The Palestine Football Association (PFA) has released a touching video announcing their men's squad for the upcoming World Cup qualifiers. The video, reportedly shot in war-torn Gaza, featuring a group of Palestinian children, is unique for the approach taken to unveil the 26-member squad.

The 3.11-minute video starts with a boy in a Palestinian football shirt juggling on a seashore in Gaza. The grief-stricken boy sees the portrait of a man on a small canvas beside the rocks. That was the image of Musab Battat, the defender of the Palestinian national team.

The boy, holding the portrait, walks into the city in ruins, with homeless survivors struggling to make with what is left of a 15-month war between Israel and Hamas that has claimed more than 48,000 Palestinian lives, including those of at least 380 footballers.

The boy is joined by a friend, who also found the portrait of a different player; they meet another boy, who brings out a canvas from a rubble featuring a third footballer. As the trio walks further into the city, the grim life of refugees emerges: people queuing up for water and supplies, still trying to appear cheerful. They are joined by a bunch of boys taking lessons from a teacher inside a tent.

As the boy squad grows, so does the number of portraits they collect. Finally, the boys display their prized possessions and hang them from a rusty goalpost and around a broken, dirty football turf. Then the boys play football. The squad, picked from the rubble of Gaza, will play the qualifiers against Jordan (March 20) and Iraq (March 25).

Palestine FA had expressed hope of playing the matches at their home ground, Faisal Al-Husseini Stadium, in the Al-Ram suburb of Jerusalem. However, with the Asian Football Confederation denying permission to conduct football on Palestinian soil, the matches will be played at the Amman International Stadium in Jordan. Ehab Abu Jazar is the head coach of the Palestine football team. 

The war began with militant group Hamas attacking Israel on October 7, 2023. Although a ceasefire agreement was reached in mid-January 2025 for the hostages-and-prisoners exchange, there have been several incidents of violence on both sides.

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