FIFA has confirmed fans will be allowed to wear rainbow bucket hats and take rainbow flags into the stadium for Wales’ match against Iran this morning – after they were confiscated ahead of the side’s 1-1 draw with the USA earlier this week.
The Football Association of Wales said venues in Qatar had been contacted and instructed to follow the agreed rules and regulations, including the Ahmad bin Ali Stadium in Al Rayman where The Dragons will face Iran for their second Group B match at 10am (UK time).
In a statement it added: “The FAW urges FIFA to adhere to their message that everybody will be welcome in Qatar during the World Cup and continue to highlight any further human rights issues.
“We remain with the belief that football is for everyone”.
The agreement, specifically between FIFA and the FAW only – comes after the first week of the tournament has been marred by the governing body’s handling of LGBTQ+ symbols.
All eyes will be on the players of Wales and England to see if they follow Germany’s lead and make a stand pre-match.
Germany’s players covered their mouths during a team photo ahead of their 2-1 defeat against Japan to show “FIFA is silencing us” by shutting down attempts to wear rainbow-coloured OneLove armbands.
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England boss Gareth Southgate has not ruled out his team making a gesture ahead of their game with the US to highlight human rights concerns, but said they will not be pressured into doing so.
That match kicks-off at 7pm at the Al Bayt stadium in Al Khor.
Southgate said: “I think we’ve got to be comfortable that we know what we stand for.
“That’s not to say we won’t do anything moving forward if the timing’s right, but I think we are rushing to be seen to be doing something, we could make an error that doesn’t land well.”
Rainbow bucket hats and flags should never have been confiscated from football fans in the first place, FAW chief executive Neil Mooney said.
Speaking to Sky Sports News, he said the FAW were “appalled” to hear rainbow bucket hats were being taken from supporters and staff in Qatar.
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The story of the Qatar World Cup
He said the FAW wrote to FIFA and pointed out that they were “promised an open and inclusive World Cup”.
“Thankfully they’ve come back just in the last couple of hours, in writing to say that our fans can wear rainbow related clothing tomorrow, including bucket hats,” he said.
“We’re glad the fans can do that. It should never have been the case that they were confiscated in the first place.
“We have it in writing from FIFA that they’re okay to wear whatever they wish.”
The drive into the village of Jiljiliya is not what you expect on the West Bank. Imposing mansions line the route, with grand gates and lavish decorations.
That’s because this is where Palestinian Americans return to build their dream homes after years of hard work in the land of opportunity.
Like Omar Assad who came back after 45 years in Milwaukee. But for him, retirement was neither long nor happy. It was cut brutally short one freezing night in January 2022.
He was returning from a game of cards when he was stopped at a makeshift checkpoint set up by the notorious Israeli army unit, Netzah Yehuda.
The IDF says he did not cooperate so the 78-year-old was detained with force.
Mraweh Mahmoud was with him.
“They took us down from the car and pushed me by the head,” he told Sky News. “The soldier was standing there and put an M16 in my head and said now I’ll shoot you.”
Mr Assad was tied up, gagged and blindfolded, Mr Mahmoud said, and forced to lie next to him. When the soldiers eventually left Mr Mahmoud realised Mr Assad was dead.
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“I took his jacket off his head, I checked there’s no pulse, I shouted Omar, Omar,” he said.
Palestinian doctors say Mr Assad died in freezing temperatures of a stress-induced heart attack. An Israeli military report condemned the soldiers’ “moral failure and poor decision-making”.
No link between death and soldiers’ errors, military prosecutors say
Netzah Yehuda’s battalion commander was reprimanded and two officers were dismissed but Israeli military prosecutors decided against pursuing criminal charges because they said there was no link between the errors made by soldiers and Mr Assad’s death.
But now the unit the soldiers came from is expected to be singled out by the US government and cut off from American funding, in the first-ever such move against any part of the Israeli military.
Reports claim the US State Department will apply the so-called Leahy Law against the unit, which prohibits US assistance to foreign military units guilty of gross human rights violations when their government fails to take sufficient action.
Why has Netzah Yehuda become infamous?
The Netzah Yehuda battalion was set up to help ultra-orthodox Jews serve in the army. It mixes religion and soldiering. But in its ranks are also elements of extremist settler groups.
