By Andrew Warshaw, chief correspondent
July 10 – FIFA president Sepp Blatter aims to set up a special task force to try and break the increasingly bitter deadlock between Israel and Palestine over restrictions placed on Palestinian footballers in the occupied territories.
After visiting both Jordan and Palestine, Blatter wound up his diplomatic Middle East summit by meeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday and impressed upon his hosts that something had to be done to solve the issue of Palestinian players being prevented from moving freely between the West Bank and Gaza for matches through border crossings controlled by Israel.
Jibril Rajoub, President of the Palestine Football Association – a full FIFA member – has described the travel restrictions as a “siege on Palestinian sport” and says Israel should be thrown out of FIFA unless it stops discriminating against Palestinian athletes.
Rajoub staged a similar protest at this year’s FIFA Congress in Mauritius, prompting Blatter to promise he would visit the region to talk to the parties concerned. Israel claims it acts as it does for security reasons, given that Gaza is controlled by Hamas which is committed to Israel’s destruction.
To try and force a breakthrough, Blatter wants Rajoub and Israeli Football Association chief Avi Luzon, along with the heads of UEFA – to which Israel is affiliated – and the Asian Football Confederation to sit round the table and thrash out their differences before the next FIFA executive committee meeting in October.
Whether all parties would agree, given such entrenched positions, must be open to question but Blatter said he had explained to Netanyahu the seriousness of the issue on the ground. “I explained to him the content of the mandate I’ve been given by the FIFA Congress in May. In a nutshell: to ease the movements of teams, referees – but also football equipment – in and out of and within Palestine.”
“I’ve asked for the Prime Minister’s help and he said yes, but with truth and fair-play. He also asked me to help him so that football is not used as a political tool.
“I’ve suggested that FIFA organises a Task Force with the Presidents of FIFA, UEFA, AFC and the Football Associations of Israel and Palestine. This proposal was welcomed by the Prime Minister. The Task Force will meet in Zurich before the next meeting of the FIFA Executive Committee in October.”
But, Blatter cautioned, football alone could not resolve deep-rooted political issues. “There are some constraints that we, FIFA, cannot open. We need the help of the authorities. FIFA – and me personally – will continue to work on this dossier.”
The West Bank, controlled by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, has partial self-rule but Israel has overall military control of the territory. But it is the Gaza Strip, from which militants regularly fire rockets into the Jewish state, that Israel is most anxious about. Netanyahu showed Blatter aerial photographs of a football stadium in Gaza from where, he said, militants had carried out attacks.
The Israeli prime minister called on FIFA to show equal fairness and, as if to illustrate the total lack of trust between the two sides, also urged FIFA not be taken in by what he claimed was Palestinian propaganda.
“They’re firing at our cities from football stadiums…in a civilian area. This is a double war crime: you’re firing on civilians and you’re hiding behind civilians… We ask FIFA to allow Israel to play fair and not to let the organisation and football to be exploited to spread lies.”
And in what appeared to be an attempt to play down the issue, Luzon insisted that Israeli authorities had granted all Palestinian travel requests so far this year. “We have received (official) data…that no request the Palestinians have made in 2013 and until now has been rejected, so I don’t understand what the problem is,” he said.
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