In the background of a brutal genocide, Palestine’s national team has achieved historic success. Last January, the team advanced to the knockout stages of the Asian Cup before narrowly losing to eventual champions Qatar. Al-Fida’i also advanced to the latter stages of the Asian World Cup qualification and has a chance of securing a maiden World Cup appearance in 2026. 

The squad is loaded with stars. Wessam Abou Ali is the best striker that Egypt’s Al-Ahly have had in a generation. Oday Dabbagh has blazed a trail for Palestinian talent in Europe, scoring goals in the Portuguese and Belgian top flights. The players’ success is even more remarkable given the death toll in Gaza.

Mention of Palestine and FIFA’s silence over Gaza stands in stark contrast to what transpired in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Russia was suspended from UEFA and FIFA less than a week after the invasion. When that action was taken, many wondered why Israel was not sanctioned in the same manner for illegally occupying Palestine and parts of Lebanon and Syria. 

After the events of October 7, 2023, demands that Israel be kicked out of football grew louder. At the UEFA Congress in February 2024, UEFA Secretary General Theodore Theodoridis doubled down, rejecting any comparison with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and stating that they were “two completely different situations.”

For its part, FIFA did its utmost to avoid taking a position. In February 2024, The West Asian Football Federation (WAFF), in tandem with the Palestine Football Association (PFA), decided to launch an appeal for sanctions to be passed on Israel. This was due to be discussed at the FIFA Congress in Bangkok last May. 

In Bangkok, FIFA President Gianni Infantino told the 211-member delegation in his address that “football can only do so much,” a stark departure from his usual projection of power, and promised that the FIFA Council would “study the matter” and take a decision on July 20. 

When that deadline arrived, FIFA falsely claimed that both parties asked for more time to submit evidence and provided a new deadline of August 31. This allowed Israel’s U23 team to compete at the Paris Olympics. When the August deadline passed, FIFA stated that it had received the independent legal assessment and that “this assessment will be sent to the FIFA Council to review in order that the subject can be discussed at its next meeting, which will take place in October.” On October 3, FIFA finally took a decision to “investigate.”

With four expired deadlines in the ledge the message is clear. FIFA would rather not deal with this problem. This is not the first time the PFA has filed complaints against Israel in the halls of FIFA. Its initial attempt to suspend Israel started over a decade ago in the aftermath of the 2014 war on Gaza, which left over 2,000 dead—the majority of whom were civilians—and destroyed 30 sporting installations. 

The campaign to kick Israel out of FIFA has its origins within the grassroots boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) campaign organized to try and stop UEFA from staging the 2013 U21 European Championships in Israel. While the campaign was unsuccessful, it did manage to create enough of a stir that UEFA decided not to select Jerusalem as a Euro 2020 host city. 

The publicity generated by the campaign also caught the interest of PFA President Jibril Rajoub, who began to co-opt its messaging. 

Rajoub, who was head of the Palestinian Authority’s Preventive Security and briefly served as Yasser Arafat’s national security adviser, took control of the PFA in 2007. It was something of an unceremonious exile from the political spotlight, but the general (who has since been promoted to field marshal) figured out how to use his platform to his advantage. The 71-year-old Rajoub is one of a dozen candidates angling to succeed the 89-year-old Mahmoud Abbas as president of the Palestinian Authority. 

The PFA’s first attempt to kick Israel out of FIFA represented their best chance at success. Decisions on suspension used to be taken by the FIFA Congress, and a suspension could have been achieved in 2015 with a three-quarters majority vote. After succeeding in bringing the measure to a vote, Rajoub withdrew the motion (a watered-down amended version passed 165–18). “Palestine has not withdrawn its application completely, but merely suspended it,” Rajoub said at the conclusion of the 2015 FIFA Congress. 

A few years later, Palestine narrowed down its demands and tried to appeal to FIFA to get settlement clubs banned from playing in the Israeli league. This would have followed the precedent set by Crimean clubs, who were barred from playing in the Russian Football pyramid in the aftermath of the 2014 annexation of the peninsula.

FIFA hemmed and hawed for years, sent FIFA anti-racism advisor Tokyo Sexwale to investigate, and then decided they would not intervene. Rajoub and the PFA appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport and lost—and were required to pay FIFA’s legal fees as a result.

After three failed bids, the pursuit of an Israel ban is hampered by issues of personnel and tactics.  

Rajoub and the PFA apparatus are ineffective messengers who are not skilled enough to lobby their peers. In fact, ahead of last year’s FIFA Congress in Bangkok, Rajoub was a late arrival, foregoing important face time with stakeholders to travel to Dublin to watch Palestine take on Bohemian FC’s women’s team in an exhibition match. 

