Ramallah (QNN) - Jibril Rajoub, head of the Palestinian Football Association, said yesterday that this year’s Palestinian national football league is at stake as a result of the severe financial crisis affecting the Palestinian Authority.
“I briefed President Mahmoud Abbas on the situation. Unless 50% of what was provided to the football clubs last year is provided this year, , there will be no league,” Rajoub was quoted as saying by official Palestinian enws agency, WAFA.
He said Abbas, nonetheless, expressed his keenness to provide the minimum funding possible for this year’s league.
“We will not accept the collapse of the sports system, but the situation requires integrated efforts. We do not want the clubs to be victims of the financial crisis,” he said.
For seven months now, the Palestinian Authority has been dealing with an unprecedented crisis after Israel passed a law allowing it to deduct from the Palestinian money the equivalent of the amount the PA pays families of Palestinian prisoners and those killed or wounded by Israelis.
As a result, the PA said it will not accept the tax money, which amounts to around $200 million every month and covers two-thirds of the Palestinian budget, if incomplete.
He claimed that the US “maintained the Gaza ceasefire, delivered record levels of humanitarian aid” and that “you don’t hear” about Palestinians in Gaza starving anymore.
Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has approved the issuance of gun licenses to Israeli settlers in 18 illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank, amid a surge in settler violence against Palestinians.