Even before the World Cup kicks off on June 11 in Mexico City’s Estadio Azteca, when Selección de fútbol de México will face off against the South African squad, nicknamed Bafana Bafana (“the boys” in Zulu), red cards have already been drawn.
The foul? Palestinian Football Association (PFA) president Jibril Rajoub, general secretary Firas Abu Hilal, and vice president Susan Shalabi Molano were initially denied visas to enter Canada to attend the annual congress of soccer’s governing body, the Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), which was held on April 30.
The Asian Football Confederation confab was also being held in Vancouver that week. The FIFA event, the 76th since the organization was founded in 1904, brought together more than 1,600 international delegates from FIFA’s 211 member associations.
Calls to suspend Israel
Though ultimately Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) allowed the three sports bureaucrats to enter the country, after FIFA officials intervened, Rajoub, 72, has tried to turn the biggest soccer tournament into a political football.
For more than a decade, he has repeatedly called on FIFA to take action regarding the Israeli “crimes” against Palestinian sports. In 2015, at the 65th FIFA Congress in Zurich – briefly interrupted by a bomb threat – he threatened to submit a resolution to suspend Israel from the global football organization.
Back then, Rajoub charged that Israel was illegally restricting the free movement of Palestinian sportsmen, coaches, and equipment between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, and blocking their travel abroad. He ultimately dropped the motion for Israel’s expulsion from FIFA after the Israel Football Association (IFA) offered a set of compromises.
Tweaking his original complaint, Rajoub ahead of the upcoming World Cup alleged that Israeli football clubs are playing illegal matches in what the PFA contends is occupied territory captured by Israel in the 1967 Six Day War.
While Palestinians enjoy football at the 12,500-seat Faisal Al-Husseini International Stadium in Al-Ram near Jerusalem, there are no professional playing fields in the West Bank, where Israeli teams play. Al-Ram has been the PFA’s home since the stadium there opened in 2008. Palestine became a member of the global soccer organization a decade earlier.
In March, FIFA published a report on the issue, ruling that the sports organization would “take no action” over the PFA claim. The report noted that resolving “the final legal status of the West Bank remains an unresolved and highly complex matter under public international law.”
Unsportsmanlike conduct
At the FIFA annual meeting in Vancouver, Rajoub – who also serves as secretary-general of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s ruling Fatah party’s Central Committee – snubbed FIFA president Gianni Infantino, who attempted to orchestrate a handshake between the heads of the Palestinian and Israeli delegations.
Following individual addresses toward the end of the congress, both Rajoub and the IFA’s vice president, Basim Sheikh Suliman, were summoned to the stage by the FIFA president.
“We will work together… Let’s work together to give hope to the children. These are complex matters,” Infantino said.
But Rajoub refused to stand alongside Sheikh Suliman. Instead, he pledged to take the Palestine-Israel squabble to the Court of Arbitration in Sport, based in Lausanne, Switzerland. No date has been set for the hearing.
“I refused to shake hands. Sport is sport… For me, that should be respected,” he told Reuters. “But if the other side is representing a criminal like Bibi [Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu]… how can I shake hands or have a photo with such a man?”
Palestine’s three-member delegation wasn’t the only representation held up by the IRCC en route to the FIFA Congress. Iranian soccer federation (FFIRI) president Mehdi Taj was questioned for three hours at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport, Iranian media reported.
The Iranian delegation chose to turn back. Taj was once a commander in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, according to Iran International. Since 2024, Canada has listed the IRGC as a terrorist entity.
Palestinian terror
Rajoub, also known by the nom de guerre Abu Rami, has roots in Palestinian terrorism as well. A close lieutenant of the Palestinian Authority’s first president, Yasser Arafat, Rajoub was allegedly behind a 1992 plot to assassinate former Israeli prime minister and ex-IDF general Ariel Sharon.
Rajoub was allowed to return to the West Bank in 1994 following the signing of the Oslo Accords. In 2003, the PLO chairman appointed him as his national security adviser.
Neither Israel nor Palestine qualified for this year’s 48-nation tournament – the most widely watched sporting event in the world – taking place across Canada, the US, and Mexico through July 19.■