Push on to boot Israel in soccer

World Now

Batsheva Sobelman

Push on to boot Israel in soccer — Los Angeles Times, 24 May 2015 — Los Angeles Times · Los Angeles, California · 24 May 2015

Transcribed from the clipping

The Palestinian Authority has a new goal in its efforts to isolate Israel internationally: a ban from world soccer.

The head of FIFA, the Swiss-based international soccer federation, arrived in Israel this week for meetings aimed at resolving the simmering sports conflict, which may resonate more with Israeli sports fans than Palestinian efforts to use the United Nations or the International Criminal Court to back Israel into a diplomatic corner.

FIFA President Sepp Blatter, however, said he was hopeful that he could find some resolution that would satisfy both sides. “Football shall connect people and not divide people,” he said earlier as he headed into the meeting.

Jibril Rajoub, a former Palestinian politician and current head of the Palestinian Football Assn., has been campaigning for two years to suspend Israel from FIFA. His proposal is scheduled for a vote in the FIFA's 65th congress convening in Zurich, Switzerland, on May 29.

In a column published in Britain's Guardian newspaper, Rajoub called on FIFA to uphold its anti-discrimination policy and suspend Israel, citing heavy government restrictions and even attacks on Palestinian athletes.

“While Israel continues to participate in FIFA matches internationally with impunity, Palestinian football players have been shot and arrested, our football association raided by Israeli army forces,” wrote Rajoub.

Although Israel's High Court issued an advisory saying that passage for athletes should be more favorably weighed than for other Palestinians, they nevertheless have faced restrictions. “Sport is a vehicle of goodwill among nations,” Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu told Blatter as the two met in his Jerusalem office.

Stressing that Israel was already acting on several of FIFA's concerns to assist Palestinian football and prepared to discuss further ways of helping, Netanyahu cautioned that introducing politics to the international association could destroy it. Such a suspension would not be unprecedented, however.

Apartheid-era South Africa was suspended by FIFA, as well as much of the rest of the international sports community.

Context added by this archive

Printed in a page-wide roundup headed FROM OUR BLOGS, in a column beside items on fast-food television advertising, a Stan Lee memoir and a Pew survey on personal privacy. Photo by Majdi Mohammed, Associated Press.

Cite this item

"Push on to boot Israel in soccer," Los Angeles Times, 24 May 2015. Covering Palestine archive, CP-2015-007. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-2015-007