In these sporty times, the following cockle-warming tale comprises a wonderful blend of footie, fusion, and faith, as a joint Israeli-Palestinian team is in Australia to compete in an international Australian Rules football tournament.

The squad features 13 Israelis and 13 Palestinians and is the culmination of a joint effort between the AFL, Israel’s Peres Center for Peaceand Palestine’s Al-Quds Association for Democracy and Dialogue.

The team conducted a sports clinic in Sydney for 160 Muslim, Jewish, Aboriginal and Christian youth yesterday, and will be officially welcomed today by the governor of New South Wales, Marie Bashir.

Next, they will fly to Melbourne to play next week against Britain, Papua New Guinea and Nauru.

While many of the players had never heard of Australia’s indigenous sport, let alone played it, before January, they have persevered through challenges such as snow and checkpoint closures.

A Palestinian player was even forced to drop out following death threats because he was suspected of collaborating with Israelis.

Despite these tribulations, Israeli player, Kevin Nafte, said the team pushed on through the problems.

When terrorists were firing rockets into Sderot and the IDF was operating in Gaza, an emotional rage transpired into a motivational force. And after the two abducted soldiers were returned to Israel in coffins, everyone just kept on playing football with a renewed enthusiasm and spirit.

Sccording to the Peres Center’s director of sport, Gal Peleg, getting the team together, even for training, was a substantial challenge:

It wasn’t just a bit hard, it was extremely hard. We needed to overcome a lot of obstacles and barriers along the way. Starting from learning a new game, a hard game, and we don’t have any AFL ovals in Israel or Palestine so we needed to play on soccer fields. Some of the players need to travel three to four hours for every training session. Then they have to get a visa and permits for every training session, go through checkpoints, and they all are volunteering for this and taking time out of work or study just to be here.

Despite efforts to remain united in an environment in which conflict is all pervasive, Peleg observes that the fraught circumstances often proved insurmountable:

Unfortunately, we had some players – brilliant players – on the team, but their neighbourhood and friends were against the project of collaborating with the ‘enemy’, and that was a terrible shame. These were some of the obstacles we’ve had to overcome.

The Third International Cup is the sport’s equivalent of soccer’s World Cup.

Eighteen teams, including Canada and the United States, are competing in Melbourne between Aug. 27 and Sept. 7.

Australian Rules football is a blend of Gaelic football and rugby. There are three posts at each end of a giant oval and each team has 18 players.

[Via: The Canberra Times and JTA; image via: Peres Center for Peace]