Gunshots punctuate the night air, making 18-year-old Zjada Baydass freeze. She’s in the middle of one of her first training sessions with the Palestinian U-20 Women’s Soccer Team. They’re preparing to host qualifying games for the U-20 Asian Federation Cup.
“You’re safe, don’t worry. It’s just fireworks,” her teammates reassure her.
The field is in Ramallah, a city just 10 miles north of Jerusalem and the administrative capital of Palestine.
“That was our first night in Palestine and they’re trying to tell us that it’s fine. Like, you’re safe, don’t worry about it,” Baydass said. “Trying to kind of hide and downplay the realities of the occupation.”
After Israel became a state in 1948, Baydass’s grandfather, who was just 16 at the time, fled to Lebanon along with thousands of other Palestinians. No one in her family had set foot in Palestine since.
Until now.
It’s March 1, 2023, about seven months before Hamas would attack Israel, and 75 years since her grandfather fled Palestine. She finds herself frozen on a soccer pitch, stealing a glance at another teammate who had just arrived from Canada.
Training continues with the occasional sound of gunshots. Baydass learned that this was nothing out of the ordinary for her teammates. Whether or not they felt scared, she didn’t know. They didn’t show it.
“They didn’t want us to be scared and they wanted us to feel like we’re safe with them,” Baydass said.
Baydass tried to hide her stress and kept playing. The session continued with a scrimmage between the senior team and the U-20 squad. Baydass was already nervous about impressing her new team and exhausted from her journey to get there when a canister was thrown onto the field. Smoke billowed out. Baydass couldn’t breathe.
“It stings your mouth, it stings your nose, and now you’re only thinking about that,” Baydass said. “I have so many things going through my head, and throughout the entire training, there’s gunshots.”
Like the gunshots, Baydass’s teammates were unfazed by the tear gas.
“They said it makes their lungs stronger,” Baydass said. “They look at everything that the occupation does as a way to better them [sic].”
Growing up, Baydass learned from her father, Fidaa Baydass, how important it was to carry Palestine with her in everything she did.
“Never forget where you come from, that’s a big thing,” Baydass said he instilled this idea upon his children and: “Never be silent for the oppressed; always help, have your voice heard.”
Zjada Baydass carried these lessons with her but never truly understood the Palestinian experience until she had her feet in that soil and saw firsthand what it meant to live under Israeli occupation. Now injustice had names and faces.
“I have teammates whose family members have been killed, or they’ve watched their friends die or get shot at,” Baydass said. “For them, it is a real, legitimate threat, and yet they will put themselves in front of that every single time to protect someone they care about.”
Path to Palestine
Baydass’s journey to Ramallah began in 2020 when she needed something to do during the isolation of the pandemic. As a kid, she hated sports, and while she enjoyed watching her dad play in his rec soccer leagues, she wasn’t interested in participating herself.
You played for Palestine,” Baydass’s father texted her. “You wore the flag that people are trying to erase, and that, alone, in my book, is a great honor.”
“I was the most unathletic kid; you couldn’t get me to do anything,” Baydass laughed, recalling her own experience playing rec soccer. “I remember I would cry in the car for 10 minutes before I got out, I hated it so much.”
Adult boredom propelled Baydass to a neighborhood park with a ball in tow. It became a daily ritual that she grew to appreciate. Soccer became a challenge, something she could see herself getting better at. In just a couple of years, Baydass went from playing recreational soccer to earning a spot with the OL Reign Academy, a competitive club connected to Seattle’s professional women’s team.
“I was so focused on the progress and it became so addicting that that’s what I lived for, honestly,” Baydass said. “Every year, it’s all about, what can I do to push myself one step further?”
In 2021, during Baydass’s junior year of high school, a family friend who used to be a part of the Palestinian Football Association recommended her to a scout for the national team. They were looking for a few international players to add to their roster, and he knew Baydass played competitively.
“I had footage, and I sent over some of my games, and then he sent them over to the head coach of the U-20 team, and she ended up making contact with me,” Baydass said. “She said that she liked what she saw, and she invited me out for a trial.”
But, being in the middle of a pandemic, the chance to try out for the team was delayed until the U-20 team had its round of qualifying games for the AFC U-20 Women’s Asian Cup in March 2023.
On Feb. 28, 2023, Baydass embarked on a 24-hour trek to Palestine to try to earn a spot on the national team’s U-20 roster.
Over the three weeks Baydass spent training and playing with the team, Baydass said the realization of what it meant to be in Palestine started sinking in.
“I’m grateful to be able to have been opened up to the realities of what I have,” Baydass said. “I’ve never thought of how lucky I am to be able to get up with a roof over my head in the morning, but now, every morning with everything that I do, I’m always thinking about Palestine in the back of my head.”
During her tryout, Zjada Baydass impressed the coaching staff in the first week and was offered an official roster spot for the AFC qualifying tournament. The team’s first game was against Nepal. All the matches would be played at the official home stadium of the Palestinian Football Association, Faisal Al-Husseini.
The stadium is located in the southern part of Ramallah, just steps away from Israel’s security wall. It’s surrounded by concrete buildings that contrast with the plastic green of the turf and the red stadium seats that hold around 12,500 fans.
“I stepped out onto the field for the first time, and it was just training, but still, I literally could not stop crying,” Baydass said. “It was such a surreal and amazing experience to be able to be back home and walk the same streets that my grandfather used to walk.”
The team didn’t do well enough in the tournament to qualify for the actual AFC U-20 tournament but Baydass’s father was proud of his daughter.
“You played for Palestine,” Baydass’s father texted her. “You wore the flag that people are trying to erase, and that, alone, in my book, is a great honor.”
