For Charlotte Phillips, and many other players in the Palestinian women's football team, every time they step onto the pitch, it's a symbol of perseverance and hope.
"Every single one of our players plays with so much heart," she told ABC Sport.
"For myself as a goalie, your job is to protect the goal … but now you're going onto a field and protecting your country.
"It was a lot of pressure on me, but it's nowhere near the pressure that the people of Gaza face, or the people of Palestine face in general."
Phillips was part of the team that recently competed in the 2026 Asian Cup qualifiers, and despite a result of one win and two losses ending their campaign to reach Australian soil, the team is proud of the performance.
"It's the magnitude of what we're playing for," Phillips said.
"We play for identity, for resistance and for the people who can't play for themselves."
Life-threatening obstacles between players and pitch
ABC Sport was in contact with members of the Palestinian team as they travelled to the Asian Cup qualifiers.
For 11 diaspora players travelling from countries including the United States, Canada, Germany, Sweden, Chile and Lebanon, as well as three living in Israel, direct air travel from within their respective nations was possible.
But it was a different matter for the nine women on the roster from the West Bank, who navigated the limitations of their Palestinian Authority passports and extensive layers of Israeli military checkpoints.
West Bank-based players on the Palestinian team routinely depart up to eight hours ahead of schedule for large, international tournaments to account for unexpected delays.
"Our situation here is so bad," said Mira Natour, former defender and current medical doctor for the national team, in a text message to ABC Sport during transit in early July.
"We need to gather all in one area before going to checkpoints because it's unexpected when they will close the checkpoints between cities or between Jordan and Palestine."
There are no civilian airports operating in the occupied West Bank.
This means that access to aviation services wholly depends on crossing the land border into Jordan and driving a further hour to Queen Alia International Airport, Amman.
But exiting the West Bank is never guaranteed for Palestinian passport holders, with Amnesty International's June report stating that arbitrary closures of checkpoints and other "extensive restrictions on freedom of movement" are commonplace.
Player Bisan Abuaita recalled the women's team's most dangerous interaction with checkpoint security in July 2023, when the team was en route to an away match in Lebanon.
"The minute we arrived at one of those checkpoints, we saw that it was closed," Abuaita said.
"They were not letting cars in or out. We stayed there for three hours, in 40 degree [Celsius heat], waiting and waiting, but they never opened.
"We had to make the decision to walk around it, risking our lives, carrying our heavy luggage as well.
"It was super hot. We had heavy bags, and the stress was crazy."
Despite the risk of arrest or extrajudicial killing facing those moving unpredictably around checkpoints, Abuaita and her teammates decided to continue their journey on foot — a five-hour journey through highland terrain.
"One important reason is that we were going to represent Palestine," Abuaita said.
"What Israel is trying to do is to deprive us that right, and we would never let them.
"By making it we tell the world we are here and we are still present."
Team helping diaspora reconnect with Palestinian identity
Phillips, a triple national of Canada, The Bahamas and Palestine, is grateful that football has become a platform for reconnecting with her maternal side's Palestinian heritage.
Her Sido (grandfather) was forced to flee his home in Jaffa during the 1948 Nakba, while her Teta's (grandmother) family lived further south in Ramla. The two met in Jerusalem and migrated to Canada in the 1970s to escape what Phillips described as "a pretty brutal occupation".
Apart from serving their local community via a successful Palestinian restaurant, the pressure to assimilate into Western life and the stigma surrounding Palestinians in public discourse suppressed Phillips's family's expression of cultural pride.
"As much as being Palestinian was something [my mother] was always proud of, it was a pride that she had to almost keep to herself because of the negative connotations that that surrounded being Palestinian," Phillips said.
But her embrace of her Palestinian nationality via the international sporting stage has been a breakthrough, fostering healing within her family unit, as well as the broader Palestinian diaspora.
"My mum told me recently, 'I'm so happy that you started playing for this team, because it made me be loud and be proud of who I am,'" she said.
"She realised that if her daughter is not afraid to show anyone in the world that we're Palestinian, and we're proud, why shouldn't she be?"
As a rising public face of the Palestinian diaspora, and aspiring human rights lawyer off the football pitch, Phillips hopes to rewrite the world's understanding of Palestinian identity one match at a time.
"I just want people to think of us as human," she said.
"When people think of Palestinians, I'd like them to think about kindness and compassion. We are not inherently violent people, as some like to say.
"We shouldn't have had to have shown this much strength, but through all of our hardships, we're still human and we're a strong, resilient people."
The Palestinian women's team has faith that the recent matches served as a beacon of hope and resilience.
"I think we will always have this breath, the will to live and show the world Palestinians are strong," Abuaita said.
"Living under occupation is a life we don't know the opposite of … but we will always seek freedom."
Bianca Roberts is an Australian freelance sports and social affairs reporter currently based in Abu Dhabi.
