Palestinian soccer chief defends dropped FIFA bid

Palestinian soccer chief Jibril Rajoub said Tuesday he took full responsibility for an 11th-hour decision to withdraw a bid to have FIFA suspend Israel from the world soccer body.

Rajoub announced the surprise decision Friday at the annual FIFA congress in Zurich, sparking jubilation in Israel but anger among the Palestinians, some of whom have demanded his resignation as head of the Palestinian Football Association (PFA).

“I take full responsibility for this matter,” he told reporters in Al-Bireh near Ramallah, insisting that the resolution had not been dropped, but only suspended.

“From the start, I said this was about sport, not politics.”

The PFA had threatened to propose a resolution calling on FIFA to suspend Israel over its restrictions on the movement of Palestinian players. It had also opposed the participation in the Israeli championships of five clubs located in West Bank settlements.

Rajoub admitted that the PFA had come under a lot of pressure from fellow associations as well as from European umbrella UEFA chief Michel Platini to back off from the move.

“Most of the football associations told us they would vote against us if we presented the motion as it was,” he said.

“We modified the motion and froze the suspension until FIFA is able to investigate.”

Ahead of the congress, FIFA chief Sepp Blatter traveled to the region for talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to try to resolve the dispute.

Netanyahu on Friday commended FIFA members for helping thwart the Palestinian bid to have Israel suspended from international soccer, and hailed the efforts of Israel’s football chief.

“Our international effort has proven itself and led to the failure of the Palestinian Authority attempt to oust us from FIFA. I thank all those took part in the international effort that led to the failure of this attempt, including the Israeli delegation in Switzerland led by Israel Football Association Chairman Ofer Eini,” Netanyahu said.

“The State of Israel is interested in a peace that will ensure security for its citizens but this will not be achieved through coercion and distorting the truth. The only way to achieve peace is to begin negotiations between the sides,” he added. So long as the Palestinians take unilateral steps against Israel, said Netanyahu, “they will only push peace further away instead of bringing it closer.”

‘Historic milestone’

Rajoub denied that Abbas was involved in the decision to drop the resolution, insisting the president “had nothing to do with it.”

And he said that cornering Israel over its actions both on and off the pitch was “a historic and important milestone in the history of Palestinian sports.”

His controversial decision sparked anger back home, with Palestinian activists launching an online petition to have him sacked.

“We spent a long time mobilizing international federations to support the Palestinian bid and we were surprised when Rajoub said they had withdrawn the motion,” activist Fadi Quran told AFP.

“We have launched a petition asking for Rajoub to be dismissed.”

The Palestinian soccer chief even had to defend himself against allegations that he had voted for Blatter to stay on as FIFA president in the face of a challenge from Prince Ali bin al Hussein of Jordan.

“I voted for Prince Ali because I am an Arab,” he said of the vote which took place on Friday and saw Blatter winning a fifth term in office.

“There is a forged statement circulating in the media that I voted for Blatter,” he said.

“This statement was deliberately published to harm Palestinian sport.”

Abbas traveled to Amman Tuesday to meet the prince, with observers saying he was seeking to calm tempers raised over the allegations about Rajoub.

The two men underlined the “soundness of relations between the two brotherly countries,” Jordanian state news agency Petra reported without elaborating.