Meanwhile, visa issues are affecting Palestinian and other delegations to the upcoming FIFA Congress.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Published On 29 Apr 2026<\/span>29 Apr 2026<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The Palestinian Football Association (PFA) has appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport against FIFA\u2019s decision not to sanction Israel over clubs based in occupied West Bank settlements, a senior PFA official \u2060said, as visa issues affecting several delegations added to tensions before the FIFA Congress.<\/p>\n The PFA has long argued that clubs based in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank \u2013 which are illegal under international law \u2013 should not compete in leagues run by \u2060the Israel Football Association (IFA).<\/p>\n list of 4 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n FIFA said last month it would take no action against the IFA or Israeli clubs, citing the unresolved legal status of the occupied West Bank under public international law.<\/p>\n \u201cSince we have exhausted every legal venue possible at FIFA, we\u2019ll still go by the rules, go by the book, and we\u2019ll appeal that decision because we think it\u2019s very unjust,\u201d PFA Vice President Susan Shalabi said after the Asian Football Confederation \u200cCongress in Vancouver on Tuesday, held two days before the FIFA Congress in the same city.<\/p>\n \u201cThe [FIFA] council decided after 15 years of deliberations on this issue not to decide. So the only course of action that we have is to go to CAS and to appeal that. We will go through the whole process until we are able to achieve justice.\u201d<\/p>\n She later told the Reuters news agency that the appeal had been filed on April 20.<\/p>\n CAS has not yet announced the appeal and was not immediately available for comment outside business hours on Tuesday. FIFA was also not immediately available for comment. Reuters also contacted the IFA.<\/p>\n Shalabi said visa problems also prevented \u2060several PFA representatives from entering Canada for the FIFA Congress, which will take place on Thursday.<\/p>\n She said she received an electronic \u2060travel authorisation immediately because she applied on a foreign passport, but other members of the delegation, including the PFA president, general secretary and legal counsel Gonzalo Boye, initially did not receive visas.<\/p>\n She said the visas were issued only after pressure \u201con the political level, on the social level, on the media level\u201d, as well as action from \u2060community members and activists, adding that the PFA president had not received a visa in time to travel with the rest of the delegation but was expected to arrive later.<\/p>\n She said Boye, however, had \u2060still not received a visa and would not attend.<\/p>\n Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada told \u2060Reuters it would look into the matter.<\/p>\n Shalabi said the visa problems were not limited to Palestine and that she understood Iran\u2019s football association, whose representatives were not present at the AFC Congress, had also faced issues.<\/p>\n \u201cAs you can see, it\u2019s a huge event that\u2019s going to happen. We have a World Cup, and it\u2019s good for Canada to \u200chave everyone from everywhere able to come and participate in this,\u201d Shalabi said.<\/p>\n She added that the situation for Palestinian football remained dire, particularly in Gaza, where she said every football structure was either unusable or destroyed.<\/p>\n \u201cWe lost so many hundreds of footballers; we lost most of \u200cthem \u200cchildren,\u201d she said. \u201cSo football now in Gaza, there is no football at all.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s very dangerous for our teams to compete,\u201d she added, noting that professional leagues were suspended and that the PFA was trying to keep football alive through grassroots and youth competitions.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Meanwhile, visa issues are affecting Palestinian and other delegations to the upcoming FIFA Congress. Published On 29 Apr 202629 Apr 2026 The Palestinian Football Association (PFA) has appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport against FIFA\u2019s decision not to sanction Israel over clubs based in occupied West Bank settlements, a senior PFA official \u2060said, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20788,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle-east-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20787"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20787\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![](\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/2017-06-08T131939Z_1189275883_RC11B0FE7F20_RTRMADP_3_GULF-QATAR-JAZEERA-1714943623.jpg?resize=96%2C96&quality=80)
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