A group of the Middle East’s football associations has asked world football chiefs to ban Israel over the war on Hamas in Gaza, according to a letter seen by Sky News.
But the Israeli Football Association has urged FIFA to keep politics out of sport and allow them to continue trying to qualify for the men’s European Championship this summer.
The bid to banish Israel’s footballers is led by Prince Ali bin Al Hussein, half-brother of Jordan’s King Abdullah II, in his role as president of the West Asian Football Federation.
That 12-nation grouping also includes the FAs of Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
The letter was sent to all 211 national football federations and the six regional confederations, including UEFA, of which Israel is a member and is today holding its annual congress in Paris.
Jordanian FA president Prince Ali wrote: “We, the West Asian Football Federations, encompassing all its members, call upon FIFA, the Football Confederations, and Member Associations to join us in taking a decisive stand against the atrocities committed in Palestine and the war crimes in Gaza, by condemning the killing of innocent civilians including players, coaches, referees, and officials, the destruction of the football infrastructure, and taking a united front in isolating the Israeli Football Association from all football-related activities until these acts of aggression cease.”
The Israeli FA called on football authorities to reject the bid to ban them but held out an olive branch for peace by wishing Jordan good luck in its first-ever appearance at the Asian Cup final on Sunday against Qatar.
“I am trusting FIFA not to involve politics in football,” Israeli FA CEO Niv Goldstein told Sky News.
“We are against involving politicians in football and being involved in political matters in the sport in general.
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“So, we are concentrating only on football matters and our dream is to qualify for the European Championship in 2024 and I’m looking forward to world peace.”
FIFA has banned Russia from international football over the unprovoked, full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 – sparking questions in Jordan about inconsistencies in approaches to nations at war.
“This is not for me to decide,” Mr Goldstein said. “And obviously we think there is a lot of difference between our situation and other situations that happened in the world.”
Israel’s government insists it is acting in self-defence and only began the war on Gaza after Hamas launched raids on its territory on 7 October, killing around 1,200 Israelis and other nationalities.
Prince Ali’s letter does not mention those massacres – the deadliest day for Jewish people since the Holocaust – nor the more than 130 people being held hostage in Gaza since being abducted from Israel that day.
But the letter references the “magnitude of suffering endured by women, children, and innocent civilians, including football players and athletes, as well as the indiscriminate destruction of sports facilities” in Gaza.
Israel insists it is acting proportionally and takes care to avoid innocent deaths. More than 27,000 people have been killed in Gaza so far, according to the Hamas-led health ministry there.
“The humanitarian crisis demands an unequivocal and resolute response from the global football community,” Prince Ali wrote.
“As members bound by the statutes of FIFA, we stand united in our pledge to uphold all internationally recognised human rights.”
Israel began competing in the Asian Football Confederation in 1954 but faced opposition from countries refusing to play them.
They qualified through Asia for the 1970 men’s World Cup but the team was then excluded from AFC tournaments from 1974.
They went on to play in Europe and Oceania for future World Cup qualification campaigns before joining the European governing body, UEFA, as a full member in 1994.
Israeli teams also compete in the Champions League and Europa League.
The national team has never qualified for a European Championship but is two games away from the finals in Germany in June.
In March, there is a play-off semi-final against Iceland and the winner plays Bosnia-Herzegovina or Ukraine.
But the European Broadcast Union has said that was a “fundamentally different” situation and backed Israel to remain in the contest.
The Israeli FA also hopes to fend off the latest attempts to expel its teams. FIFA and UEFA provided no immediate comment to Sky News.
But Jordanian royal Prince Ali wrote to FAs, including the UK home nations: “It is with a sense of profound responsibility and commitment to the principles of human rights, justice, and peace that we implore your engagement in this crucial matter.”
It was only following the Oslo Accords in 1998 that the Palestinian FA was able to join FIFA and it competes as Palestine.
The men’s team reached the round of 16 for the first time at the Asian Cup last month.
The Kremlin has criticised President Joe Biden for adding “fuel to the fire” after giving Ukraine permission to launch US missiles into Russia.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters: “It is obvious that the outgoing administration in Washington intends to… continue adding fuel to the fire and provoking further escalation of tensions around this conflict.”
Russia‘s Foreign Ministry added that the action by Mr Biden‘s administration would fundamentally alter the nature of the war and trigger “an adequate and tangible” response.
The UK has refused to reveal if it plans to follow suit, for example extending the use of British-supplied Storm Shadow missiles by Ukraine to hit targets inside Russia.
Britain’s Defence Secretary John Healey told the House of Commons commenting would “compromise operations and security”, adding that he will speak with the US and Ukrainian defence secretaries on Monday evening.
At the G20 Summit in Brazil, Sir Keir Starmer gave a similar response: “I’m not going to get into operational details because the only winner, if we were to do that, is [Vladimir] Putin, and I’m not prepared to do that.”
For over a year Ukraine has been calling on America changes its policy on the use of long-range missiles.
Donald Trump Jr,the son of president-elect Donald Trump,suggested in a post on X that Mr Biden was risking a third world war “before my father has a chance to create peace and save lives”.
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3:04
The use of tactical missile systems for Ukraine
Hungary: Policy is ‘astonishingly dangerous’
There has been a strong, but mixed, reaction across Europe to America’s change of policy.
Hungary’s foreign minister, Peter Szijjarto, said the decision was “astonishingly dangerous” – although the country’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban has a close and often sympathetic relationship with Moscow.
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Slovakia’s leader Robert Fico, who has also fostered a stronger relationship with his Russian counterpart, said it was an “unprecedented escalation of tensions” and “a decision that thwarts hopes for the start of any peace talks”.
