FIFA Is Legitimizing Israeli Clubs That Play in Illegal West Bank Settlements

If you take this long to investigate something, there is a good chance you are hiding something. FIFA and UEFA, it turns out, have been hiding several things. Ten, to be precise. That is the number of illegal Israeli settlement clubs now operating in the occupied West Bank, at least seven of them playing on land that should fall under the jurisdiction of the Palestine Football Association (Palestine FA). There are also three clubs in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights.

FIFA promised to investigate illegal settlement clubs in October 2024 amid accusations they breach FIFA and UEFA territorial integrity and anti-racism statutes. Yet while seemingly counting these clubs, FIFA has been broadcasting their games on its streaming platform, FIFA+. One club has been allowed to progress to Israel’s Premier League, after being given a generous helping hand by the UEFA Foundation and the U.S. government. Another club has been selected twice to play in UEFA competition, despite a strict vetting process apparently in place.

These are the findings of a new report I authored on illegal settlement clubs — the first time these have been thoroughly investigated since shortly after President Gianni Infantino and UEFA President Aleksander Čeferin’s presidencies began. They raise an uncomfortable question: are FIFA and UEFA’s leadership moving the goalposts on Israeli occupation of Palestine — effectively legitimizing illegal settlement clubs, and — by extension — Israel’s unlawful presence there? The evidence overwhelmingly suggests so.

Under Infantino and Čeferin’s leadership, illegal settlement clubs have grown in number, size, and stature, in keeping with the current and planned settlement expansion in the West Bank. The inclusion of these clubs within FIFA and UEFA’s structures legitimizes and promotes settlements, as well as facilitating the transfer of a civilian population, including footballers and their families to an occupied territory. It is also helping to implement a system of apartheid against Palestinians through segregated football structures built on their land.

Filing at the International Criminal Court

In February, Infantino and Čeferin became the first sports presidents to be accused of complicity in war crimes (the transfer of a civilian population into occupied territory) and crimes against humanity (apartheid) in a filing submitted by an expert legal team to the ICC. UEFA was uncharacteristically quick to respond, dismissing the claims as being “as sensationalist as they are unsubstantiated.” FIFA issued no comment, perhaps with good reason. But within days, Gianni Infantino couldn’t resist an opportunity to publicly promise to replace Gaza’s football infrastructure through a ‘Board of Peace’ populated by a host of politicians complicit in its carpet bombing.

Such a PR exercise largely echoed that undertaken last year, when instead of actually expelling Palestine’s colonial occupier from football structures, FIFA promised new pitches in the West Bank — green band-aid solutions to be plastered over occupied land. Since the initiative is labeled as a partnership between both the Palestine FA and the Israel FA, the intended beneficiaries remain unclear. Among them, however, will not be the 1007+ Palestinian sporting figures Israel has killed, nor those predictably denied access at racial checkpoints and roadblocks dotted all over Gaza and the West Bank.

FIFA+ Broadcasting Illegal Settlement Games in East Jerusalem

But it’s not the only way FIFA is normalizing Israeli games on Palestinian land. In the illegal outpost of Har Homa overlooking Bethlehem, illegal settlement games are being filmed and then streamed on its platform, FIFA+.

Within days of the report being released, FIFA moved its entire website — and the links to the games — to its partner, DAZN, where the games are not available, an act which would have erased all traces of the broadcasts, had records not been taken.

One of the clubs in question is Beitar Nordia Jerusalem — seemingly formed as a friendlier alternative to the notoriously racist Beitar Jerusalem. It is difficult to see how a club that plays its ‘home’ games on occupied Palestinian land could possibly champion anti-racism. Yet, it is under this banner of inclusivity that illegal settlement clubs are being legitimized and, as it emerges, financed. It was under this guise that one was recently invited on a tour of La Liga headquarters and Spanish clubs, with the suspected involvement of some large corporate backers, and the same framing is being used to funnel significant money into other clubs.

UEFA and Its Foundation Push U.S. Policy

Another illegal settlement club to have shared Beitar Nordia’s grounds and its financial fortune is ‘anti-racist and anti-fascist’ Hapo’el Jerusalem. Formed a breakaway club which started its games in illegal settlements in Israel’s lowest league, it is now one of only two clubs in Israel with a men and women’s team in Israel’s Premier League. Its journey to the top flight was perhaps made easier by the millions of dollars in funding it has received from its neighbors in East Jerusalem, the U.S. Embassy, and other U.S. government agencies. Most grants are earmarked for its ‘Neighbourhoods League’ — an apparent ‘peace-keeping’ initiative suspected to have operations in East Jerusalem. These transactions appear to have been sent to its fan owners’ address in the illegal settlement of Har Adar.

While the U.S. government does not recognize East Jerusalem as Palestinian land, also on Hapoel Jerusalem’s donor list is an organization one might expect — in accordance with EU law — to take a different view. The aptly named UEFA Foundation for Children gave the club and its fan owners €320,000 from 2020 to 2023. Aleksander Čeferin has been its president since 2017. The revelation that he financed projects violating international law in tandem with U.S. federal agencies raises serious questions about the role football is playing to further destabilize the region under his leadership.

Even more concerning is the fact Čeferin has also allowed illegal settlement club Hapo’el Bikat Hayarden (also known as Hapoel Jordan Valley) to compete in UEFA competitions in 2016 and 2022 at the height of the case to ban it. While he may have escaped the level of criticism directed at Gianni Infantino for his close relationship with FIFA “Peace Prize” recipient and FIFA World Cup host Donald Trump, the political alignment underpinning UEFA’s actions appears increasingly difficult to ignore.

While the roster of the FIFA World Cup White House Task Force may suggest otherwise, football and politics should not mix, we are told; it cannot solve geopolitical problems. Such is the mantra often repeated by those quietly peddling the deadly yet profitable cocktail of imperialism and sport – perhaps fearing the antidote that may be found in the crowds.

It is there that fans have relentlessly demanded UEFA and FIFA sanction the Israel FA. In October last year, UEFA reportedly came close — until the proposal was allegedly shelved following the timely arrival of Donald Trump’s “Peace Plan,” suggesting maintaining peace was a condition for the Israel FA to continue competing.

Fueled by Western actors, the Israel FA and its settlement clubs have since kicked on, to the tune of the IDF’s unabated assaults on Palestine and Lebanon, punctuated only, perhaps, by its attacks on Iran.

In March, after years of sidestepping an issue now impossible to ignore, FIFA effectively ruled that the illegal settlement clubs could continue playing. In a decision now likely difficult for the Palestine FA to appeal in the FIFA-funded Court of Arbitration for Sport, it claimed the legal status of the West Bank to be “an unresolved and highly complex matter under public international law.”

Despite these clubs implementing a system of apartheid against Palestinians, the Israel FA was punished only for the racism of its fans and officials. It was also ordered to play its next three international matches under FIFA’s anti-racism banner.

Israel may not have qualified for the tournament, yet as we head into a politically charged World Cup we must remember that behind the slogans of anti-racism and social cohesion, the very sport Gianni Infantino claims “unites the world” and Aleksander Čeferin says “builds bridges” not walls, is being strategically used to fragment the West Bank on their watch.