Palestine Football Association Speech At FIFA Congress 2025 | OneFootball

A transcript of a speech made by Susan Shalabi, vice president of the Palestine Football Association, to the 75th FIFA Congress in Asunción, Paraguay, on May 15, 2025.

It has been almost 15 years since the issue of Israeli illegal settlement clubs located in Palestinian Territories was formally brought to FIFA’s attention.

One year ago, we stood here and asked this body not for favours, not for special treatment, but for the enforcement of the very statutes and principles we all agreed to govern us as members of the global football community.

Specifically, we asked for the removal of the illegal settlement clubs on Palestinian territory from the Israeli leagues and immediate action against persistent racism and incitement to genocide within the Israeli football structure, which settlement clubs, by the way, are an integral part of.

These clubs are a clear violation of territorial integrity provisions in Article 64, paragraph two, and 65 of the FIFA statutes. In other words, football is being sadly used as a tool contributing towards the occupation, annexation, and colonization of Palestine.

Last year, President Infantino himself described the matter as urgent and promised swift review. The matter was then remitted to the FIFA governance audit and compliance committee and the FIFA disciplinary committee. But that was eight months ago, and even now, in the report that we hear from the compliance, we didn’t even see any mention of Palestine or the investigation that was being done there.

Since then, we received no timeline, no response, no clarity, no due process, even though the scope of the investigation is confined to clarifying the identity of the clubs located in the legal settlements and applying the provisions of the FIFA statutes.

Despite repeated follow-ups, we still don’t have any decision on this long-standing and clear matter.

Our issue, sadly, again, is stuck in a highly politicized, bureaucratic holding pattern, not unlike the suffering of our people. Visible, undeniable, but sadly ignored.

Just in the past year alone, the United Nations’ top human rights experts, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Fair Square, and many others addressed their letters to the FIFA Council. All of them urged FIFA to stop delaying the decision to immediately bar the Israel FA from organizing football activities in illegal Israeli settlements. and I quote, “to take action to end FIFA de facto sponsorship of football in Israeli settlements, which are inseparable from serious human rights abuses.”

If the highest judicial authority in the world, the International Court of Justice, has ruled Israeli settlements illegal and ordered their immediate disarmament and dismantlement, what is it that is stopping us, as FIFA from following our own statutory obligations, our own human rights policy commitments and the international human rights law and the respect of which is enshrined in Article Three of the FIFA statutes.

We must all realize that by delaying the decision, FIFA will be seen to be supporting the illegal settlements.

Let me remind you that all of this is happening against a background of football fields in Palestine being needlessly destroyed and used as detention camps for Palestinian civilians, including children. Hundreds of Palestinian players, officials, and children from Palestinian football academies, who were part of this football community, have been brutally killed.

Meanwhile, Israeli football players in European clubs and the Israeli national team publicly called for the annihilation of Gaza.

An Israeli organization, the New Israel Fund, documented 493 violent incidents of a racist nature by Israeli clubs and fans, including 152 racist chants and incitements to genocide in Israeli stadiums, all within the period of just one football season. No action has been taken against any of it.

As the Israel Football Association keeps implementing apartheid on the football stadiums in the West Bank, ignoring racism and illegally occupying and annexing Palestinian footballing territory, we must ask ourselves, what else needs to happen before the international football governing body takes action?

This is by far not only about Palestine. It’s about upholding FIFA’s core constitutional provisions. Today, we ask you to do what FIFA is expected to do: to uphold its own rules.

Delaying a long-standing, urgent, and legally non-controversial issue is not a neutral act. It is an enabling act. This Congress is not just a calendar event. It is the supreme legislative body of FIFA. What you decide here or fail to decide matters.

So I plead with the FIFA member associations all present in this room to stand up and protect FIFA’s core values, demand, rule of law, due process, clarity, and accountability.

Specifically, in line with this year’s proposal of the Palestine Football Association, we respectfully ask the FIFA Congress, in accordance with the applicable provisions under both the FIFA governance regulations and the FIFA statutes, to give the duty to the governance audit and compliance committee to urgently conclude its investigation into the inclusion of illegal settlement clubs in competitions organized by the Israel Football Association, and send the relevant report to the FIFA Council within one month from today, at the latest.

All we are asking for is a clear update on the status of the matter and an exact date by which the investigation will be concluded.

We have also not received any update regarding the disciplinary proceedings opened against the Israel Football Association on last 30, January, 2025.

Let’s not wait another year. The President already said last year that it was urgent. Let’s not keep rewriting the minutes of meetings and passing the bucket from one committee to the other, while football in Palestine is being erased. We need to act now. Thank you.