Saudi Arabia's national football team arrived in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on Sunday, on a groundbreaking visit to play against Palestine on Tuesday. The game will be played in the West Bank town of Al-Ram, between Ramallah and Jerusalem, and marks a change in policy for the Gulf state, which has previously only played against Palestine in third countries.
Four years ago a similar game was ultimately played in Jordan after pressure on the Saudis not to go to Israeli-occupied territory. Arab clubs and national teams have historically refused to play in the West Bank, where the Palestinian national team plays, as it obliged them to apply for Israeli entry permits, implying normalisation of relations.
But lately clubs or national teams from Iraq, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain have all visited. Others, including Egypt and Lebanon, still refuse. Saudi Arabia does not have official diplomatic relations with the Jewish state but the two countries are widely believed to have discreet contacts over Iran, their common enemy. The team visit had been seen by some as breaching a decades-long Arab boycott of the Jewish state over its treatment of the Palestinians.
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