FIFA Executive Does Not Reach Decision on Israel’s West Bank Soccer Teams
Goal Guy: Israeli soccer star Itay Schechter celebrates a goal in 2010. The country?s lower leagues ended a ban on wearing yarmulkes during games after protests. Image by getty images
The governing body of international soccer, FIFA, did not reach a decision on preventing Israeli teams from playing in West Bank settlements.
The organization was expected to discuss the issue at its executive committee meeting, which ended on Friday, but did not make any decisions, Haaretz reported. It was to have considered a special committees recommendations and come up with a solution to be presented at the FIFA world congress, scheduled for May 2017.
Six Israeli teams play their home matches in West Bank settlements.
The international NGO Human Rights Watch late last month called on FIFA to quit sponsoring matches held by the Israel Football Association on West Bank pitches.
Human Rights Watch said it had conducted an investigation of the Israel Football Association, a FIFA member, and found that the group holds games in West Bank settlements “on land unlawfully taken from Palestinians.”
The Palestinian Football Association has accused its Israeli counterpart of violating FIFA rules by holding games without permission on the territory of another member group. Jibril Rajoub, the head of the Palestinian Football Association, has threatened to take the issue to the Court of Arbitration for Sport for a ruling on the issue if FIFA does not deal with it.
New FIFA President Gianni Infantino earlier this month told the French news agency AFP that he would make finding a resolution to the conflict over West Bank Israeli soccer teams “a priority.”
The West Bank soccer teams are in Ma’aleh Adumim, Ariel, Kiryat Arba, Givat Ze’ev, the Jordan Valley and Oranit.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
