As a Palestinian footballer, I call on FIFA to stand against Israeli apartheid

I am a professional Palestinian footballer. I’ve played for three Palestinian Premier League clubs and played nearly fifty times for the Palestinian men’s national team, scoring two goals. I am extremely proud to be able to represent the Palestinian people in international competitions.

But my homeland is illegally occupied and oppressed by Israel and has been for decades. We live under a system of racial segregation that the International Court of Justice (ICJ) found last year amounts to the crime against humanity of apartheid. We face daily attacks by armed Israeli settlers and the Israeli army.

Sports is no exception. In the beginning of my career with the youth team of Shabab Al-Bireh Club, we faced repeated assaults and attacks by the Israeli army due to the club’s proximity to the illegal Israeli settlement of Psagot. Israeli forces frequently fired tear gas at us during training.

While I was with Jabal Al-Mukaber Club, the Israeli army stormed the area surrounding Faisal Al-Husseini Stadium during the final match of the 2023 Palestinian League with Balata Refugee Camp Club. Israeli forces fired tear gas inside the stadium in the 70th minute, forcing the match to be stopped for half an hour, while many players and fans suffered from suffocation.

Israeli football is deeply implicated in Israel’s violations of international law. The Israeli Football Association (IFA) governs on behalf of at least six clubs currently playing in its leagues that are based in illegal Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

These clubs are a part of Israel’s broader agenda to normalise and entrench military occupation and apartheid. They are in violation of both international law and FIFA’s own rules. For example, Article 64.2 of FIFA’s statute states that “Member associations and their clubs may not play on the territory of another member association without the latter’s approval.”

Israel has been committing a genocide in the Gaza Strip since October 2023. This is the conclusion of a UN Commission of Inquiry, several human rights organisations, groups of eminent lawyers and genocide scholars. Throughout these months, at least 800 Palestinian sportspeople, at least 400 of them footballers, were killed in Israeli attacks according to the Palestine Olympic Committee and the Palestinian Football Association.

To add insult to genocidal injury, the IFA has just created a new “Reservists League” made up of Israeli soldiers who have served in Israel’s Gaza genocide.

Israeli forces have destroyed stadiums and sports clubs across Gaza. In January 2024, a video emerged of Israeli troops using Yarmouk Stadium in Gaza City as a detention camp for Palestinian prisoners, transforming what should be a place of joy and cheering into a place of horror and torture.

Later that month the Israeli army demolished a large part of the stadium that had been home to the Gaza Sport Club.

Some football fields in the Gaza Strip have also had to be used as burial sites because the number of dead and widespread destruction have overwhelmed the existing cemeteries. In all, Israel has destroyed or damaged 288 Palestinian sports facilities.

Many of our sportspeople are simply struggling to stay alive, struggling to eat while Israel has blocked humanitarian supplies. In response to the desperate situation, the ICJ has just last month issued a ruling demanding sufficient aid be let in, and reminding Israel the use of starvation as a method of warfare is prohibited under international law.

While waiting for humanitarian aid for his family of five children, Suleiman Obeid, known as the ‘Palestinian Pele,’ was shot and killed by Israeli forces in Gaza in August.

This is the situation of Palestinian football and yet so far, FIFA and UEFA have not acted to ban Israeli national teams and club sides from participating in international or European football.

When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, FIFA banned Russia from all competitions just four days later, saying: “Football is fully united here and in full solidarity with all the people affected in Ukraine.” And yet, Israel’s decades long illegal occupation of Palestinian territory and the scale of destruction and killing in the Gaza Strip has not moved the football authorities to even allow a vote on Israel’s exclusion.

When we see Israeli teams like Maccabi Tel Aviv allowed to compete in European competitions, despite their long history of racist and fanatically violent fans, despite the club’s support for the Israeli military as it carries out a genocide, we see the double standards of football authorities.

 The match against Aston Villa should not go ahead, with or without the Israeli fans.

The football world must not normalise Israel’s oppression that we as Palestinians face. It must recognise that there can be no fair play with teams from genocidal and apartheid Israel. Just as apartheid South Africa was suspended from FIFA, so must apartheid Israel be today.

The Palestinian Football Association has long demanded Israel’s exclusion from international sports as an essential accountability measure for the oppression that we face. We know that football fans around the world stand with our call, but we need the footballing authorities to finally listen to us. The FA and UEFA must act now to stop this match from going ahead and exclude all Israeli teams from future competitions.

Mohammed Bassim Rashid is a professional Palestinian footballer who’s played 48 times for the Palestine national team. He plays as a defensive midfielder for Indian Super League club East Bengal, as well as the Palestine national team.

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Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab, its editorial board or staff.