VANCOUVER
\nPalestinian football federation President Jibril Rajoub refused to take part in a photo opportunity with Israel soccer official Basim Sheikh Suliman in a tense incident at the end of Fifa\u2019s Congress on Thursday.
\nAfter both Rajoub and Suliman had addressed delegates, Fifa President Gianni Infantino invited both men to stand alongside him.
\nHowever Rajoub declined the gesture, refusing repeated attempts by Infantino to encourage him to participate in the moment.
\nAt one point Rajoub could be heard to say: \u201cWe are suffering.\u201d
\nThe Palestinian Football Association recently appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) over Fifa\u2019s refusal to sanction Israel over football clubs based in the West Bank.
\nThe PFA maintains that clubs based in West Bank settlements should not be allowed to compete in leagues controlled by Israeli football authorities.
\nIn 2024, United Nations experts said at least eight football clubs had been identified as playing in \u201cIsraeli colonial settlements\u201d and called on Fifa to \u201cfulfil its responsibility to respect human rights\u201d.
\nSpeaking to reporters on Thursday, Rajoub called on Fifa to \u201capply the statutes with fairness, with logic.\u201d
\n\u201cWhat\u2019s going on in Palestine is terrible, destroying all the Palestinian sport facilities in Gaza, the killings of hundreds of Palestinian athletes, employees\u2026 I think it\u2019s now the time to make justice,\u201d Rajoub said.
\n\u201cThe guy who spoke on behalf of Israel, he did not even pay attention to the suffering, to what\u2019s going on.
\n\u201cI refused to shake hands. How can I shake hands or have a photo with such a man?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
VANCOUVER Palestinian football federation President Jibril Rajoub refused to take part in a photo opportunity with Israel soccer official Basim Sheikh Suliman in a tense incident at the end of Fifa\u2019s Congress on Thursday. After both Rajoub and Suliman had addressed delegates, Fifa President Gianni Infantino invited both men to stand alongside him. However Rajoub …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":97141,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-97128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97128"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97128\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":97147,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97128\/revisions\/97147"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/97141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}