Ahead of a promised Extraordinary FIFA Council meeting this week, FairSquare has submitted a report to football’s governing body detailing Israel Football Association (IFA) violations of FIFA Statutes and in support of the call by the Palestinian Football Association (PFA) for FIFA to sanction the IFA.
FIFA President Gianni Infantino announced in May that the organisation would seek “independent legal expertise” to analyse and assess a call by the Palestinian Football Association (PFA) to take action against the IFA, stating that any decisions would be taken by the Council by 20 July.
The FairSquare submission to FIFA, submitted this week, which includes information and insight that has a bearing on the case, was prepared with the aim of assisting the governing body’s appointed legal experts. It argues that there are multiple grounds that should give FIFA cause to suspend or expel the IFA – the holding of matches in occupied Palestinian territory, serious and systematic racial discrimination, political interference, and Israel’s killing of Palestinian players and the systematic destruction of PFA facilities – most of which predate Israel’s attacks in Gaza since the Hamas attacks of 7 October 2023.
The submission proposes that FIFA has clear and obvious grounds to act under article 72(1), article 4(1), article 14(1)(i) and article 15(c), and article 2(1) of the FIFA Statutes.
FairSquare co-director Nick McGeehan said:
“It is of course up to the legal experts appointed by FIFA to consider the full range of the evidence against the IFA and in the interests of the game, it is imperative that they do so. However, there is a vast body of evidence to suggest that the only thing that could possibly stop FIFA from suspending or expelling the Israel Football Association is a political decision from its senior leadership not to enforce its statutes.”
Violations of FIFA Statutes
Article 72(1) of FIFA Statutes – Matches in occupied Palestinian territory
Article 72(1) of FIFA Statutes states that, “member associations and their clubs may not play on the territory of another member association without the latter’s approval.”
FIFA has been fully aware that the IFA has been in open breach of FIFA Statutes since at least 2013 and the first PFA complaint about the IFA permitting Israeli teams to play matches in settlements considered illegal under international law and described by the UN Security Council as “a major obstacle to the achievement of … a just, lasting and comprehensive peace.” The IFA continues in 2024 to incorporate at least five illegal settlement clubs located in the territory of the PFA into its national league – Ma’aleh Adumim, Kiryat Arba, Givat Zeev, Bikat Hayarden and Ariel.
Article 4(1) of FIFA Statues – Serious and Systematic Racial Discrimination
Article 4(1) of FIFA Statues states that, “discrimination of any kind against a country, private person or group of people on account of race, skin colour, ethnic, national or social origin… is strictly prohibited and punishable by suspension or expulsion.”
The actions of the Israel state cannot be directly imputed to the IFA, but the systematic and serious racial discrimination practised by the Israel state permeates every aspect of public life for Palestinians, including their sporting lives. In addition to permitting its teams to play matches on occupied Palestinian territory, the IFA has also allowed deeply discriminatory practices to go unchecked within its national league and has not taken meaningful steps to address supporters’ incitement to violence against Arabs and Palestinians, as most obviously exemplified by the case of the football club Beitar Jerusalem, which has a de facto policy to exclude Arabs and Palestinians and whose supporters call themselves “the most racist team in the country” and openly incite violence. The IFA has sanctioned the club for the behaviour of their supporters, but they have not taken meaningful steps to address the Beitar fans’ incitement of racial violence against Arabs and Palestinians, leading Beitar supporters to play an increasingly influential and profoundly damaging role in public discourse in Israel. The FairSquare submission describes the political support that Beitar and its supporters have received from senior government figures in Israel, most notably Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
All States suffer from racial discrimination to some extent, and so there is a threshold implicit in Article 4(1) of the FIFA Statutes in which discrimination would be of such a degree as to require suspension or expulsion from FIFA. In that regard, the principal international standard to which FIFA should refer is provided by the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD). There is a large body of highly credible evidence that shows that Israel is practising racial discrimination in its most serious form, which is to say that Palestinians live in a system of apartheid, and compelling evidence that this has infected the policies and practices of the IFA. In this regard, FIFA’s suspension and expulsion of the South African football association in the 1960s and 1970s provides a clear precedent for similar action to be taken against the IFA.
Article 14(1)(i) and Article 15(c) – Political Interference
Under article 14(1)(i) of FIFA’s Statutes its member associations are obliged to be “independent and avoid any form of political interference” and article 15 (c) obliges them to include provisions in their statutes that oblige them “to be independent and avoid any form of political interference”.
