The grandstands of the Aleksandar Nikolić Hall in Belgrade are empty, and the scenography is dominated by the blue chairs, which fit in with the large, blue-white flag of Israel, unfurled right next to the field.
The basketball players of Hapoel from Jerusalem run out, but this time the black color of the shirts they are wearing dominates.
Belgrade became their basketball home, where they hosted the Turkish Galatasaray in a Champions League match under the auspices of the International Basketball Federation (FIBA), due to the impossibility of playing in Jerusalem due to the war in Israel.
On their chests are photos of seven fans of that club who were killed in an attack by the Palestinian extremist group Hamas on October 7 in the south of Israel, with the message "forever in our hearts".
On the back are two more photos under the inscription "bring them home", which is an appeal to free about 240 hostages kidnapped by Hamas, among them two Hapoel fans.
"Everyone in Belgrade was kind to us, we felt safe from the first moment we arrived, and the cooperation with the Serbian police was impeccable," the club said in a written response to the BBC in Serbian after the match.
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The conflict in Israel, which began on October 7 with an attack by Hamas, and continued with strikes by the Israeli army on the Gaza Strip, also spelled the end for other athletes on both sides of the wall that separates the Palestinian territories - the Gaza Strip and the West Bank - from Israel, at least for some time.
Hapoel will extensions to play in Belgrade, so will Maccabi from Tel Aviv, which plays in the basketball Euroleague and will host Bayern Munich on November 9, while the football team of Palestine will host in Algeria.
Israeli basketball clubs and the local security services "estimated that the risk is the lowest in Belgrade," says Bakhtijar Aljaf, director of the International Institute for Middle Eastern and Balkan Studies (IFIMES) in Ljubljana, for the BBC in Serbian.
"One reason is that Serbia has and maintains a neutral status, unlike Hungary or Croatia, it did not vote against the United Nations resolution on the cease-fire in Gaza (Serbia abstained).
"In addition, Serbia still ranks well in the Middle East as one of the countries of the Non-Aligned Movement," Aljaf stressed.
He adds that the history of Serbian-Jewish friendship, which dates back to the period of the Ottoman Empire, and continued during and after the world wars, also played a role.
However, the holding of such sports events among the local population "can cause fear and panic" from the spillover of the conflict from Israel to the territory of Serbia, says Irena Đokić, president of the Center for Security, Investigation and Defense (DBA) in Belgrade, for the BBC in Serbian.
"Partly because there are a lot of people from Israel and Palestine in Serbia and the region, but also because Hamas members are not only in Israel, but all over the world.
"I can understand why there is fear, but I believe that there will be no local conflicts and spillover of the war to the territory of Serbia," assesses this security expert.
Athletes from warring areas have been hosted outside their countries before, and the most recent example is Ukrainian football clubs competing in European countries.
The basketball players of Partizan and the football players of Crvena zvezda went through similar hardships, whose greatest successes happened at the beginning of the bloody war in the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s, so they had to look for new homes in Spain, Hungary and Bulgaria.
The silence, the search and the noise of fans who are not there
Approaching Hala Aleksandar Nikolić on the cool evening of November 1st, I don't see a crowd and hear no noise, something that has become the folklore of basketball games in Belgrade, especially when Crvena zvezda and Partizan take the field.
There are almost no policemen around the hall, only a few security guards in yellow vests, so I pass unhindered to the official entrance, but there I am stopped by a policeman in full gear, while several other colleagues are standing next to him.
I am subjected to a thorough search and passing through a metal detector, something that is not the usual procedure for reporters at basketball matches.
The impression is different in the hall.
There are only a few dozen spectators, and even fewer members of security, police and other security services.
The match begins with a minute's silence for the victims of the war in Israel, which causes everyone in the hall to stand up and stand still.
Loud silence is then replaced by even louder cheering, but it does not come from the throats of thousands of people, who are not in the stands this time, but is played from the public address system.
