Palestine and Israel representatives had been lined up close together at the FIFA Congress in Canada.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Published On 30 Apr 2026<\/span>30 Apr 2026<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Palestinian football federation president Jibril Rajoub refused to stand alongside Israel FA \u2060Vice-President Basim Sheikh \u2060Suliman in a heated moment at the 76th FIFA Congress.<\/p>\n Both men were called to the stand by FIFA President Gianni Infantino at the event on Thursday, but Rajoub \u2060declined to be brought closer to Suliman, a Palestinian citizen of Israel.<\/p>\n list of 4 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n Infantino put his hand on Rajoub\u2019s arm and invited him with a gesture to come closer to Suliman, but in \u2060vain.<\/p>\n Asked what Rajoub said when he refused, Palestinian FA Vice President Susan Shalabi, who was in the room, told Reuters: \u201cI cannot shake the hand of someone the Israelis have brought to whitewash their fascism and genocide! We are suffering.\u201d<\/p>\n Israel has denied committing genocide in Gaza.<\/p>\n Infantino \u200cthen took the stand and said: \u201cWe will work together, President Rajoub, Vice President Suliman. Let\u2019s work together to give hope to the children. These are complex matters.\u201d<\/p>\n Speaking to the Reuters news agency after the congress ended, Shalabi said Infantino\u2019s attempt to have Suliman and Rajoub shake hands showed little consideration for the Palestinian FA chief\u2019s speech, in which he made yet another plea for Israeli clubs not to base teams in \u2060the West Bank settlements.<\/p>\n \u201cTo be put in a position \u2060where to have a handshake after everything that was said, this negates the whole purpose of the speech that the general [Rajoub] was giving,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u201cHe spent like 15 minutes trying to explain to everyone how \u2060the rules matter, how this could easily become a precedent where the rights of member associations are violated with impudence, \u2060and then we\u2019ll just wrap this under the carpet. \u2060It was absurd.\u201d<\/p>\n Last week, the Palestinian Football Association (PFA)\u00a0appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport against FIFA\u2019s decision not to sanction Israel over clubs based in West Bank settlements.<\/p>\n The PFA has long argued that clubs \u200cbased in settlements in the West Bank \u2013 territory Palestinians seek as part of a future state \u2013 should not compete in leagues run by the Israel Football Association (IFA).<\/p>\n FIFA said \u200clast \u200cmonth it would take no action against the IFA or Israeli clubs, citing the unresolved legal status of the West Bank under public international law.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Palestine and Israel representatives had been lined up close together at the FIFA Congress in Canada. Published On 30 Apr 202630 Apr 2026 Palestinian football federation president Jibril Rajoub refused to stand alongside Israel FA \u2060Vice-President Basim Sheikh \u2060Suliman in a heated moment at the 76th FIFA Congress. Both men were called to the stand […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21025,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-us-canada-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21024","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=21024"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21024\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/21025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n
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