FIFA President Gianni Infantino last week finally said what most people thought he would say: the world’s governing body of football “cannot solve geopolitical problems”. Which basically meant FIFA will not suspend Israel from football activities around the world, and that will include not preventing Israel from playing in next year’s World Cup.
There was a sense that FIFA might take action against Israel when its council met last Thursday amid global calls to bar Israel from playing in competitions, including the FIFA World Cup. The calls have been growing in recent weeks, particularly after a declaration by the United Nations.
The UN report said there were reasonable grounds to conclude four of the five genocidal acts defined under international law had been carried out by Israel in Gaza since the start of the war in 2023.
A panel of seven human rights experts at the UN subsequently called on FIFA, which organises the World Cup, and UEFA, which organises European competitions, to suspend Israel’s national team from international football, saying: “Sports must reject the perception that it is business as usual.”
But FIFA acted exactly as if this were indeed the ordinary operations of a clothes store. Israel’s participation in football was not included as a formal item on the agenda of the FIFA council meeting. The Gaza genocide in the ongoing, intentional systematic destruction of the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip carried out by Israel was put under “miscellaneous”.
However, Infantino “touched” on the subject in his opening remarks for the session at FIFA’s headquarters in Zurich. The 55-year-old Italian said to his 37-member delegates: “Our thoughts are with those who are suffering in the many conflicts that exist around the world today, and the most important message that football can convey right now is one of peace and unity.
“FIFA cannot solve geopolitical problems, but it can and must promote football around the world by harnessing its unifying, educational, cultural and humanitarian values.”
Infantino later met with Palestinian Football Association (PFA) President Jibril Rajoub “to commend him and the PFA for their resilience at this time” and reiterated FIFA’s commitment “to using the power of football to bring people together in a divided world.”
And that was that.
Infantino did not mention, at least in public, the over 67,000 Palestinians killed in the Gaza war so far. There was no mention that 80 per cent of the Palestinians killed have been civilians. There was no mention that 70 per cent of the Palestinians killed were women and children. There was no mention of the horrifying destruction and devastation of Gaza. There was no mention of malnutrition, indeed a famine, gripping the embattled city.
FIFA did not schedule a news conference and Infantino was not made available for interviews.
Shortly before the Zurich gathering, there were reports that UEFA was ready to do what FIFA would not: vote on what to do with Israel. A number of European football federations urged UEFA to call a vote of its executive committee ahead of the FIFA meeting in Zurich on suspending Israeli teams from international competitions.
A vote by the 20-member UEFA panel to sanction Israel seemed likely to pass, people familiar with the discussions disclosed.
But it is difficult for UEFA to unilaterally remove Israel from the World Cup. Even though UEFA organises Europe’s qualification format and fixtures for the World Cup, it does so in collaboration with FIFA which has the last word.
FIFA and Infantino — who has built close ties to US President Donald Trump ahead of the US co-hosting the World Cup next year with Canada and Mexico — were never likely to follow any UEFA vote. That prospect became even more distant last week when the US State Department said it vowed to fight any attempts to block Israel from participating.
Calls to exclude Israel from football and other sports increased in recent weeks in the run-up to the Zurich meeting and the anticipation that FIFA would honour its obligation to humanitarian values. That commitment never materialised. It was an opportunity missed.
It was also an opportunity for FIFA to emerge from its bubble and take a look at what’s happening in the real world.
There is at present a global outcry over the humanitarian toll wrought by Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said Israel should be banned from international sports events just like Russia, which was sidelined after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Turkey expressed similar beliefs. Amnesty International has urged FIFA and UEFA to suspend the Israeli Football Association from their tournaments.
Add to that the countries that have recently recognised a Palestinian state, including European powers Britain and France.
Russia’s banishment from international football and the Olympic Games since its 2022 invasion of Ukraine provides a recent precedent that international sports governing bodies can take action.
The comparison with Russia’s 2022 expulsion is unavoidable. Then, FIFA and UEFA acted within days of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, citing the need to protect the integrity of competitions.
What about “protecting the integrity of competitions” from the brutal Israeli onslaught on Gaza?
There is the Israeli defence that individuals should not bear the consequences of the decisions their government makes, so there should be no discrimination or sanctions against individual players because of their origin or nationality.
To counter that argument, there is a poll which says that 62 per cent of Israelis say “there are no innocent people in Gaza”. So, we can safely assume that at least some players are fine with the killings.
Israel will call this collective punishment – and so it is. Collective punishment works both ways. Just as Israeli troops are firing at anything that moves to get at Hamas, Israeli teams in all sports should be banned from international tournaments as a consequence of their government’s actions.
Sometimes a whole school class has to get punished for the behavior of just one student. It doesn’t matter if it’s fair or not. That’s life; tough luck, Israel.
(Just for the record, despite not being in Europe, Israel became a member of UEFA after several member states of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) boycotted Israel in the 1970s. Israel’s national team are currently participating in European qualifiers for next summer’s men’s World Cup, while Israeli club Maccabi Tel Aviv are playing in the Europa League. Israel are third in their World Cup qualifying group, six points behind leaders Norway. The Israel men’s team will travel to play World Cup qualifiers against Norway in Oslo on 11 October and Italy in Udine three days later.)
FIFA’s position on the plight of the Palestinians is extremely disappointing. It is ignoring its own human rights commitments.
FIFA should follow the precedent set with Russia and exclude Israeli teams over the government’s countless war crimes in both Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
FIFA should not pretend that it cannot see the atrocities happening in Gaza. There is a legal and moral imperative to take every measure possible to end the genocide in Gaza now.
This is not business as usual. Sporting bodies must not turn a blind eye to the grave human rights violations being perpetrated every hour on the hour in Gaza.
It’s true that banning Israel from the World Cup will not stop the mass killings of Palestinians. But all people of conscience have a part that they can play to make Israel pay for the real-time carnage that is Gaza.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 9 October, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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