Why does Fifa refuse to sanction Israel?
Argentina is “now more ready than ever” to host the World Cup, the president of Fifa said in March 1976, just two days after the country’s military had overthrown Isabel Peron’s government in a US-backed coup and inaugurated almost a decade of bloody dictatorship.
At least 30,000 people were “disappeared” by Jorge Rafael Videla’s junta, but this appeared of little concern to football’s international governing body. After the 1978 World Cup in Argentina, it elevated the tournament’s leading organiser - Navy Vice Admiral Carlos Lacoste - to Fifa’s vice presidency.
Later this month, Israel’s football team is scheduled to begin its campaign to qualify for the 2026 World Cup in North America.
As Fifa continues to resist mounting calls for the national side to be suspended from the competition, retracing the association’s dark history serves to illuminate its role in offering legitimacy to the oppressor as an instrument of the imperial international order.
Fifa has turned a blind eye to Israel’s illegal occupation since the Palestine Football Association (PFA) was admitted to membership in 1998. In open violation of Fifa’s supposed commitment to international humanitarian law, the Israel Football Association (IFA) has incorporated football clubs located in illegal settlements for decades. This is a clear breach of Fifa statutes, which state that “member associations and their clubs may not play on the territory of another member association without the latter’s approval”.
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Meanwhile, in violation of Fifa’s rules, the vitriol of Israeli fans has long been ignored. Five years ago, The Economist labelled Beitar Jerusalem as “the most racist football club in Israel”, reporting that fans “scream epithets, such as ‘terrorist’, at the Arabs who play for opposing squads”.
Explaining its failure to act against the IFA in 2017, Fifa maintained that it “remains neutral in matters of politics and religion”. Russia, however, was quickly expelled from the 2022 World Cup following its invasion of Ukraine. Fifa’s motto - “For the Game. For the World” - clearly only extends to parts of it.
Fifa was contacted and invited to respond to this piece, but there was no response by the time of publication.
Destruction in Gaza
Since October 2023, Gaza’s footballing infrastructure has been destroyed, and Israeli forces have killed more than 350 Palestinian footballers. Hani al-Masdar, the 42-year-old playmaker turned coach of the Palestinian Olympic football team, was killed by an Israeli air strike in January 2024.
Two months later, Mohammed Barakat - “the legend of Khan Younis”, with more than 100 career goals to his name - lost his life when his family home was bombed on the first day of Ramadan.
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In Gaza City, the Yarmouk sports arena, once a 9,000-seat football stadium, has been levelled. For a period of time, Israeli forces used the facility as a makeshift detention camp. While tanks encircled the stadium, dozens of Palestinians were pictured stripped to their underwear and kneeling with their hands tied behind their backs. Others were tortured for hours on end.
By May 2024, the enclave’s only undamaged football stadium had become a refuge for thousands of people fleeing northern Gaza. That same month, Fifa President Gianni Infantino announced that he would seek independent legal advice to assess the PFA’s call to sanction Israeli football. Nearly a year later, Fifa has yet to act.
While football's governing body continues its decades-long commitment to legitimising the crimes of imperialism, the world's terraces wave the Palestinian flag
The atrocities visited upon those detained in Yarmouk stadium recall the horrors that occurred in Chile’s national stadium, where dozens were murdered after General Augusto Pinochet’s US-backed coup in September 1973.
Two months later, the Chilean national team lined up on that very same pitch. They were scheduled to play the Soviet Union in a crucial qualifier ahead of the 1974 World Cup. The Soviets, however, refused to play on a pitch “stained with blood”. Fifa, dismissing their complaint, ordered the game to go ahead and, having scored into an empty net, the Chileans secured their World Cup place.
When Fifa’s officers visited the stadium to approve its use ahead of the match, the army hid the dictatorship’s prisoners out of sight. The inspectors were "only interested in the quality of the grass", observed those prisoners who remained in the stands.
Colonial tool
Since it was established by European powers in 1904, Fifa has served to legitimise a colonial settlement that has kept the Global South subjugated to the West. Far from being the great equaliser, international football has long highlighted the contradictions of the “rules-based international order”, designed to drain wealth and resources from one part of the world to another.
This Eurocentrism catalysed the only organised boycott of a World Cup by an entire continent in Fifa history. Africa avoided the 1966 competition in protest at the unequal distribution of places for the championship: while Europe was offered 10 places, the nations of Africa, Asia and Oceania were forced to compete for just one.
Led by Ghanaian leader Kwame Nkrumah, and inspired by the wave of decolonisation sweeping the continent, each member of the Confederation of African Football withdrew from qualification - a decision for which they were later fined by Fifa. Africa’s boycott proved successful when, four years later, the continent was granted a dedicated place at the 1970 World Cup.
Israel’s efforts to destroy Gaza’s footballing institutions must be understood as symptomatic of the Israeli army’s war on each and every part of Palestinian existence.
This violence has been matched only by the determined resilience of the Palestinian people. In January 2024, days after the killing of Masdar, the national side made history by booking their place in the knockout stages of the Asian Cup for the first time. This resistance to the erasure of ethnic cleansing demands the solidarity of the footballing world.
Last month, supporters of Glasgow’s Celtic FC began a campaign for Fifa to “show Israel the red card”. The Green Brigade’s call has since been echoed around the globe, from Spain to Morocco to Ireland.
While football’s governing body continues its decades-long commitment to legitimising the crimes of imperialism, the world’s terraces wave the Palestinian flag.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
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