Palestine cites threats to withdraw petition for Israel’s exclusion from FIFA

The Palestinian Football Association (PFA) has received Israeli threats to withdraw a petition demanding Israel’s exclusion from the football governing body, FIFA, according to its head on Tuesday, Anadolu Agency reports.

Last month, PFA submitted a petition to sanction and exclude Israel from FIFA on the grounds of human rights and humanitarian law violations in the Gaza Strip.

The governing body will discuss the petition on Friday.

“The petition lists all violations committed by Israel against Palestinian football and players,” Jibril Rajoub told Anadolu.

“We have documented the killing of 256 Palestinian athletes at the hands of Israelis,” he said. “Dozens of athletes were buried under rubble and hundreds were arrested.”

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In its petition, PFA calls for addressing racism and discrimination within its league and ending Israel’s violations of the FIFA statutes in its continued inclusion of Palestinian football teams in the Israeli national league.

“There are clubs located in the Palestinian Territories that participate in Israel’s national league, and this a violation of FIFA decisions,” Rajoub said.

Article 4 of the FIFA statutes strictly prohibits “discrimination of any kind against a country … or group of people” on any grounds, and says any breach of this non-discrimination obligation is punishable by “suspension or expulsion”.

“The violations committed by Israel can’t be accepted by any sports federation in the world,” Rajoub said.

The PFA chief cited a threat by Israeli Foreign Minister, Israel Katz, against him over the Palestinian petition at FIFA.

“Katz threatened me with imprisonment if the petition was not withdrawn,” Rajoub said.

“Many Israeli officials also issued threats against me, but I will continue,” he added. “We believe that the whole world will support us, and Turkiye’s position is very important to us at this stage.”

“I am confident that the Turkish Football Association will support our just cause,” he added.

Israel has waged a brutal offensive on the Gaza Strip following Palestinian Resistance group, Hamas’s cross-border attack on 7 October, 2023, which killed about 1,200 people.

However, since then, it has been revealed by Haaretz that helicopters and tanks of the Israeli army had, in fact, killed many of the 1,139 soldiers and civilians claimed by Israel to have been killed by the Palestinian Resistance.

Nearly 35,180 Palestinians, most of them women and children, have since been killed, and over 79,000 others injured, according to Palestinian health authorities.

More than seven months into the conflict, vast swathes of Gaza lay in ruins amid a crippling blockade of food, clean water and medicine.

Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) which, in January, issued an interim ruling that ordered it to stop genocidal acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.

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