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Israeli Arabs are split on whether Badir (c) should play for Israel
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This Saturday the England football squad take on Israel in the two sides' first official encounter.
This Euro 2008 qualifier will, according to the Israeli press, test the loyalties of English Jews who live here. Which side will they cheer for, the papers ask?
But it is not just the Anglo-Israelis who may choose not to wave the Israeli flag this weekend.
One in five Israelis is a so-called Israeli Arab. They are the families of Palestinians who stayed in Israel after its war of independence in 1948.
Many prefer to be called Palestinians with Israeli citizenship. They hold Israeli passports, unlike the stateless Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, but in this self-declared Jewish state theirs is often an uncomfortable existence.
'Proud'
Walid Badir and Salim Tuam will both be stepping out on to the field on Saturday to play for their country. They are Israeli Arabs.
It should be a young man's dream to play for his country. The pinnacle of patriotism, perhaps.
But Israeli Arab society is divided as to whether Walid and Salim are doing the right thing.
Some say it is wrong to play for a nation they believe discriminates against them. Others applaud their ability to make it to the top, against the odds.
Midfielder Salim told me he was proud to be part of the Israel team.
"If you're talented," he says, "you're welcomed in the world of football, regardless whether you're an Arab or a Jew."
He says he has been lucky but that he knew plenty of other Israeli Arabs who could not fulfil their life dreams because of who they are.
'Discriminated against'
Israeli law demands equal rights for all its citizens but many Israeli Arabs say in Israel, some citizens are more equal than others.
They call us the cancer in the heart of Israel. And what do you want to do with a cancer? Cut it out
Israeli Arab rapper
The Israeli Arab rights group, the Mossawa Centre, says Israeli Arab towns and districts often have worse housing, public transport, education facilities and general infrastructure than the national average.
It is also harder to advance professionally, the group says.
According to Mossawa, Israeli Arabs make up more than half of the families living on the poverty line here.
"They call us the cancer in the heart of Israel. And what do you want to do with a cancer? Cut it out," says Mahmoud, a rapper in a well-known Israeli Arab group, DAM.
I went to meet him and fellow rappers Tamer and Suhell in their hometown of Lod, a mixed Jewish and Israeli Arab urban sprawl.
Their neighbourhood is rundown.
Paint peels off blocks of flats. Graffiti is scribbled across the concrete all around.
'Low self-esteem'
DAM's mother-tongue is Arabic but they often rap in Hebrew. They say they want Jewish Israelis to hear their message.
"We encounter faces that don't want us, looks full of disgust/ whispers full of swearing, just wishing to expel us./ What? Did you forget who made the foundations for these buildings?" - they sing in their hit A Stranger in My Own Country.
In Born Here, they rap about "health care centres surrounded by sewage/ kindergarten surrounded by sewage/ for that there is no excuse it's just that the city didn't care for the Arabs".
"Their problem is us being here - living, breathing - on this land they say is Jewish land," says singer-songwriter Tamer.
"So we grow up with low self-esteem," he says.
'Enemy within'
Suhell explains they named the hit Stranger in My Own Country because that is how they feel.
"When I was at school we learned history from a Jewish perspective," he told me.
"We learned that in 1948 the heroic Jews beat the bad Arabs. Well those Arabs were our grandfathers. They also make you sing the national anthem at school. It's an anthem for a Jewish state. But I'm Arab, I'm Palestinian, so how can I feel at home here?"
A recent study conducted by Haifa University indicates that 76% of Israel's Arab citizens thinks that Israel, a Jewish state, is racist.
The poll also suggests that the majority of Israelis (who are Jewish) fear Israeli Arabs will eventually organise a violent rebellion and that they feel more loyalty towards Palestinians living in Gaza and the West Bank than towards the State of Israel.
Many right-wingers in Israel describe Israeli Arabs as the enemy within. Some have taken part in attacks against Israel.
'Country for all citizens'
Yuval Steinitz is an MP for the right-wing Likud Party. He also sits on the security and foreign affairs committee in Israel's parliament, the Knesset.
"We respect the rights of Arabs living in Israel," he says.
"We also understand that they feel as brothers to Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.
"But some of those Palestinians are fighting Israel and here in the Israeli Arab community you have leaders [and] ordinary people that are clearly supporting Israel's destruction or terrible suicide bombing attacks on Israeli civilians. And this is, of course, impossible to accept."
But Jamal Zahallk, an MP for Balad, one of the three Israeli Arab parties in the Knesset, says most Israeli Arabs are not plotting to bring down the State of Israel.
They just want to change its politics - drastically.
"The political platform of Balad," he told me, "is the struggle to transfer this from a Jewish state to a country for all citizens. We need equality for Arabs and for Jews. Then Israel will be a truly democratic country like any other country in the world."
In this weekend's Euro qualifier you will see clear teamwork between Jewish and Arab Israelis.
If you want to think positively, you could say it is a start.
Off the pitch though, and good intentions aside, people here will tell you mutual suspicion is growing.
It's where you feel belong to. I personally feel that I belong in both places. But the longer I spend in Israel the more I feel it's my home. 