Baydass ended up impressing the coach of the senior Palestinian team and was invited to train with them in Saudi Arabia a couple of months later. After that, Baydass returned to Seattle to finish her freshman year at the University of Washington while balancing this newfound role representing Palestine on the national stage.
October 7
Gaza was in the headlines on Oct. 7, 2023. Hamas, both a political party and an Islamist militant movement, launched a surprise attack on Israel. Hamas fighters stormed Israeli military bases and Israeli settlements close to the border, killing more than 1,200 Israelis and foreign nationals and taking hundreds hostage. In response, Israel launched a military offensive, resulting in more than 52,000 deaths in Gaza to date.
Baydass was back home starting her sophomore year of college, watching the war from afar.
“We’re witnessing all these terrible things happen but through the protection of our screens,” Baydass said. “There’s a lot of times you kind of feel helpless, you feel like there’s a lot more that you should be doing.”
When Baydass had enough of just watching, she threw herself into supporting the Palestinian people. In December she organized a weekend of soccer clinics, “Soccer for Gaza,” at Tukwila’s Starfire Sports, an athletic complex just south of Seattle.
Over the two days Baydass worked with about 40 kids and with help from volunteer coaches, led them through a three-hour soccer session. At first glance, it looked no different than any other soccer clinic – players worked on footwork and shooting. But this time a Palestinian flag hung on the fence outside the field. Before the players left each day, Baydass spoke about her experience playing for Palestine and shared a pre-match tradition with them.
“Before every match started, we all walked onto the field, we had our scarves like this,” Baydass said, showing how she wore her scarf tied around her neck. On one side, there was the keffiyeh pattern, a black and white pattern with what represents fishnets, olive leaves and the sea. The other side is adorned in the red, white and green stripes of the Palestinian flag.
“We gave our scarves to the other team, so the other team got to go home with a piece of Palestine with them as well. So that’s what I wanted to do for you guys here today,” Baydass said as she handed similar scarves out to the kids at the clinic.
Kathleen Burr brought her 8-year-old and 13-year-old to the clinic.
“We’re here in solidarity with Palestinian people in support of what’s happening over in Gaza,” Burr said. “A lot of the videos we see of the kids losing their lives – soccer’s a big part of their community and they didn’t get to fulfill their dreams.”
Burr hoped that by bringing her kids they could feel like a part of something and be in solidarity with the Palestinian community.
In total, Baydass raised more than $4,000 over the weekend, which she donated to the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund.
“Our people in Palestine don’t have voices, but I do,” Baydass said. “It feels like a responsibility that I have, and it means a lot because my teammates see it.”
Playing for Palestine
A couple of months after that December clinic, Baydass, now 19, reunited with her Palestinian teammates in Jordan in February 2024. They trained for the West Asian Football Federation Women’s Championship in Saudi Arabia.
“That was one of the hardest tournaments that I’ve ever had to play,” Baydass said. “It meant so much, not only to my family, but to the families in Palestine, to my teammates, to my coaches, to approach this tournament as a means of kind of showing the world and the international community and the teams we’re playing against that despite everything that’s happening to our people, that’s not going to be a limiting factor.”
Baydass recalled how her coaches sent her and some of the other international players video and audio of the Palestinian national anthem so they could learn it on their flights to training. It was important to Baydass that if a camera panned to her that she was singing along.
“The field is our platform of protest, and it is our establishment of resistance, and that being on that national team and representing our country is our duty and our responsibility that we have to uphold, not only for our families and for ourselves, but also for everyone in Palestine.”
Before their first group stage match against Iraq, the coaches brought the team together for their typical pre-match meeting. But this time, they had very little to say. Instead, they turned on a projector.
“They didn’t talk to us, they didn’t say anything, no greetings, nothing,” Baydass said.
For the next hour and a half, the team watched videos recorded in Gaza.
“Footage of mothers and fathers and children and like all of the gruesome things that we’ve been witnessing, like people pulling people out of the rubble, buildings falling on top of them, dismembered children, families pleading for help,” Baydass said.
The coaches turned off the screen and left the team with a simple message. The people they were just watching, that was who they were playing for. Remember that.
Palestine would go on to beat Iraq 3-0 in their first match and would finish with enough points to move on to the semi-finals. They’d made it to the final back in 2014 and hoped to make a statement with another appearance that year. But Jordan, who went on to win the tournament, handed them a decisive 5-0 loss.
Baydass stressed that even though they lost, the tournament was significant. It was a reminder for the world that Palestine was still there. It also provided some relief for her teammates living in the region.
“While soccer is also our duty, it is really the only outlet that my teammates in Palestine have as a means of traveling, as a means of being and enjoying their time free from fear or stress of the occupation or any of the limitations that they experience in Palestine,” Baydass said. “Every ride home from those games – it was all joy. We’d be blasting music on the bus, and everyone’s dancing to Palestinian resistance songs.”
Resistance from Afar
Baydass injured her foot a few months after that tournament, sidelining her for a year or so. But that didn’t stop her from continuing her activism.
At first, her father was nervous about letting her participate in public protests. He had concerns about how it could impact his daughter’s future, like securing a job. But after her coaches talked to him about how much it meant for them to see her speaking up, he was fully supportive.
“My dad’s been to every single one of the protests with me. I’ve never gone alone,” Baydass said.
In September 2024, Baydass collaborated with the Rachel Corrie Foundation, a non-profit that advocates for peace in Palestine, to hold a tournament for adults to benefit the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund. Nearly 90 people showed up to play small-sided games at Judkins Park. She organized the tournament again this past September.
For Baydass, this work is a small price to pay for representing her country on and off the pitch.
“Our people are fighters,” Baydass said. “Our people are so resilient, and they’re so strong, and I want that to be what Palestine is remembered for.”