It has become infamous, implicated in one case of alleged abuse of Palestinians after another, many of which its soldiers have filmed on their own phones. Its soldiers have been prosecuted for human rights violations and accused of unlawful killings, electrocution, torture and sexual assault.
Israel’s government has fought a rearguard action against the looming US action.
Its prime minister called the prospect absurd and its defence minister Yoav Galant showed solidarity with the battalion’s soldiers this week saying “no one in the world can teach us about morals and values”.
But one organisation of ex-soldiers opposed to Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories says the Israeli government knows this could be just the beginning of action against its military.
‘They’re terrified of the possible results’
Ori Givati from the NGO Breaking the Silence told Sky News: “They understand that this might open the Pandora’s box of what the occupation really is, and how it looks like to occupy millions with the military.
“And if that Pandora’s box will be opened and it is starting to open in recent months, I think they’re terrified of the possible results because they want to continue to occupy.”
Back in Jilijilya, Mr Assad’s family welcomes reports America will act against the soldiers they blame for his death but say that’s not enough – they want them brought to justice too.
Nazmia, Mr Assad’s widow, said: “God willing it will be good if they do this, but also punish them like what they did with him, arrest them and fire them from their positions.”
The parents of an Israeli hostage have told him “we love you, stay strong, survive” after he appeared with part of his arm missing in a video released by Hamas.
Hersh Goldberg-Polin was kidnapped at the Nova musical festival when Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October.
The video shows him with his lower left arm missing; witnesses said it was blown off when he helped throw grenades out of a shelter where people were hiding.
He reportedly used his shirt as a tourniquet to stem the bleeding, but was captured.
Clearly under duress in the undated video, the 23-year-old criticises Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government, saying they should be “ashamed” for not securing the hostages’ release.
He also claims Israeli bombings have killed “about 70 detainees like me” and that the rest are living in an “underground hell without water, food, or sun”.
Mr Goldberg-Polin, who wears a red shirt and sits against a plain white wall, finishes with an appeal to his parents, telling them “stay strong” and “I love you so much, and miss you so much”.
His parents responded to Wednesday’s video by filming their own emotional response.
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Jon Polin says hearing his son for the first time in more than 200 days is “overwhelming”.
“We are relieved to see him alive but we are also concerned about his health and wellbeing as well as that of all the other hostages, and all of those suffering in this region,” he says.
Mr Polin calls for the countries involved in negotiations to “be brave, lean in, seize this moment and get a deal done to reunite all of us with our loved ones and end the suffering in this region”.
His mother, Rachel Goldberg-Polin, stares resolutely into the camera and tells him: “Hersh, if you can hear his, we heard your voice today for the first time in 201 days… I am telling you – we are telling you – we love you, stay strong, survive.”
The 23-year-old was born in California but moved to Jerusalem with his family when he was younger.
He was among about 250 Israelis and foreigners kidnapped in the initial Hamas attack, which also killed around 1,200 people.
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Baby saved from womb of dying mother
Israel’s aim to wipe out Hamas has so far killed more than 34,000 people in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run health authority.
Hundreds of thousands are also said to be on the brink of starvation and have been forced to flee the violence.
Fears are growing that a ground assault on the southern city of Rafah – where more than a million people are sheltering – is imminent after Mr Netanyahu said Israel was “moving ahead” with its plans.
“Because it’s built to withstand both biological and chemical attacks,” Dr Yehezkel Caine told Sky News as we entered the complex, “we have an airlock which is built of two separate sets of blast doors”.
Beyond they have installed a whole new level of wards below the existing underground hospital, ripping out a logistics floor and installing more beds and equipment.
The bunkers would be activated should other hospitals closer to the front need evacuating.
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They are planning for worst-case scenarios here like an all-out war with Hezbollah.
“The hospitals in the north will be overwhelmed with casualties and they themselves will come under fire, in which case they would have to evacuate their patients to the centre of the country, the same as we did in the first weeks of the war in the south,” said Dr Caine.
He and his staff know the 7 October attack last year by Hamas and Iran‘s missile and drone barrage earlier this month have changed everything for the people of Israel.
“For the civilian population since the war of independence we’ve never been in a situation where the threat to the civilian population has been as great,” he said.
Above ground, the Herzog Medical Centre continues with its peacetime specialisms.
It has Israel’s largest ventilator unit, treating adults and children, but also excels in psycho-trauma treatment and geriatric rehabilitation.
Many of those suffering PTSD from the trauma in this conflict are treated here.