October 4 – Just when it looked like FIFA might finally take a giant courageous leap by siding with the Palestinian cause in the Middle East, procrastination was again the name of the game.
FIFA’s all-powerful Council stopped short of meeting a Palestinian request to suspend Israel on Thursday, instead opting for a compromise by launching an investigation into allegations of discrimination.
How long such an investigation will take and what its conclusion might be is anyone’s guess. In the meantime, conflicts rage on in Gaza and Lebanon.
At FIFA’s congress in Bangkok in May, the Palestinian Football Association (PFA) called for its Israeli counterpart to be suspended and for Israeli teams to be banned from FIFA competitions over the destruction of Gaza.
Since then there have been all manner of delays with FIFA finally confirming last month the matter would be discussed on Thursday when it was on the Council agenda.
It duly was addressed, with the Council adopting the recommendations and conclusions reached in a legal review of the case. It decided that FIFA’s disciplinary committee would be mandated to investigate the alleged offence of discrimination.
At the same time the FIFA governance, audit and compliance committee “will be entrusted with the mission to investigate – and subsequently advise the FIFA Council on – the participation in Israeli competitions of Israeli football teams allegedly based in the territory of Palestine.”
FIFA president Gianni Infantino said in a statement: “The FIFA Council has implemented due diligence on this very sensitive matter and, based on a thorough assessment, we have followed the advice of the independent experts.
“The ongoing violence in the region confirms that, above all considerations… we need peace.
“As we remain extremely shocked by what is happening, and our thoughts are with those who are suffering, we urge all parties to restore peace to the region with immediate effect.”
Ahead of the meeting, PFA chief Jibril Rajoub and his vice president Susan Shalabi went to Zurich to lobby officials.
“I trust and I expect that FIFA will take the right decision,” Rajoub told The Associated Press before the meeting. “I am asking for the Council to follow their statutes.”
Whilst Thursday’s ruling was undoubtedly a significant step in the right direction, there must still be serious doubts as to when and whether such a sensitive footballing issue will ever be resolved one way or the other.
Infantino has refused to put to a vote the sanctions demanded by the PFA and the latest process follows a pattern of Palestinian requests for FIFA to uphold its legal rules, only for the issue to invariably be shifted into various committees.
Supporters of the Palestinian cause accuse FIFA of double standards for not applying the same punishment meted out to Russia, kicked out of FIFA competitions within days of the invasion of Ukraine. The difference, some might argue, is that Israel acted in retaliation to an act of terrorism – albeit disproportionately – whereas Russia invaded a sovereign country.
FIFA gave no timetable for the investigations it has now requested, only fuelling questions about how much longer the can will be kicked down the road.
Meanwhile a group of UN experts piled even more pressure on FIFA by saying that at least eight clubs had developed or had been identified as playing in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank with a ninth playing some home games in a settlement.
The experts said that the activity of those teams amounted to the Israeli FA tacitly contributing to “the unlawful presence of Israel in the occupied Palestinian territory.
“This is in stark violation of international law,” they said, calling on the FIFA Council “to ensure that its decisions are in conformity with non-derogable norms of international law”.
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