Occupied Palestine (QNN)- The Palestinian Football Association has appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport against FIFA’s “unjust” decision not to sanction Israel over clubs based in illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank.
A senior PFA official said on Tuesday, as it has long said that clubs based in Israeli settlements in the West Bank should not compete in leagues run by the Israel Football Association (IFA).
Last month, after carrying out an investigation based on a 2024 PFA complaint, Fifa insisted that "the final legal status of the West Bank remains an unresolved and highly complex matter under public international law", and therefore, it would "take no action".
Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank are illegal under international law, according to the International Court of Justice.
“Since we have exhausted every legal venue possible at FIFA, we'll still go by the rules, go by the book, and we'll appeal that decision because we think it's very unjust," PFA vice president Susan Shalabi said after the Asian Football Confederation Congress in Vancouver, held two days before the FIFA Congress in the same city.
"The (FIFA) council decided after 15 years of deliberations on this issue not to decide. So the only course of action that we have is to go to CAS and to appeal that. We will go through the whole process until we are able to achieve justice."
She later told Reuters that the appeal had been filed on April 20.
Shalabi said visa problems also prevented some of the PFA's representatives from entering Canada for the FIFA Congress.
She said she received an electronic travel authorisation immediately because she applied on a foreign passport, but other members of the delegation, including the PFA president, general secretary and legal counsel Gonzalo Boye, initially did not receive visas.
She said the visas were issued only after pressure "on the political level, on the social level, on the media level," as well as action from community members and activists, adding that the PFA president had not received a visa in time to travel with the rest of the delegation but was expected to arrive later.
She said Boye, however, had still not received a visa and would not attend.
Shalabi added the situation for Palestinian football remained dire, particularly in Gaza, where she said every football structure was either unusable or destroyed during the genocide.
"We lost so many hundreds of footballers; we lost most of them children," she said. "So football now in Gaza, there is no football at all."
"It's very dangerous for our teams to compete," she said, adding that professional leagues were suspended and that the PFA was trying to keep football alive through grassroots and youth competitions.
In February, the groups Irish Sport for Palestine, Scottish Sport for Palestine, Just Peace Advocates, Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, and Sport Scholars for Justice in Palestine filed a 120-page complaint with the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court against Fifa's president, The New York Times reported.
The complaint names Gianni Infantino and European football governing body president Aleksander Ceferin and accuses them of "aiding war crimes".
"FIFA and UEFA permit [Israeli] clubs to play in leagues organised by the Israel Football Association and host matches on the seized land," the groups said.