After the squeak of sneakers and the sound of the ball hitting the floor, which are rarely heard when the hall is full, a little nervousness, complaints about the refereeing and one overtime, Hapoel defeats the Turkish Galatasaray in the basketball Champions League.
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Satisfied with the result, but also with the fact that the match passed without incident on and off the field, Jerusalem's Hapoel emphasized to the BBC in Serbian that the organization in cooperation with the Serbian security services was successful.
"The challenges were only in the field of logistics, because hosting outside of Israel implies numerous additional elements, such as transport obligations and branding of the hall.
"The local production team was very professional and we are happy to say that everything went without any mistakes," they add.
Security risks
The decision to play the match between Hapoel and Galatasaray without an audience in the hall was made "mainly for security reasons", say the Israeli team.
Galatasaray is one of the most popular clubs in Turkey, a country whose president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has unequivocally and harshly criticized Israel for the attack on Gaza, and Ankara has meanwhile tightened relations with Tel Aviv by withdrawing its ambassador.
Although it has not yet been officially confirmed by the Euroleague, it is expected that the stands will also be empty at the match between Maccabi and Bayern on November 9, she reported. television Sport Club.
Irena Đokić, president of the Center for Security, Investigations and Defense (DBA), believes that closing the hall for visitors "reduces the security risk" that the match carries.
"I see it as the state's decision to protect its own people, it simply prevents a large number of people from being gathered in one place, although this is not a guarantee that there won't be an incident," explains this expert.
Đokić notes that there should be no fear of major conflicts in Belgrade, but also that the possibility of "some kind of incident" should not be ruled out.
"They could be made by certain groups of people with the aim of preventing the holding of those matches - something like protests or demonstrations in Belgrade," she adds.
He also states that playing matches during the current conflicts in Israel "could encourage Islamist terrorist groups, which are based on the ideology of violence, to make incidents".
"But this is not a new thing for our security services, neither at sports events, nor outside of them, so I believe that they will be ready to prevent them, if there is a need", Đokić believes.
Bakhtijar Aljaf, an expert on Middle Eastern issues, warns that there is a risk of incidents between the Jewish and Palestinian communities in Belgrade, for which the matches could be a motive, although they do not have to happen in the immediate vicinity of the hall or in it.
"There is also a danger that the intelligence and counter-intelligence services of a third party or state incite such events.
"The police must take care to prohibit gatherings on that day or during that period," he believes.
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How and why did the Israelis play in Belgrade?
The day after the outbreak of conflict in the Middle East, the Partizan basketball club he sent an open letter to Maccabi from Tel Aviv, offering him a "temporary home with a sincere welcome in Belgrade".
Both teams compete in the Euroleague, the highest quality international club competition in Europe, and at the co-owners' meeting on October 24 the decision was confirmed about the Maccabi household in Hala Aleksandar Nikolić.
Three days later it was announced and that Hapoel from Jerusalem, the basketball club led from the bench by former Partizan coach Aleksandar Džikić, will play in the same hall in the basketball FIBA Champions League.
President of Serbia Aleksandar Vučić he said then for Radio-television of Serbia (RTS) that the choice of this country as host "is a great honor for Serbia, because they know which country is able to provide it".
"They know that in this country there is no one who hates Arabs, no one who hates Jews, we want peace to be established there and to live with both," added Vučić.
Since the beginning of the biggest conflict between Israel and Palestinian extremist groups in recent decades, peaceful gatherings have been held in Belgrade in support of both Israel and the Palestinians.
A Palestinian household in Algeria
The Palestine Football Association was admitted to the International Football Federation (FIFA) in 1998, and the national team waited another decade for its first home game.
The Palestine national team first ran on the real home field on October 26, 2008, when they at the newly opened Faisal al-Husseini Stadium in Ramallah, they played a draw in a friendly match with Jordan (1:1).
This stadium in Ramallah, a city in the West Bank not far from Jerusalem, was the place where the game was played the first formal match of Palestine at home on July 3, 2011 in the qualifiers for the World Cup against Afghanistan.
The West Bank is a territory where Palestinians have some autonomy, and is governed by Fatah, an organization that opposes Hamas, which holds power in the Gaza Strip.
