By Paul Nicholson
June 14 – The Palestine Football Association (PFA) is taking FIFA to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) claiming FIFA broke its own statutory rules and denied the PFA its rights over the decision taken by the FIFA Congress not to go to a vote on whether six Israeli teams playing league matches on occupied territory in Palestine should be allowed to continue.
The PFA is asking CAS to rule that the decision not to vote on its proposal to ban Israeli clubs from playing in occupied territory be declared null and void, and that the decision that was passed in its place be revoked and that FIFA be ordered to immediately vote on the PFA’s proposal.
Instead of voting on the issue of the six Israeli clubs playing in occupied territory, the Congress instead voted on a motion giving the FIFA Council a time limit until the end of March 2018 to evaluate reports from the FIFA Monitoring Committee Israel-Palestine.
Crucially it also handed the final the decision on the Israeli/Palestine situation will be taken by the FIFA Council and not by Congress, and that the deadline for that decision was pushed out to October 2018. That motion was passed with a 73% vote using the electronic voting system. While this is a majority, FIFA rules state a 75% vote is required to actually change the conference agenda.
The PFA claims the decision not to vote was railroaded through by FIFA president Gianni Infantino at the Bahrain Congress in May, following a decision taken at FIFA Council to postpone the decision.
The PFA maintained at the time, and in their submission to CAS, that it is their right and the right of all FIFA members, enshrined in FIFA’s statutes, to present proposals to the full FIFA membership for a vote. That right was denied to them though they followed all the correct statutory procedures to bring it before Congress.
They say that FIFA broke its own procedural rules with Palestinian supporters saying that the autocracy of the decision-making process demonstrates a strong lack of democracy in the new FIFA.
Although unstated, the sub-text for the CAS appeal is the fear of the Palestinians that the FIFA Council, whose new members are increasingly under the influence of Infantino’s grace and favour following elections throughout the confederations, will automatically rule for the Israelis. If a vote had been taken at Congress that would likely have fallen in favour of the Palestinians.
Neither the PFA or the IFA have commented officially on the appeal, though the IFA pointed out that they are not a plaintiff in this case and so have no comment. The IFA has maintained all through the dispute that the issue is more about regional geo-politics than football, but the problem is that neither side are prepared to give any ground on this issue and that has raised it to a political powerplay.
The FIFA Monitoring Committee Israel-Palestine was initially tasked to report and aid the free movement of Palestinian players, officials and equipment through the territory. The PFA and the IFA both privately say that although still a fragile situation, but it is one that is improving and neither side want to upset that process. But the issue of the six Israeli teams has dwarfed this, and the abject failure of the Tokyo Sexwale-led committee to present a report or any explanation why, raises more questions than there are answers for.
CAS is not being asked to rule on the merits of the geo-politics but on the democratic process of FIFA in this case. It should not be a politically motivated decision that their arbitrators come to, but it will certainly have political consequences.
In their announcement of the appeal, CAS said: “A CAS arbitration procedure is in progress. Firstly, the parties will exchange written submissions and a panel of three arbitrators will be constituted. The Panel will then issue directions with respect to the holding of a hearing. Following the hearing, the Panel will deliberate and at a later date, it will issue a decision in the form of an Arbitral Award.”
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