Tactically, Palestine is using ideas and strategies from the 1960s and 1970s, when the CAF and the AFC were successful in banning South Africa, Rhodesia, and Israel from football competition. 

In that era, newly independent nations were united by their shared anticolonial experience. That unity was the driver that delivered several gains for the African continent, including more representation at World Cups and increased revenue sharing. 

Inspired by the success of the CAF, Kuwaiti FA President Ahmed Al-Sadoun launched a plan to boot Israel from the Asian Football Confederation. To do so, he increased the membership of Arab teams in the organization from two—Lebanon and Kuwait—to nine. Al-Sadoun then used this bloc to convince the Asian Football Confederation to move the 1972 Asian Cup finals from Israel to Thailand. Two years later in Kuala Lumpur, Al-Sadoun was successful in freezing Israel’s membership, because it was judged that football was no longer being nurtured in the territories under its jurisdiction. The vote passed 17–13 with six abstentions.

In 1978, Yugoslavia put forth a proposal for Israel to join UEFA. In an attempt to find support, Israel lobbied several Asian nations in Bangkok to vote in favor. Al-Sadoun’s successor, the late Fahad Al-Ahmed, interceded, flying from the FIFA Congress in Buenos Aires to Bangkok to counter Israel’s efforts, which led to the motion failing days later. Israel would remain unattached to a confederation until 1994 as a result of Kuwait’s efforts.

Half a century later, these types of actions are less likely to take place inside the halls of FIFA, because the organization has changed. Until the late 1970s, FIFA was an amateur organization whose revenues came nearly exclusively from ticketing. Decision-making was more democratic and decided by the Congress in a one nation–one vote system. Today, FIFA rakes in mountains of cash from commercial sponsorships and merchandising. Power has become concentrated at the top, with the FIFA Council, appointed by the FIFA president, deciding on matters of importance. 

Gianni Infantino, like his predecessor, has been keen to keep politics out of the game. With football yielding untold cultural and commercial power, it pays to keep the status quo. Any act of subversion that goes against the established political order risks upsetting commercial and state sponsors, which in turn hurts FIFA’s top brass.

Commercialization of the game has, however, given more power to players and fans, and it is with those stakeholders that supporters of Palestine should engage. During the second half of the Champions League playoff encounter between Celtic and Bayern Munich, fans unfurled a banner demanding UEFA and FIFA “Show Israel the Red Card” and held up red placards. The campaign caught on in the rest of Europe with fans in Ireland, Spain, France, and Morocco taking up the message the following weekend. 

Not a single municipality in Belgium agreed to host the Israeli team in September’s UEFA Nations League encounter, and the match was moved to neutral territory. In cities that decided to host the Israeli national team or Israeli clubs, the hooliganism of its fans in Amsterdam and Paris led to serious doubts over how to stage future matches without causing an undue burden on the taxpayer. 

Finally, many forget that the powers that be did not initially want to ban Russia from international football. Gianni Infantino first floated an idea inspired by the IOC—that Russia would be allowed to compete in World Cup qualification in unmarked jerseys, hosting games on neutral territory without raising their flag or playing their anthem. 

Robert Lewandowski, Poland’s captain, was the first to refuse to play against Russia. He convinced his teammates, along with the captains of Czechia and Sweden, to back him. The adamant position of the players forced FIFA to backtrack less than a week after its initial IOC-style decision. The players continued to stand firm, vowing to withdraw from World Cup qualification even if a Russian appeal to CAS proved successful. 

Israel has been drawn in Group I for 2026 World Cup qualification alongside Norway, who have been a thorn in the side of FIFA on the issue of human rights. Last month, Norwegian champions Bodø/Glimt donated all ticket revenue from their Europa League match against Maccabi Tel Aviv to Gaza. 

“It was important for us to conduct the match in a way that respected everyone’s right to express themselves, while ensuring the safety of players, supporters and the rest of the city,” The club said in a statement. “We will donate all the ordinary ticket revenues from the home game against Maccabi Tel Aviv to the Red Cross and earmark aid work in the Gaza Strip. This amounts to NOK 735,000—and is donated by all of us.”

These actions follow generally supportive statements by NFF President Lise Klaveness, who directly referenced Gaza following the World Cup draw:  “None of us can be indifferent to the disproportionate attacks that Israel has subjected the civilian population in Gaza to over time.”

While Norway’s sporting authorities have stopped short of declaring a boycott, there seems to be a window for their players to be approached as torchbearers of the cause. If the PFA were smart they would change tack and try to influence the likes of Erling Haaland, Martin Ødegaard, and Alexander Sørloth, as opposed to Gianni Infantino and his entourage of old men in navy suits.