When Israel takes the pitch against Norway on 11 October for their 2026 World Cup qualifier, the most important question will not be who wins, but whether Israel should be allowed to play at all.
Fifa, the world’s governing body for football, positions itself as a human-rights advocate. When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Fifa moved with lightning speed, banning Russia from all competitions four days later. In a joint statement with Uefa, Europe’s football governing body, they asserted, “Football is fully united here and in full solidarity with all the people affected in Ukraine.” And yet, little solidarity has been afforded Palestinians. When it comes to Israel, Fifa and Uefa have foot-dragged.
Pressure is ramping up on the barons of football to take action. After United Nations experts issued a statement demanding that Israel be suspended from international football because of the genocide in Gaza, the Times reports that Uefa may take up the issue as soon as next week.
Football is politics by other means. Fifa and Uefa demonstrated as much with their ban on Russia. Fifa’s guiding statutes give it the power to take a similar moral stance against the actions of Israel and to offer “full solidarity” with Palestinians, especially since the Palestine Football Association is a Fifa member. To sit silent is to signal brazen favoritism. Fifa and Uefa should suspend Israel from competition.
Some may argue that sports and politics shouldn’t mix. But in a time of rising authoritarianism across the globe, including in the United States under Donald Trump, now is the time for international organizations to stand up for core moral principles. Today, selective ethics are freighted with extra danger: they enable demagoguery.
Israel is orchestrating a staggering human tragedy in Gaza. It has dropped well over 100,000 tons of explosives on the Gaza Strip, more tonnage than struck Dresden, Hamburg, and London combined during the second world war. More than 64,000 Palestinians have been killed, most of them by Israel’s military, with the Lancet calculating a much higher death toll and a retired Israeli general noting that more than 200,000 Palestinians have been killed or wounded. The Lancet says that on average, 35 children are killed every day in Gaza. With Israel blocking most food aid, around a quarter of all Gaza residents were suffering from famine in August. Hospitals are often hit, in violation of international humanitarian law. Around 200 journalists have been killed, with many of them apparently targeted by the Israel Defense Forces, a breach of international law. Together, this constitutes genocide, according to the International Association of Genocide Scholars. But for Israel’s far-right finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, Gaza is just a “real-estate bonanza.”
These horrors do not chime with Fifa’s stated ideals. Its president, Gianni Infantino, has remained conspicuously silent on the subject of Israel and Gaza, even though Fifa’s legal handbook trumpets that the group “is committed to respecting all internationally recognised human rights and shall strive to promote the protection of these rights.” Sure, Infantino penned cut-and-paste condolence letters to the football associations of Israel and Palestine in the wake of the horrific 7 October attack and the launch of Israel’s military response, but he hasn’t replicated anything resembling his statement that Fifa “condemns the use of force by Russia in Ukraine.” Neither far-right security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir’s stated support for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, nor inflammatory statements by a range of powerful Israeli politicians has moved Infantino to condemn Israel, let alone propose any concrete sanctions against the country, despite the fact that Fifa’s statutes state that “Discrimination of any kind against a country, private person or group of people on account of race, skin colour, ethnic, national or social origin, gender, disability, language, religion, political opinion … is strictly prohibited and punishable by suspension or expulsion.”
One could argue that denouncing war crimes is too much to expect from a sports organization. But even if we stick to the realm of sports, Israel appears to be violating Fifa rules. The organization’s statutes state clearly that “Member associations and their clubs may not play on the territory of another member association without the latter’s approval.” And yet, according to Human Rights Watch, the Israel Football Association is staging matches on “settlements in the West Bank on land unlawfully taken from Palestinians.” The United Nations has identified at least eight Israeli football clubs that have either developed or played matches “in Israeli colonial settlements of the occupied West Bank.” In addition, the UN says many clubs in the Israel Football Association (IFA) “have exhibited racism towards the Palestinian people and players over the years,” a clear violation of Fifa’s non-discrimination policies. The London-based human-rights group Fair Square determined that there is “longstanding and irrefutable evidence that the IFA is in violation of Fifa Statutes.”
Last May at the Fifa Congress in Paraguay, Susan Shalabi, a vice-president of the Palestinian Football Association, implored Fifa’s Governance, Audit, and Compliance Committee to conclude two investigations into Israel’s actions in the West Bank. Despite an abundance of evidence, Fifa chose to kick the investigation down the road. By slow-rolling these inquiries, Fifa, whether intentionally or not, has adopted the same approach as Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, calling for investigations into human-rights violations as a strategy of staving off accountability.
Beyond staging matches in the West Bank, Israel has engaged in what scholars are increasingly calling “athleticide”: killing Palestinian athletes, destroying sports facilities, and transmogrifying Gaza’s storied Al Yarmouk Stadium into a temporary detention center. Last month, beloved Palestinian footballer Suleiman Obeid – known to many as the Palestinian Pele – was killed by an Israeli drone strike. He is one of nearly 800 Palestinian athletes who have been killed by Israel since October 2023.
Fifa and Uefa have the power to take action. Although admirable, the burden shouldn’t be on star players like Liverpool’s Mohamed Salah to ask tough questions about the killing of Obeid or for Norway to donate the profits from its qualifying match against Israel to Gaza relief. The full weight of football governing bodies is required.
Although history does not provide us with crisp facsimiles, Fifa’s handling of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine shows that the group can act on principle. Given the facts on the ground in the West Bank and Gaza, Israel should not be allowed to take the pitch for World Cup qualifying matches. Fifa and Uefa need to expedite investigations into Israeli football malfeasance. By choosing to ignore their own rules, they disfigure them. When impunity thrives on moral sleepwalking, it leaves us precarious – and vulnerable to authoritarianism. Now is the time for Fifa and Uefa to stand in alignment with the principles they so vociferously proclaim.