The IFA has colluded with the Israeli government to prevent the PFA from exercising its rights as a FIFA member association, and a senior figure in the Israeli government has publicly threatened the head of the PFA.
The PFA has a right under FIFA Statutes to submit a motion for a FIFA Congress vote on sanctions to be imposed on the Israeli Football Association, and the IFA has a right to defend itself using the appropriate channels that FIFA makes available. The Israeli government has interfered in this process. In response to the PFA complaint, the Israeli Foreign Minister threatened to imprison the head of the PFA, Jibril Rajoub. On 2 May 2024, Israel Katz, Israel’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, published the following statement on X (formerly Twitter):
“Jibril Rajoub, a terrorist in a suit who openly supported Hamas’s crimes, is working around the clock to get Israel removed from the international soccer association. We will work to thwart his plans, and if he doesn’t stop—we will imprison him in the Muqata’a [presidential compound in Ramallah], where he will be left to play Stanga [a soccer-like game popular with Israeli children] by himself between the walls.”
It is worth noting that a previous comment by Israel Katz was cited by the the International Court of Justice in January 2024 when it found that there was a plausible case that Israel is in breach of its obligation under the 1948 Genocide Convention and ordered a series of legally binding provisional measures to ensure Israel’s adherence with the convention. On 13 October 2023 Katz said on X (formerly Twitter) that “We will fight the terrorist organization Hamas and destroy it. All the civilian population in [G]aza is ordered to leave immediately. We will win. They will not receive a drop of water or a single battery until they leave the world.”
On 5 May 2024, and in advance of the 74th FIFA Congress in Bangkok, an Israeli news outlet YNet reported that, “the Israeli military is working around the clock with the aim of arriving as prepared as possible and torpedoing the initiative of the Palestinian Association, which has already succeeded twice – in 2015 and 2017 – in raising the Israeli issue for discussion.” The report stated that “legal advisors of the ministries of foreign affairs, culture and sports and the IFA Chairman of the IFA, Shino Zoertz,” were among the members of a Whatsapp group called “remaining in FIFA”.
In June 2024, Australian authorities controversially denied Rajoub a visa to enter the country, where Palestine’s men’s team were set to play Australia in a World Cup qualifier on 11 June. Australia’s Department of Home Affairs responded to a media inquiry about the case saying that it did not comment on individual cases and that all visa applications “are considered on an individual basis against legal requirements.”
Article 2(1) – Killing of Players, Systematic Destruction of Facilities
One of FIFA’s key statutory objectives is the development of the game outlined in Article 2(1) of the FIFA Statutes: “to improve the game of football constantly and promote it globally in the light of its unifying, educational, cultural and humanitarian values, particularly through youth and development programmes”.
According to the most recent data published by the Palestinian Football Association, 231 of its registered football players have been killed since October 2023, 65 of them children and 165 of them classified as youth players. Israel’s actions in Gaza have resulted in extraordinary devastation”. The Palestine Stadium, the Beit Hanoun Municipal Stadium, the Gaza Sports Club Stadium, and the Al Hilal Sporting Club Stadium have all suffered extensive and well-documented damage from Israeli air-strikes. According to the Palestinian Football Association, Israel has destroyed 42 sports facilities in Gaza and seven in the West Bank.
As the report notes, Israel has been killing Palestinian players and destroying FIFA-funded sporting facilities in Palestine for decades, its actions since 7 October 2023 primarily differ in their severity and consequences. In addition to the destruction of facilities and deaths of players, the Al Yarmouk stadium has been the site of Israeli violations of international humanitarian law. In December 2023, footage emerged showing Israeli troops turning Yarmouk stadium into a makeshift internment camp for Palestinian detainees. Dozens of men, women and children were rounded up, stripped down to their underwear, and blindfolded while armed soldiers and tanks encircled the field. A soldier carrying a baby wrapped in a blanket could be seen at the end of the video. More footage continued to emerge, including photos published on the PFA website showing tanks patrolling the field, soldiers posing in front of a group of detained women and children, and blindfolded men and women forced to kneel in front of a goal with the Israeli flag attached to the netting.
The actions of the Israeli Defence Forces cannot be imputed to the IFA, but in the context of other clear and direct violations of the FIFA Statutes, and the IFA’s collusion with the Israeli state, it would be fully appropriate for FIFA to take this issue into consideration in arriving at its conclusions.
