe 15 years or longer.
Liam: Yeah, well, largely Celtic haven't been about for 15 years. However, they are an extension of the Lajee Center, which is a cultural center based in Aida refugee camp in the occupied West Bank. And, yeah, I've been visiting Aida camp for quite a long time. And over, I guess, yeah, the last decade or so, the links between either refugee camp in the West Bank and Glasgow in Scotland have been developed in quite a and quite a substantial way. And this one of the things that is came out of that, perhaps the most significant thing, has been the formation of Lajee Celtic which is a football club based in Aida camp, which has various different age groups of players, from you know, kids as young as six all the way up to senior teams. Lajee Celtic came out of a game that was played actually in Glasgow, a Champions League qualifier, where Celtic played hapwell Beersheba, an Israeli team. And at that time, in 2016 Celtic fans were warned not to display any kind of support for Palestine at that game. Obviously, Celtic fans have a reputation for support for Palestine, so when Celtic were going up against an Israeli team, there was an expectation that there may be more visible support for Palestine, so the authorities, UEFA, even Celtic Football Club themselves, attempted to stop any sign of support. In response to this, Celtic fans doubled down and showed a massive wave of support for Palestine at the game. This led to a fine by UEFA for the waving of Palestinian flags. And in response to that fine, - and I'm getting to the point - where, as Lajee Celtic comes into it, in response to that fine, Celtic fans, predominantly the green brigade, Celtic Ultras, launched a campaign called ‘match the fine’ for Palestine. The intention being that we wouldn't be raising money to pay the fine itself. The club has plenty of money to do that, but instead, we would match the fine and send that to organizations and charities in Palestine, one of them being the Lajee Center.
Now, Celtic fans didn't just match the fine which I think was about 30,000 £. In fact, they matched it many times over and raised about 180,000 £, half of which went to the Lajee center, and that was predominantly going on the building of a football pitch in either refugee camp, and funding Lajee Celtic facilities, boots, strips, equipment for all of the players. So the whole formation of Lajee Celtic, I guess, be sourced to that point, but since then, has gone onto, you know, to bigger things, obviously, within the confines of the occupation, within the confines of the post October 7 situation as well, which is very difficult to have any type of football team and the West Bank since then, but nevertheless, it has persisted, growing and is really coming on leaps and bounds, and mostly, due to the, you know, fantastic work that's done by the people who run the Lajee center, but obviously supported at the same time by Celtic fans, but also by supporters all over the world.
LC: Very cool. So how many could you give us an estimate about? You know, how many kids are we talking about in either refugee camp? Like, how many kids are part of Lajee Celtic?
Liam: So I think there's up to 100 players across all the age groups. We are covered by Lajee Celtic. I was in Aida camp fairly recently and visited - they have quite a small pitch next to the Lajee Center and the camp which is surrounded, is worth mentioning, is surrounded on three sides, basically by the apartheid wall, by the separation wall. You have watchtowers looking literally over the football pitch. And so where the kids and the players train. They're constantly being monitored and watched by the occupation soldiers. But when I was there quite recently, the pitch was being used constantly by all age groups. So many times there was 20-30 kids at a time playing many tournaments, and then all the way up to the senior team, who have been playing. The West Bank League has been canceled since the seventh of October, 2003 so they have not been able to play competitive games, the senior team, but they have been playing sort of exhibition games throughout this period. So the team is looking in good shape, and hopefully they can actually get to play competitively in not too long.
LC: So what kinds of things within Lajee Celtic, does the support help, as in, you know, what are the kinds of plans? What are the ideas - I love that it's happening, and I'm sure it's hard to maintain. But what sort of the plans are there around Lajee Celtic or what do they hope for?
Liam: There's a lot of plans. I think, first and foremost, the Lajee Center, obviously, largely Celtic is one part of the Lajee Center. The Lajee Center does work across the sort of cultural sphere, predominantly with young people. They've got dance groups, they've got music groups, they've got women's groups, they've got an environmental unit. So largely, Celtic is just one component, obviously, of the Lajee Center, which, you know, believes in cultural resistance to the occupation. So it is a form of, yes, cultural resistance. But also, I think it's worth remembering the conditions in which people live in Aida camp, they are facing almost daily, if not daily, then at least weekly, raids from the Israeli army, which traumatize people, in particular children, to a huge scale. There was a study done which showed that AIda refugee camp is the most tear gassed place on Earth, it's been more tear gassed than anywhere else on Earth. So obviously, one the trauma that that brings to especially the children of the camp. But also the health, the negative health effects that that brings, also to the children of the camp are huge.
So through things like Lajee Celtic what that is offering is the young people the chance, an opportunity to engage, and, you know, something, an activity that one is healthy for them, and two, that gives them opportunity to play, because there are very few opportunities or spaces to play, and three just to try to give them an outlet. And obviously the situation with grown ups surrounded by this huge militarized force on all sides, and through offering a chance to, you know, train to dance or train to play traditional Palestinian music or to play for Lajee Celtic - all this, I guess, is to try to offer the young people of the of the camp and outlet to express themselves, but and hand in hand with that, of course, goes the, you know, a lot of the, I guess, a lot of the political links that come with that.
So Lajee Celtic has already done one tour to Africa, to South Africa. Last year, they were invited by organizers in South Africa. So obviously, to get them to South Africa took, you know, funding and finance, and for many of them, the players that went, in fact, for the vast majority of them, it was the first time they'd ever had the opportunity to leave the West Bank, to leave Palestine, to see the sea, to see a different country, to meet different people. And obviously, when they got there, they got a hero's welcome. So that is just one thing, as well as often, these people have a chance to to represent Palestine, outside of Palestine and that's been huge. We're hoping, and we have been hoping, to get Lajee Celtic to Ireland this summer, just right now, actually, unfortunately, the Irish government didn't issue visas for the team, which was hugely disappointing, but we will try to make that happen as soon as we possibly can. So all of this obviously needs funding and support. And there has been very, very generous support from so many people across the board. Obviously, the selling of Lajee Celtic strips helps to finance it. Obviously, hugely gratefully, the selling of any Lifta strips as well to help to finance this.
And in terms of the big idea of the project it is just to give, you know, the people of the camp who grow up in these really traumatizing and awful conditions, an opportunity to experience life like so many of us take for granted. And that, I guess, is the sort of fundamental point of what we're about to do. Yeah.
Thank you!
