Earlier this month a group of Palestinian boys turned out to train at their local football pitch in the shadow of the wall separating Israel from the West Bank's Aida refugee camp -- and found a note at the gate.

The children took the ominous message from Israeli authorities to Muhannad Abu Srour, sports director at the Aida Youth Centre in the camp near Bethlehem, and the news was not good.

"We were shocked to discover that it was a decision to demolish Aida camp's football field," Abu Srour told AFP, adding that more than 500 children regularly train on the field roughly half the size of a regulation soccer pitch.

"The football field is the only open space we have. If the field is taken away, the children's dream is taken away," Abu Srour said.

The planned destruction of the Aida field is one of many points of contention in the occupied West Bank, but it is a particularly painful one for young Palestinians yearning for a better future.

One of the older members, 18-year-old Abdallah al-Ansurur, hopes to make it into the national Palestinian team, and, like many other youth at........

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