FIFA stopped short of suspending the Israeli soccer federation on Thursday, but asked for a disciplinary investigation of possible discrimination alleged by Palestinian soccer officials.
A senior FIFA panel overseeing governance will separately investigate “the participation in Israeli competitions of Israeli football teams allegedly based in the territory of Palestine,” soccer’s governing body said after a meeting of its ruling Council.
The Palestinian soccer federation has consistently asked FIFA for more than a decade to take action against the Israeli soccer body for incorporating teams from West Bank settlements in its leagues.
The compromise decisions came more than four months after Palestinian officials had urged FIFA to suspend Israel’s membership at a meeting in May.
The request to FIFA’s congress in May also cited “international law violations” in Gaza during the Israel-Hamas conflict and directed the soccer body to its statutory commitments on human rights and against discrimination.
FIFA delayed making a decision in May until after a legal review scheduled for July, then pushed back the issue two more times until a meeting of its 37-member Council on Thursday.
“The FIFA Council has implemented due diligence on this very sensitive matter and, based on a thorough assessment, we have followed the advice of the independent experts,” FIFA president Gianni Infantino said in a statement.
Ahead of the meeting, Palestinian soccer federation leader Jibril Rajoub and its vice president Susan Shalabi came to Zurich to lobby FIFA officials.
“I trust and I expect that FIFA will take the right decision,” Rajoub told The Associated Press. “I am asking for the Council to follow their statutes.”
The latest process follows a pattern — under Infantino and his predecessor Sepp Blatter — of Palestinian requests for FIFA to uphold its legal rules and the question then being steered toward ad hoc panels and other committees.
FIFA gave no timetable Thursday for the in