FIFA opts not to suspend Israel but will investigate Palestinian claims of discrimination

ZURICH: FIFA stopped short of suspending the Israeli soccer federation on Thursday, but asked for a disciplinary investigation of possible discrimination alleged by Palestinian soccer officials.

A senior FIFA panel overseeing governance will separately investigate “the participation in Israeli competitions of Israeli football teams allegedly based in the territory of Palestine,” soccer's governing body said after a meeting of its ruling Council.

The Palestinian soccer federation has consistently asked FIFA for more than a decade to take action against the Israeli soccer body for incorporating teams from West Bank settlements in its leagues.

The compromise decisions came more than four months after Palestinian officials had urged FIFA to suspend Israel's membership at a meeting in May.

The request to FIFA's congress in May also cited “international law violations" in Gaza during the Israel-Hamas conflict and directed the soccer body to its statutory commitments on human rights and against discrimination.

FIFA delayed making a decision in May until after a legal review scheduled for July, then pushed back the issue two more times until a meeting of its 37-member Council on Thursday.

“The FIFA Council has implemented due diligence on this very sensitive matter and, based on a thorough assessment, we have followed the advice of the independent experts,” FIFA president Gianni Infantino said in a statement.

Ahead of the meeting, Palestinian soccer federation leader Jibril Rajoub and its vice president Susan Shalabi came to Zurich to lobby FIFA officials.

“I trust and I expect that FIFA will take the right decision," Rajoub told The Associated Press. "I am asking for the Council to follow their statutes.”

The latest process follows a pattern — under Infantino and his predecessor Sepp Blatter — of Palestinian requests for FIFA to uphold its legal rules and the question then being steered toward ad hoc panels and other committees.

FIFA gave no timetable Thursday for the investigations it has now requested.

Supporters of the Palestinian soccer campaign have criticized FIFA for not following its decision in 2022 to suspend Russian national teams from its competitions within days of the military invasion of Ukraine. European soccer body UEFA also removed Russian teams.

Several European federations had already refused to play scheduled games against Russia, including Poland and its captain Robert Lewandowski. They said they would not go to Moscow for a World Cup qualifying playoff in March 2022.

FIFA later successfully argued at the Court of Arbitration for Sport that keeping Russian teams in its competitions would cause chaos and be a security risk. Russian teams have not played in World Cups, European Championships or the Champions League for more than 2 1/2 years.

In the case of Israel, which has been a member of UEFA for 30 years, no European federation has refused to play its national or clubs teams. Israeli teams have played home games in neutral countries such as Hungary and Cyprus for security reasons since the Hamas attacks one year ago.

The Palestinian men's national team is currently playing in the Asian qualifying program for the 2026 World Cup, hosting Jordan three weeks ago in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The team next plays at Iraq on Oct. 10 and hosts Kuwait five days later in Doha, Qatar.