By Shireen Akram-Boshar<\/p>\n
This article was originally published by Truthout<\/a><\/p>\n FIFA President Gianni Infantino has long been accused of currying favor with Trump and other autocrats.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n FIFA has proposed a match<\/a> between Israel and Palestine as the opener for a youth tournament set to begin in the U.S. in September in the international body\u2019s latest reactionary move.\u00a0<\/p>\n The tournament will be for soccer players aged 15 and under, and is open to all of FIFA\u2019s member states. This includes Russia, which has been banned from FIFA tournaments since the start of its invasion of Ukraine in 2022. But FIFA wants the opening game to feature Palestinian and Israeli youth soccer teams in its latest attempt to \u201cpromote peace.\u201d<\/p>\n Gianni Infantino, FIFA\u2019s president who has curried favor with Trump since 2018<\/a> and awarded Trump the first \u201cFIFA Peace Prize\u201d in 2025, has attempted to push the Palestinian and Israeli football associations together.\u00a0<\/p>\n In April, Infantino attempted to persuade Palestinian and Israeli delegates at the FIFA congress in Vancouver to shake hands and pose together for a photo. Jibril Rajoub, the Palestinian Football Association\u2019s president, refused, saying<\/a>, \u201cI cannot shake the hand of someone the Israelis have brought to whitewash their fascism and genocide. We are suffering!\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n After Jibril\u2019s refusal, Infantino spoke of the upcoming youth tournament. \u201cWe have a beautiful under-15 tournament coming up, where we will invite all 211 countries to participate, all the children of the world, let\u2019s do it for that,\u201d he said. \u201cLet\u2019s work together, you have my commitment, you have the support of the whole room.\u201d<\/p>\n A spokesperson of the Israeli Football Association said that its president<\/a> has \u201csaid publicly several times\u201d that the Israeli team is \u201cwilling to use football as an instrument to promote normalization and peace.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n But \u201cnormalization\u201d and \u201cpeace\u201d can only mean so much as Israel has killed at least 565 Palestinian soccer players, coaches, and sports staff since the start of its genocide in Gaza in 2023. Between 5,000 and 6,000 survivors of the genocide have also lost limbs<\/a> from Israeli bombings, including hundreds of athletes.<\/p>\n According to the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Movement, normalization<\/a> fosters \u201cjoint activity between the oppressed and the oppressor that is not based on the recognition of the rights of the oppressed\u201d and that does not \u201caim at the elimination of oppression.\u201d Instead, it is a \u201cweapon used by Israel\u2019s apartheid regime to whitewash its regime of oppression and undermine international solidarity.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n But Infantino has been on board with promoting a reactionary peace through soccer. In addition to ingratiating himself to Trump, Infantino has been criticized for \u201ccozying up to autocrats\u201d in Russia and Qatar during the previous two World Cups. Trump also invited Infantino as a guest at the White House for the signing of the Abraham Accords \u2014 which normalized relations between Israel and Arab states, the first of which were Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.\u00a0<\/p>\n And in February, Infantino announced a $50 million partnership between FIFA and Trump\u2019s Board of Peace, with the plan to build soccer infrastructure in a decimated Gaza. In an article for Truthout, Dalia Abu Ramadan wrote<\/a>, \u201cTrump, together with FIFA President Gianni Infantino, promotes projects presented as symbols of peace and prosperity, while the basic needs of people are being ignored.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Infantino\u2019s plan for the youth tournament also ignores a decade-long campaign to ban Israel from FIFA.\u00a0<\/p>\n In 2024, the Palestinian Football Association submitted a proposal to suspend Israel<\/a> from international tournaments for violating FIFA\u2019s statutes during Israel\u2019s genocide in Gaza. The proposal accuses the Israeli Football Association of complicity in violations of international law, and discrimination against Palestinian players. Rajoub stated at the time that FIFA must not remain indifferent to \u201cviolations or to the ongoing genocide in Palestine.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The 2024 complaint also rested on the fact that Israel has at least six clubs<\/a> in illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank. Nonetheless, in March 2026, FIFA announced that it will not take any action against the Israeli Football Association, saying that the \u201clegal status of the West Bank remains an unresolved and highly complex matter.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n In response, Amnesty International spokesperson Steve Cockburn said:<\/p>\n The International Court of Justice has unambiguously declared that Israel\u2019s occupation of Palestinian territory is unlawful, that settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) are illegal and that Israel\u2019s presence in the OPT must rapidly end. FIFA\u2019s own statutes are clear that its members cannot play games in the territory of another association without permission.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cBy continuing to condone the presence of clubs based in illegal settlements in the OPT in Israel\u2019s league, the Israeli Football Association is indirectly legitimizing Israel\u2019s unlawful occupation and its severe human rights violations against Palestinians, including the crime against humanity of apartheid,\u201d he went on.\u00a0<\/p>\n If it is peace that FIFA is promoting, it is certainly an exclusionary one. Last week, Rajoub said he was denied a visa to travel to the U.S. during the World Cup, and remains stuck in Mexico City despite his FIFA accreditations.\u00a0<\/p>\n On Friday, activists in Toronto repeated the call to kick Israel out of FIFA<\/a> ahead of Canada\u2019s first World Cup game.\u00a0<\/p>\n This article<\/a> was originally published by Truthout<\/a> and is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)<\/a>. Please maintain all links and credits in accordance with our republishing guidelines<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Shireen Akram-Boshar This article was originally published by Truthout FIFA President Gianni Infantino has long been accused…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":494525,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-494524","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494524","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=494524"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494524\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/494525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=494524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=494524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=494524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}