Palestinian Football Association Calls on FIFA to Intervene Over Arrest of Two Players

The Palestinian Football Association (PFA) has slammed Israel over the “unjust arrest” of two players from its women’s national team and called on the sport’s governing body, FIFA, to intervene.

Israeli authorities on Wednesday extended the detention of Rand Halawani, 20, who was arrested a day earlier on suspicion of “throwing objects” at people in Jerusalem. Another national team player, Natalie Abu Diyeh, 21, a student at Birzeit University, was detained along with three other young Palestinian women in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday. The four are suspected of “promoting terrorist activities and additional terrorist-related activities,” Israeli police said.

The PFA issued a statement demanding the release of Halawani and Abu Diyeh, whom it described as “young international players who have proudly represented Palestine at both youth and senior levels.”

“Their arrest is not an isolated incident, it is part of a well-documented pattern of systematic targeting of Palestinian athletes, which continues without accountability,” the statement read.

Palestinian sports people “are routinely denied freedom of movement, safety, and the basic right to participate” in violation of the international law, FIFA statutes and the Olympic Charter, it stressed.

The Palestinian Football Association said that it “calls on FIFA… and the wider international sporting community to move beyond statements and take concrete action” against Israel.

FIFA banned the Russian national football team and clubs from international events following the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in February 2022. Moscow described the move as illegal.

However, FIFA has refrained from applying similar restrictions against Israel, despite repeated calls by the Palestinian Authority and some legal experts to do so over the aggressive military campaign launched by West Jerusalem in the Gaza Strip in response to a deadly incursion by Palestinian armed group Hamas on October 7, 2023.

The PFA said last year that the Israeli forces killed 785 Palestinian athletes and sports officials since then, with 762 deaths happening in Gaza and 23 in the West Bank. There were 437 football players among them, it added.