North Africa football fans use stadium freedoms to back Palestinians

As early as October 8 - the day after Palestinian militant group Hamas launched an attack on Israel that sparked the war - supporters of Raja Club Athletic in Casablanca revived an old chant. "You for whom my heart is saddened," goes the song which spread throughout the Arab world. "Our tears have been flowing for years. Palestine, my beloved, the Arabs are asleep. You, the most beautiful country, must resist."

In Algiers, dramatic choreographed fan displays, known as tifos, depicted giant figures in the traditional keffiyeh scarf associated with the Palestinian cause and calls for a "free Palestine". "The Palestinian question unites everyone" in the region, said Abderrahim Bourkia, a Moroccan sociologist who has studied diehard "ultra" football fans. "The ultras generally place themselves on the side of the oppressed, so for them, it goes without saying to sing about Palestine."

Banners at stadiums across North Africa have denounced the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip. There have also been vows to "avenge the (Palestinian) children" as well as support for the "resistance fighters in the heart of the tunnels" - a reference to Hamas's tunnels under Gaza. Supporters interviewed by AFP in Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia used pseudonyms and covered their faces to conceal their identities.

Seif, a 28-year-old member of the Zapatista Ultras, who support Esperance Sportive of Tunis, said the Palestinian issue added to other more local ones, citing Tunisian corruption and the death of teenaged supporter Omar Laabidi who drowned during a police chase in 2018.

Throughout the region, political dissent in football stadiums takes place against a backdrop of repression and a lack of freedom of assembly and expression, according to