FIFA: Israel Guilty of Systematic Racism Against Palestine

Last week, during the recently concluded FIFA Congress in Switzerland, an important event was largely unnoticed, given the hullabaloo surrounding the corruption charges brought against various FIFA officials.

Palestine Football Association had proposed a resolution to suspend Israel from FIFA membership due to the systematic discrimination faced by Palestinian footballers. Finally, the Palestine Football Association, amended its resolution, postponing the suspension of Israel pending an enquiry, while Israel promised to take some steps to stop the harassment of Palestinian footballers and football teams.

So how did the much maligned Sepp Blatter actually manage to broker some sort of understanding between these two sides? Why did Palestine drop its call for immediate suspension of Israel? Newsclick discusses these issues with Prabir Purkayastha, editor of Newsclick and a convenor of the Indian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel. Prabir points out that contrary to the stories being carried in the mainstream media, not only has Palestine not 'withdrawn' its proposal for suspension of the Israeli FA from FIFA, but FIFA has actually overwhelmingly voted in favour of the Palestine resolution thereby recognizing the institutional racism and discrimination against Palestinian football being carried out by the Israeli state. This is not a victory for Israel as Netanyahu has claimed but only avoiding an even bigger defeat namely, suspension of Israel from world football.

Rishab Bailey (RB): Hello and welcome to Newsclick. Last Friday during the recently concluded FIFA congress in Zurich a very important event unnoticed amongst the hullabaloo of the various FIFA officials being arrested on corruption charges. Now, Palestine had proposed a resolution to suspend Israel from FIFA membership. This is move that has led to a lot of consolation amongst the diplomatic community and Israel launching a huge diplomatic offensive to ensure that this move never succeeded. The conference however ended with the Palestine amending it's resolution to have Israel suspended and the delegation of the two countries exchanging what is known as handshake of peace. So did the much maligned Sepp Blatter actually managed to broker some sort of agreement between these two factions?  Why the Palestine drops it's call for suspension of Israel? To discuss these issues we are joined by Prabir Purkayastha, Editor of the Newsclick and the convenor of the Indian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of the Israel. Hi Prabir, welcome to Newsclick. Now, why Palestine asked for the suspension of Israel from FIFA in the first place. What were the events leading upto this?

Prabir Purkayastha: As you know, this has been an issue that the Palestinians have raised for a long time that essentially for the movements, the footballers, the club officials, the teams between different venues they have all come under various problems. They have been arrested, players have been arrested. Some of them shot, some of them imprisoned. So free movement for sporting event itself is a problem in Palestine apart from the fact that footballers have also been arrested at different points of time. We can go the details in little later. The other is, the sporting equipments that comes in even if it is a free gift, it's a donation huge taxes are imposed on them. So their access to the basic sporting material is not available. The third issue of course for instance there are Gaza teams as you know and they have to play in the West Bank or West Banks team has to play in Gaza. Again this is a matter which is very difficult for them to do and quite often the players get arrested when they go back on or when they are trying to come up. So this will be the set of issues which have been there. Also issues of racism and anti Arab measures within Israel itself including the league that is there. There are various charges of racism being leveled against sports officials, sports clubs and so on. So, the whole bunch of issues but I think the most important of them is really the freedom of the clubs to move around for the Palestinian team to move out and come back and also other teams to come into West Bank come into Palestine and play. I think these are the major issues that they have been facing and this is the reason they have raised the issue.

RB: Now, the importance of the vote was shown by the fact that there was a huge diplomatic pressure particularly have been brought to there by Israel for the last few months. But what would the ban have actually meant in practical purposed both in terms of the football consequences as well as in terms of more diplomatic tussle between Israel and Palestine that we have seen regarding Palestinian state and so on. Does this have any connection to that?

PP: Let's be very clear. The South Africa's de-legitimization in the public sphere to place because of sporting ban. It started really sporting ban. So that bites hard because it is popular culture. So that is affected, people want to watch football. So if you are not allowed to go out and so on, you are not allowed to play in FIFA competitions it's a huge blow to Israel. I think politically they are aware of the issue that South Africa's downfall apartheid regime in South Africa down fall really started when the anti-apartheid campaign successfully threw out South Africa out of cricket, out of football, out of Olympics and so on and this was at the teeth of opposition by the same countries who are also opposing Israel's expulsion, the United States, the European countries. So this has been a matter of history that South Africa's anti-apartheid movement and the BDS movements are really parallel. They draw inspirations, in fact the BDS campaign very openly draws inspiration from the anti-apartheid campaign and the people like Desmond Tutu has endorsed saying what's happening in Israel today or in the occupied Palestine is worst than what happened in South Africa.

RB: What did Israel agreed to in this process of negotiations? Have they agreed to any of the Palestinian demands particularly regarding the movement of players and so on?

