Key points are not available for this paper at this time.
This article examines two soccer-related encounters between the supporters of an Arab club in Israel, Hapoel Taibe, and two Jewish clubs that have a hard core of fanatical fans, highly hostile to Arabs in Israel. It is suggested that inter-ethnic relationships between minority and majority groups are underpinned by dependency relations; thus, collective identity is not determined independently, but is situational. Hence, it is assumed that the behaviour of the Arab spectators at their club games is only relatively autonomous in that it is influenced and shaped by the actions of the Jewish crowd. The encounters between the supporters reveal the problems of self-identification for the Arab fans. This article argues that the options of being a soccer fan, that is, being - at least in the soccer stadium - just an Israeli citizen (specified by ethnic factor), or of being part of an Arab collective (specified by nationalistic factor), are forced on them by the hardcore Jewish fans.
Amir Ben‐Porat (Thu,) studied this question.