A wide coalition of Palestinian and international organizations denounced FIFA president Gianni Infantino’s failure to compel Israel’s national football league to exclude six football teams based in illegal Israeli settlements and called for the dissolution of the FIFA Monitoring Committee Israel-Palestine.
Part two of a three-part series on Palestinian sports teams and the BDS struggle looks at the Palestinian Football Association’s efforts at pressuring FIFA to sanction Israel.
Last month, Human Rights Watch released a damning report emphasizing that soccer’s governing body, Federation International du Football (FIFA), should render a decision on Israel Football Association (IFA) teams that are being played on occupied Palestinian land. FIFA was expected to render a decision whether to suspend or expel six Israeli teams at at an executive meeting earlier this week, but in true FIFA form, the executive committee fouled and postponed their decision despite suggestions from special committee members, open letters from UN officials, and from academics and activists, an Avaaz.org petition that garnered over 150,000 signatures, the HRW report, and an on-going digital campaign that calls for justice in sport. The oppression of Palestinian football by Israel is a hot-button issue for FIFA- which makes a profit from the matches and sponsorships of the IFA teams. While Israeli teams flourish, Palestinian football is hardly thriving due to a lack of resources, crumbling infrastructure, and unjust mobility restrictions on teams.
Over the past two days Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has taken his most aggressive—and outlandish—tone yet on critics by accusing them of anti-Semitic tropes, following a collapsed effort to sanction Israel at the international soccer association, FIFA. Speaking to Knesset today Netanyahu said his country’s “actions are being twisted,” telling his parliament those who speak against Israel are initiating “false libels.”
Jeff Halper writes about a meeting between Israeli activists and FIFA President Sepp Blatter during his recent visit to Palestine/Israel. Halper says their message was: “Until the Occupation ends and specifically Israeli harassment of Palestinian football, we told him, the IFA deserves a “red card” from FIFA.”
This evening Israeli Forces delayed the Palestinian National Football Team at the Allenby/Al Karamah Crossing, the only international border for Palestinians living in the Occupied West Bank. The national team was on its route to Tunisia as part of their preparation for its upcoming official matches. This new Israeli violation occurred less than 24 hours after Mr. Sepp Blatter, president of FIFA, left Israel and Palestine, having received a commitment from Israeli PM Mr. Netanyahu about facilitating the travel of Palestinian athletes.
In March, Palestine was supposed to compete in the FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup in Doha but was unable to because Israel would not allow the team to leave the Gaza Strip. Even though beach soccer is nowhere near as important or popular as association football, barring an entire team from participating in a tournament was the final straw for the Palestinian Football Association.
A letter signed by a number of progressive writers, film makers, politicians and activists calls for FIFA to suspend the Israeli Football Association (IFA) at the FIFA annual congress in Zurich on 28-29 May 2015. Signatories include former UN Special Rapporteur Richard Falk, Palestinian refugees’ champion Salman Abu Sita, Breyten Breytenbach, Noam Chomsky and Ronnie Kasrils.
The New Israel Fund (NIF) has partnered with The Israel Football Association (IFA) to form a new campaign called “Kick Racism Out of Israeli Football”. However, during the initial stages of this new partnership the IFA chose to segregate the Israeli children’s national football league in Israel’s Triangle area which is home to the majority of Israel’s Palestinian citizens.