The next game that the Palestinian national team will formally host will be played on November 21, and their opponent will be Australia in the Asian qualifiers for the 2026 World Cup.
Due to the war in Israel, the match will not be played in Ramallah, but in Algeria, they announced from the football association of that North African country.
"All official and unofficial matches of the Palestinian national team in preparation for the 2026 World Cup and 2027 Asian Cup" will be organized "in accordance with Algerian laws," they added.
Partizan from Fuenlabrada, Zvezda from Sofia and Budapest
The war also displaced the sport from Ukraine, where the Russian invasion has been ongoing since February 2022.
During that period, the Ukrainian football team played as a host in several European countries - in the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia.
Shakhtar from Donetsk, the champion of this country, international and domestic matches, has not played at its home stadium for years, since the Donbas Arena, the stadium of that club, was severely damaged in the conflicts of 2014.
Miners, as this team is nicknamed, are playing in the Champions League this season and are playing as hosts in Hamburg, Germany, while last season they were hosts in Warsaw, Poland.
The biggest Serbian clubs also have experience with hosting abroad, which, due to the war in Yugoslavia in the early 1990s, performed in Spain, Hungary and Austria.
Crvena zvezda welcomed 1992 as European football champions, but the situation in the club and in the country was not bright.
Almost the entire championship team of Zvezda left Belgrade and Yugoslavia, where war was raging at the time, which is why the red and white hosts were in Hungarian Budapest and Szeged, as well as in Bulgarian Sofia, where they hosted Italian Sampdoria.
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While the fans of Crvena Zvezda do not have fond memories of this experience, supporters of rival Partizan remember 1992 fondly, especially when it comes to basketball.
In the middle of the war, and before the international sanctions against Serbian athletes, black and white basketball players were not denied the right to compete in the European Champions Cup, but they did have the opportunity to play in front of their home crowd in Belgrade.
They found the solution in the Fernando Martin hall in Fuenlabrada, a suburb of Madrid, where they started their campaign for the title of European champion.
The campaign ended triumphantly - Partizan became the champion of Europe for the first time in history that season.
The black and white basketball players, coaches and managers were every week "from Tuesday to Friday on a trip or on the 'home field' in Madrid, and we spent the weekends in Belgrade," recalls Slaviša Koprivica, a member of that Partizan team, in an interview with a smile. for the BBC in Serbian.
The situation he and his teammates were in because of the war in their homeland was not similar to the one athletes are going through today due to the conflict in Israel, he points out.
"At no point did we feel unsafe, we walked normally around the city, outside the hotel, and to the hall, and there were no special security measures during the matches - like when we played before that in Belgrade.
"No one from the state or service followed us, even if we were aware of it, but only us players and people from the coaching staff and the club were there," Koprivica describes.
The war events in Yugoslavia did not affect the attitude of the people in the suburbs of Madrid towards the then very young black and white team.
Moreover, the black and whites had a lot of support from the Spaniards, so that trophy generation would later be called "Partizans from Fuenlabrada".
The match between Jerusalem's Hapoel and Turkey's Galatasaray is only the first in a series of matches between Israeli clubs in Belgrade.
In addition to the meeting on Thursday, November 9 against the German Bayern in Belgrade, Maccabi from Tel Aviv could also host the Turkish Fenerbahce in the capital of Serbia.
According to the original schedule of the Euroleague, that match was supposed to be played in Istanbul on November 16, but the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, so the club from Tel Aviv requested that it be organized in Belgrade, which they are talking about.
The decision to move the match to the Aleksandar Nikolić Hall in Belgrade has not yet been officially made, and it is not known whether Maccabi will play any more matches in Serbia.
Hapoel confirmed to the BBC that for now it has been decided that they will play at least two more Champions League games in the Serbian capital - on December 13 against the Greek PAOK and on December 20 against the Portuguese Benfica.
It has not yet been decided whether there will be fans in the hall, and until then "there is time to consider all relevant factors", they add.
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