Israeli football beginning to feel the pressure as Gaza genocide continues
Israeli football beginning to feel the pressure as Gaza genocide continues
Last month Suleiman al-Obeid, a footballer known as the “Palestinian Pele”, was killed by Israeli forces in Gaza while queueing for food.
“Obeid wasn’t just a friend and former teammate on the national team, he was one of the most talented and ambitious players I’d ever known,” Mohammad Abu Aita, a former Palestinian national team player, told Middle East Eye.
“He had a beautiful spirit and was a role model for young athletes.”
Israel, Palestinian Football Association (PFA) chairman Jibril Rajoub said, has caused “a catastrophe without precedent” to Palestinian sport.
Israel has now killed 774 Palestinian athletes and officials, including 355 footballers, according to the PFA. Close to 300 sports facilities in Gaza and the occupied West Bank have been destroyed by Israel.
“In Gaza, it's hard to talk about sport at all. Stadiums have been destroyed, sports centres have been damaged, and the players, like all the residents of the Gaza Strip, are busy with daily survival,” Fadi Mustafa, a journalist at Sport 5, an Israeli channel, told MEE.
“Sport is not on the agenda now,” Mustafa said, adding that for Palestinian football in the occupied West Bank, despite the existence of “an active league, it is an exhausting daily struggle”.
'Even if it is not yet officially expressed, the unofficial pressure has a real impact'
- Fadi Mustafa, sports journalist in Israel
Despite this, Fifa, football’s governing body, and Uefa, the sport’s governing body in Europe, have not banned Israel from their competitions and have avoided ruling on whether the Israeli Football Association should be sanctioned.
This course of action has led to accusations of double standards, with Russia swiftly banned following its invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
In Israel, though, the mounting worldwide pressure can be felt.
“Even if it is not yet officially expressed, the unofficial pressure has a real impact," Mustafa said.
"Football stars are exposed and, in some cases, even pay a price for every tweet, comment or like," he told MEE. "What happens on social media could decide their future," he added, referring to Israeli players abroad.
Difficulty getting contracts
Yoav Borowitz, sports correspondent for Kan 11, an Israeli state-owned channel, said that "Israeli players find it difficult getting contracts in senior leagues.
"There are still a lot of Israeli players playing abroad, but there are many more cases of players who could have gone to Europe and didn't go because it's very difficult to bring in an Israeli player," Borowitz told MEE.
According to Borowitz, the local league in Israel is also affected, as "it's harder to bring good players to Israel. Players don't want to come because they think it's dangerous and because of the bad image."
Last month, Israeli player Shon Weissman’s move to German second division club Fortuna Dusseldorf was cancelled due to the player's social media posts, which expressed support for the genocide in Gaza. Weissman has remained in Spain, at Granada.
On Monday, Manor Solomon, probably Israel’s most high-profile current player, secured a last-minute move on loan from English Premier League club Tottenham to Villareal in Spain.
His arrival was met with outrage. A Villareal fan-run X account posted that Solomon “proudly and outwardly supports Israel’s genocide and illegal occupation of Palestine and its people”.
Alongside screenshots of Solomon’s Instagram posts, including one with a caption that read “Killing their own people and blaming Israel”, the account said that the Israeli winger was “not welcome at Villarreal and does not deserve the affection of its supporters”.
Israeli matches in Europe
While Israeli players are facing a backlash for their views, the Israeli Football Association (IFA) is worried that the behaviour of Israel’s fans abroad will make the national team unwelcome across Europe.
Since October 2023, Israel has been hosting international games abroad, with the team playing what is technically a home game in Hungary next Monday against Italy.
'It is not easy to arrange friendly games for our teams. Some of the teams just don't want to play against us'
- Boni Ginzburg, Israeli youth team director
Last month, IFA chairman Shino Zuaretz said that Israeli football fans' violent behaviour abroad made him ”very concerned", as it could lead to a reluctance to host Israeli teams, and then Israel will "have nowhere to play".
Beitar Jerusalem fans, who have a history of anti-Arab racism, have provoked outrage in a number of different European cities, chanting “death to Arabs” and setting off fireworks in the stands.
"It is not easy to arrange friendly games for our teams. Some of the teams just don't want to play against us," Boni Ginzburg, technical director of the IFA’s youth teams, said last week.
Sanctions on Israel
In March 2024, the Palestine Football Association submitted a proposal to Fifa, calling on it to sanction the IFA.
A year and a half later, football’s governing body has not yet made a decision. Fifa has requested “expert legal advice”, an approach it took back in 2018 when the issue first surfaced.
'If the national team is expelled from international competitions, it would be a fatal blow'
- Yoav Borowitz, Israeli sports correspondent
In May, at a Fifa congress, Palestinian football official Susan Shalabi said: "We can't wait another year. We need action now.
"The problems we face in football are visible, undeniable, yet constantly ignored," she said.
In June, a group of legal experts and scholars, including Israeli historian Ilan Pappe and two former UN rapporteurs, told Fifa that Israel was breaking international law by hosting football matches on occupied Palestinian land.
According to Borowitz, Israel’s planned occupation of Gaza City could change the situation.
Israel's removal from international football can "happen quite quickly. That's pretty much what happened with Russia," Borowitz told MEE.
"Israel has to take into account that every day it can turn against it, and Israel can be barred."
Such a suspension "will bury Israeli football. The league will continue to exist, but the number of foreign players will go down, the amount of investment will decline, and the quality will probably deteriorate.
"If the national team is expelled from international competitions, it would be a fatal blow," Borowitz said.
"Any suspension from an international competition constitutes a direct blow to football in Israel on the competitive, economic and especially image levels," Mustafa told MEE.
"This is a first step on the road to political isolation, which will be very difficult to deal with.
"The consequences for the teams will be no less severe and the window of opportunities for Israeli players will slowly be closed," he said.
Zuaretz, the IFA’s chairman, said last month the association was “making tremendous efforts” in order to "continue to be a part of every competition and not allow our enemies to lead to our removal… the results of which would be devastating".
The Israeli official said these efforts were going on “under the radar” and “over the radar”.
Russia and Israel
On Wednesday, Aleksander Ceferin, the president of Uefa, European football’s governing body, told Politico that Zuaretz was a “good friend”.
Ceferin said that while Uefa had banned Russian teams, following what he described as an “almost hysterical political reaction”, he was “not a supporter of banning the athletes. Because what can an athlete do to their government to stop the war?
“Now it’s more a pressure of the civil society than politicians, because politicians are obviously, when it comes to wars and victims, very pragmatic,” Ceferin said, when comparing the “super strong political pressure” applied over Russia to that over Israel.
“I cannot say what will happen. There are talks about everything, but me personally, I’m against kicking the athletes out,” he said.
When asked what it will take for Russia to be returned to Uefa competitions, Ceferin was clearer: “The war has to stop,” he said.
Borowitz told MEE that Israel hasn't been expelled so far because it still has supporters, but “there are more people who want to see Israel out”, as “removing a team from Uefa or Fifa is rare”.
“Sanctions will not resolve the war, but they can serve as a means of moral and symbolic pressure,” Mustafa told MEE.
“They signal to the international community that a red line has been crossed, and thanks to the tremendous exposure of sports, especially football, this can have an impact in the long run.
“The Arab states do not act in a unified or pressured manner," he added, "perhaps out of fear of regional political repercussions. If there is broad pressure from Arab associations, Fifa may be forced to discuss this more seriously.”
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