PP: I think, there is a tacit agreement that these will all be relaxed. This is really government decisions and obvioulsy government has given undertakings to both the Palestinian authority as well as the FIFA that they will relax these issues and this is not something that they have not done earlier. Earlier also given assurances they have not been kept.

RB: They claimed that they are going to provide special identifications for footballers.

PP: So footballers can move more easily and so on. But the point is it's a political will to do these things and the fact is they were doing earlier something quite different. For instance, they shot two footballers on the foot and I think one footballer had ten bullets, a teenage footballer young 17 year old,  19 year footballers and the other footballer had two bullets one in each foot. Now, these are obviously very targeted attacks to maim them for lives and it's believed that these footballers will not play ever again at least competitive football. There have been footballers who have been arrested and put in jail for three years. It is only under enormous pressure that the footballer we are talking about was released. He went for a hunger strike for about a month more before he was finally released. So you have a whole bunch of this kind of issues which have been there. This is all in the name of fighting terrorism etc. etc. So these are the charges which can be brought in the West Bank in Gaza people are coming in and out at any point of time. So it seems they have given some assurances that this will not happen and we have to see what happens. That's why the Palestine football association has said that they will wait for next years Congress in Mexico to decide what they will again do on this.

RB: So what exactly happened at the FIFA Congress in Switzerland. What led to this handshake of peace between Israeli and the Palestinian delegates and why did Palestine actually withdraw if they did, they request to suspend Israel from FIFA.

PP: You know this has been a sort of big hype that the Palestinian football union Jibril Rajoub actually withdrew the resolution. What happened was they placed an amended resolution and the amended resolution was voted and was passed by huge majority. Ninety percent of the people voted in the favour of the amended resolution. Now, the amended resolution does not let Israel off the hook. The amended resolution very clearly says a committee will be formed, they will go into the issues, they will go into the clubs which are now playing in Israel and who are basically part of the settlement whether they have the right to do so and can the Israeli Football Association allow them to play in the Israeli league, what are the consequences and if these are proved to be in violation of the FIFA's statutes, in that case the Israeli Football Association will be suspended. Now, whether this will be an automatic suspension if the committee so finds them or will it have to come again to the  next years Congress.

RB: No. It would in such a situation will go back to the FIFA Congress because only FIFA Congress has the power to suspend a member one would think.

PP: But by having passed this resolution which has an automatic provision whether this  would hold or not is a different issue. But nevertheless, the question is very clear that they did not withdraw the resolution as it has been said in papers and almost all papers have carried this, all newspapers have carried this that the Palestinian Football Association withdrew the resolution. The amended resolution accepts that there is racism in Israel in Football, in sports and this needs to be addressed. So it actually establishes by a majority an overwhelming majority in FIFA that there is racism in football in Israel and a committee has to go into what are the issues, what are the facts on the ground and then FIFA Congress can either take a decision or by virtue of this resolution, will it be a suspension of Israel or not is to be seen.

RB: Now, do you believe that it is wise for organisations like FIFA into getting into matters that are so intrinsically sort of linked to politics. I mean Israel and many of the backers particularly EU has consistently so called for a distanced be maintained between politics and sports. We heard it in India in the context of cricket with Pakistan and so on and so forth. Is this desirable or is it just hypocrisy given than sports particularly football given the sort of passion it inflames in people and always be linked whether they go back to first world cup where European countries refused to go to Uruguay and later on you had South American countries refusing to go to Europe for World Cup in France, so on and so forth.

PP: You know two separate issues. While one may argue what is politics what is not should it come into sports or not, FIFA's basic position is racism has no place in sports okay. Is racism political, obviously it is. So it is accepted that certain political things have to be taken up in sports, discrimination either in the basis of race or any other form of discrimination being one of them so part of statute itself. So I think it is question of what you define as politics when you don't like it, you say you are bringing politics into sports. When you take up the issue of discrimination and race and then if there is a wide spread support you say this is not political. But the point is race, racism, racial discrimination are all political. At the end of it, the fight against racial discrimination or any form of discrimination is a political one. So I don't think sports can be out of this. Should it come to day to day politics? No. Sports are way to settle differences between countries. I think it is much more civilized to play a football game or a cricket game than you fight a war. Yes, that is definitely yes. But I don't think we should say that the sports is going to be apolitical, it never was. You have given   examples. But even I football FIFA has earlier removed Serbia from FIFA membership. So there have been earlier examples. South Africa was also sanctioned exactly for the same reason. It's apartheid. So there are enormous numbers of such examples and I think the issue really is that if you want to fight discrimination some countries call this is motivated, this is political etc. But, we know the reality on the ground is that there is a discrimination that now 166 or 163 members of  FIFA governing council themselves have said.

RB: So some positives coming from the FIFA conference in Switzerland. That's all the time we have today. Thanks for joining us on the Newsclick.