{"id":494185,"date":"2026-06-15T17:29:15","date_gmt":"2026-06-15T17:29:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/494185\/"},"modified":"2026-06-15T17:29:15","modified_gmt":"2026-06-15T17:29:15","slug":"fifa-pushes-for-israel-palestine-opening-match-in-september-tournament","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/494185\/","title":{"rendered":"FIFA pushes for Israel-Palestine opening match in September tournament"},"content":{"rendered":"

FIFA<\/a>, the governing body of soccer worldwide, will propose a match between Israel and Palestine during the inaugural game of its under-15s football festival, to be held in September, according to reports on Monday by The Guardian and The Athletic.<\/p>\n

The match would be played during a symbolic tournament in the US, with players from all 211 of FIFA\u2019s member associations present -including Russia, which has been banned from tournaments ever since its invasion of Ukraine in 2022.<\/p>\n

FIFA President Gianni Infantino<\/a> will aim for the match to take place, with previous attempts to show “good relations” between the Israeli and Palestinian associations failing.<\/p>\n

The tournament was already announced in May, during a FIFA congress that was better remembered because of a tense situation between the Israel FA Vice-President Basim Sheikh Suliman and the Palestinian soccer federation President Jibril Rajoub<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Rajoub refused to stand alongside Suliman during their speeches at the congress after Infantino called them to the podium.<\/p>\n

Infantino put his hand on Rajoub’s arm and invited him with a gesture to come closer to Suliman<\/a>, but to no avail.<\/p>\n

According to\u00a0The Guardian, a handshake was scheduled between the two soccer executives, but Rajoub changed his mind during Suliman’s speech.<\/p>\n

Asked what Rajoub<\/a> said when he refused, Palestinian FA Vice-President Susan Shalabi, who was in the room, told Reuters: “I cannot shake the hand of someone the Israelis have brought to whitewash their fascism and genocide. We are suffering.”<\/p>\n

Infantino then took the stand and said: “We will work together, President Rajoub, Vice-President Suliman. Let’s work together to give hope to the children. These are complex matters.”<\/p>\n

Now Infantino seems to aim for a new encounter between delegations, with no official decision over the match having been taken as of the writing of this article.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FIFA, the governing body of soccer worldwide, will propose a match between Israel and Palestine during the inaugural…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":494186,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[19712,8316,85,46,106,37889,43,6608,19711,105,30572],"class_list":["post-494185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-fifa","tag-fifa-world-cup","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-israel-sports","tag-israeli-football","tag-news","tag-palestinian","tag-soccer","tag-sports","tag-world-cup-soccer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=494185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494185\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/494186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=494185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=494185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=494185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}