AL-BIREH, April 16, 2011 (WAFA) – Al-Bireh’s football stadium with international standards that can accommodate more than 8000 spectators was inaugurated on Thursday.
French football star Lillian Thuram, member of the 1998 French World Champion team, was present at the inauguration along with presidential secretary Husain Al Araj, Jibril Rajoub, president of the Palestine Football Association, Götz Lingenthal, Head of the German Representative Office in Ramallah and Olivier Plançon, Deputy Consul General of France in Jerusalem.
The ceremony was followed by a football match of the Palestinian First Division championship between the Al Bireh and Wadi Elnees football clubs. The first kick of the game was given by Thuram on his very first visit in Palestine especially for the inauguration.
The total cost of the stadium, equipped with tribunes, changing and coaching rooms as well as showers and sanitary facilities, amounted to more than 1.1 million euros funded by the Government of France through the French Development Agency AFD in partnership with the Municipal Development & Lending Fund (MDLF), and by the Government of Germany through the German Development Bank KFW in partnership with UNDP, according to a joint French-German press release.
The lawn of the stadium was installed last year with financial support from the International Federation of Football Association FIFA. The municipality of Al-Bireh also provided an important financial contribution to the project, it said.
The Palestinian Football Association plans to host matches of the Palestinian league as well as international matches in the new stadium. In addition, the Al-Bireh municipality will use the facility for large-scale community events.
The stadium is part of the Majid Assad sports complex which includes an outdoor sports field, a multipurpose sports hall and a youth sports complex with a half-size Olympic swimming pool.
A section of the stadium was actually built on an area of Al-Bireh which Israel claims falls under its military and administrative jurisdiction, designated in the 1993 Oslo accords as Area C, due to its closeness to the settlement of Psagot, built in its entirety on a hilltop the Israeli military had expropriated from Al-Bireh in the 1980s.
Israel had previously stopped construction of the stadium and only allowed its resumption following international intervention.
M.A.
