Palestinian Soccer Association Drops Effort to Suspend Israel From FIFA - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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shared by Emilio Ergueta on 04 Jun 15
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JERUSALEM — The Palestinians dropped their bid to suspend Israel from international soccer competition at the last minute Friday, and agreed to instead form a committee of the sport’s governing body, FIFA, to handle their complaints of racism and discrimination.
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Jibril Rajoub, president of the Palestine Football Association, called for a vote at FIFA’s annual congress to ask the United Nations to determine whether five teams from settlements in the occupied West Bank should be allowed to continue to play in Israeli leagues.
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In an emotional speech, Mr. Rajoub said he had been persuaded to abandon the demand to suspend Israel by fellow delegates to the FIFA congress, particularly one from South Africa, who said the vote would be “painful” for the conclave scarred by scandal after Wednesday’s dawn arrest of top soccer executives. He accepted Mr. Blatter’s proposal for a “peace match” between Israeli and Palestinian teams, but also said it “does not mean I give up the resistance.”
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The FIFA campaign, part of a mounting Palestinian effort to press the case against Israeli occupation in international forums, garnered global attention and incited deep concern in Israel’s soccer-obsessed society.
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Yaakov Finkelstein, an Israeli diplomat sent to Zurich for the FIFA congress, said any action on the settlement teams would have been “a deal-breaker for us.”
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The Palestinians contend the settlement teams violate FIFA rules by, essentially, having one member’s teams playing in another’s turf. The amended Palestinian proposal, which the congress passed overwhelmingly, calls on FIFA to ask the United Nations for official notification of its 2012 resolution upgrading Palestine to nonmember observer-state status “in order to prove the territorial issue.”