Much has been made of the AFL’s recent efforts to expand the game, creating inroads for the sport in the Gold Coast and Greater Western Sydney, with additional licenses heading to Tasmania, and an as-yet-unannounced 20th location. The league has also sought to make in-roads internationally, hosting pre-season games in London, and Los Angeles, and games for premiership points in China and New Zealand. However, nothing comes close to the AFL’s most audacious expansion project ever, tackling peace in the Middle East.
An initiative led by Australians and an Israeli organisation called the Peres Center for Peace and Innovation recruited athletes from Palestine and Israel to form a joint team, which would compete at the 2008 International Cup after a year of learning the game.
For those of you who have forgotten, the AFL briefly ran an international tournament, similar to the FIFA World Cup, from 2002 to 2017. In 2008 the tournament featured 16 teams from different countries including New Zealand, Samoa, Japan, India, Papua New Guinea, Great Britain, Nauru, South Africa, Denmark, China, Ireland, Canada, Sweden, Finland, and the United States.
The joint Israel and Palestinian team was supported by many AFL figures, including former Carlton president, Dick Pratt, and the legendary Ron Barassi. During the tournament, Hawthorn legend Robert DiPierdomenico would coach the team.
2008 International Cup
To learn the game, athletes were sent to a small town in Israel where they were able to practice on a soccer pitch, and sessions were run in English with Hebrew and Arabic translators working with the team. The team also had a few practice matches against groups of Australians that were in the area at the time.
At the 2008 tournament, hosted just outside of Melbourne, the joint Israeli-Palestinian team lost all three group games, scoring only 22 points and conceding 452. They lost by 127 points to Great Britain, 133 points to Papua New Guinea, and 170 points to Nauru.
The Peace Team then had their first win, defeating the China Red Demons by nine points in the finals, before defeating the Finland Icebreakers in the 13th place play-off, scoring 89 points while restricting the Finns to 14 points.
In Between Years
The effort was largely seen as a success, bringing Israelis and Palestinians together. Following the tournament, a documentary about the team called Tackling Peace was released. The team’s process was also featured in an AFL and Channel 7-produced documentary called The Essence of the Game.
Unfortunately, conflict broke out a few short months after the end of the tournament, with the Israeli army invading Gaza following a six-month-long ceasefire. This, coupled with increasing tension between Palestinian and Israeli athletes, led to the Palestinian athletes facing great difficulty in getting permits to cross into Israel.
2011 International Cup
Despite the difficulties faced in the region, another effort was made to bring a second joint Israeli-Palestinian team to Australia for the second International Cup. The team lost many of the players from the first team but retained Kamal Abu Altom, who was the co-captain of the first Peace Team.
During the second tournament, this time hosted in Sydney, the team was drawn into group six alongside the United States and Canada and failed to score a single point in either of their games. In the divisional round, The Peace Team recorded their first win for the tournament, defeating China 90 to 7, while losing to Fiji and France, finishing in third. The Peace Team would end their tournament by defeating India to finish third in the second division.
End of the Road
Even though they had participated in two successive international tournaments, The Peace Team soon fell apart as tensions increased in the region. A third attempt at reviving the team was made by inaugural player, Yonatan Belik in 2015, who based the team in Jerusalem. The team participated in the Euro Cups in 2015, where they finished 12th out of 12 teams.
The group quickly fell apart again, but has since been replaced by an Israeli side based out of Tel Aviv, called the Tel Aviv Cheetahs. The Israeli team has participated in the 2022, 2023, and 2024 Euro Cup where they finished as high as 6th place out of 14 teams, the country’s greatest result at an international tournament.
Despite the end of the project, one of the members of the second Peace Team still trains with the Tel Aviv team and is the coach of the Israeli National team.
The AFL continued to run the International Cup competition until the 2020 competition was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the tournament has not been resurrected, despite plans to host the 2020 and 2023 tournaments on the Sunshine Coast. Instead, the AFL sponsored multiple regional AFL events including the Trans-Atlantic Cup, the Asia Cup, and the Pacific Cup.