But other countries have been more positive.
Polish President Andrzej Duda said: “This decision was very necessary… Russia sees that Ukraine enjoys strong support and that the West’s position is unyielding and determined.”
Meanwhile, Estonia’s foreign minister Margus Tsahkna was equally positive. He said easing restrictions on Ukraine was “a good thing”, adding: “We have been saying that from the beginning – that no restrictions must be put on the military support [for Ukraine].”
How could Russia respond?
In the past, Russia’s president has mentioned sending weapons to the West’s adversaries to strike Western targets abroad. He didn’t mention any nations specifically, but the assumption was it was a reference to Iran.
Moscow has also recently changed its nuclear doctrine, to allow it in theory to respond with nuclear weapons if the West attacks targets on Russian soil.
So are these threats genuine? Or is it more sabre-rattling?
The calculus in Washington seems to be that this is another bluff from Moscow, following the obliteration of previous red lines without consequence.
The West has supplied missiles, battle tanks and fighter jets to Kyiv, all without invoking the escalation that was threatened.
But could Russia respond in other, more subtle ways, which it doesn’t want to broadcast? Think sabotage, cyber attacks, closer alignment with Iran (and of course North Korea).
So in that sense, it’s not the Kremlin’s public fury the West will be worried about, it’s what happens behind the scenes.
Missiles are ‘not a game changer’
Former British ambassador to Russia Sir Toby Brenton has told Sky News: “Nobody is really expecting this to be a game changer.
“They’re expecting it to make life more difficult for the Russians, slow the Russian advance down, but… from all the stories I’m hearing, there are not actually that many of these missiles available to be used.”
Barely anyone speaks – there is virtual silence apart from the sounds of passing vehicles and the wind whipping through flags and photographs commemorating the dead in a war that started 1,000 days ago when Russia invaded.
What is really striking is the sheer number of people who have died, and this memorial in Kyiv’s Maidan Square represents just some of those who gave their lives defending their country.
Soldiers in camouflage fatigues pause to pay their respects to comrades, civilians stop and stare, heads often bowed.
At the same time, on mobile phones, news alerts announce another missile strike on Ukraine. This time in the port city of Odessa.
More dead, more injured, it never stops here.
As this war grinds on, with Russia making significant gains in the east, it says something about the Ukrainian people’s resolve to keep going.
For months the Ukrainian government has been pleading with the United States and its western partners for permission to use long range weapons to attack deep inside Russia.
These weapons would allow Ukraine to target airfields and bases where drones and missiles are launched against Ukraine, and to attack supply routes and military camps. In effect – to take the fight to Russia.
Time and again civilians and soldiers alike tell me the West and the United States are scared of annoying or provoking Russia. Wrongly or rightly, most believe the West is happy for Ukraine to hold the line but not beat Russia.
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Ukraine allowed to use US long-range missiles in Russia
News that President Biden, in the twilight of his time in office, has changed his position allowing American missiles to be fired into Russia, has been greeted with euphoria.
Although it’s tempered by his decision to allow them to be used only in the Kursk region of Russia, where North Korean troops are augmenting the Russian military.
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I met Ukrainian MP Lesia Vasylenko in the capital, she heard the news as she arrived back in Ukraine from a trip abroad.
She says the decision has “lifted spirits here” and calls the move “extremely significant” but says it needs to go further.
“As members of parliament we have been echoing the president in every single meeting we have abroad, asking for the permission to strike inside Russia’s territory, what this means is permission to liquidate 16 airbases from which Russia on a daily and nightly bases sends airplanes carrying missiles that are hitting Ukrainian homes, Ukrainian infrastructure, and basically making civilian life impossible in the country,” she told me.
She continued: “Having permission to strike inside of all of Russia would really change things round for the people of Ukraine first and foremost, but also on the battlefield.”
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She told me that despite the war dragging on, the Ukrainian people remain resolute and united.
“The resilience is still there, for us this resilience equals survival, if Ukraine stops fighting there will be no Ukraine, there will be no us as Ukrainians, there will be no housing, we would not be allowed to live under the Ukrainian flag, so the only option here is to make sure that Russia stops fighting and that Russia can never fight again.”
Over the past almost two weeks I have driven from the west to the east of this huge country.
It strikes me that you can barely pass a town or a village cemetery without the blue and gold colours of the Ukrainian flag punctuating the grey skies – marking the graves of the war dead.
A thousand days since the Russian invasion began, soldiers and civilians alike are still dying, but Ukraine is still fighting.
An undersea fibre optic cable between Germany and Finland has stopped working and might have been deliberately cut by an unknown party, according to authorities.
The 729 mile (1,173km) C-Lion1 cable under the Baltic Sea from Helsinki to Rostock went offline just after 2am GMT on Monday.
The outage was reported by Finnish state-controlled cyber security and telecoms company Cinia.
A physical inspection has not yet been done but the abrupt nature suggests it was completely severed by an outside force, said chief executive Ari-Jussi Knaapila.
Germanyand Finland‘s foreign ministers said they were “deeply concerned” and it “immediately raises suspicions of intentional damage”.
A joint statement said: “Our European security is not only under threat from Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, but also from hybrid warfare by malicious actors.
“Safeguarding our shared critical infrastructure is vital to our security and the resilience of our societies.”
Cinia said “corrective measures” were under way and a repair ship was being prepared.
The damage to the fibre optic cable could take around five to 15 days to fix, Mr Knaapila told reporters.
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He said the damage occurred near the southern tip of Sweden’s Oland island and that Cinia was working with authorities to investigate.
The cable links central European telecoms networks to Finland, other Nordic countries and Asia.
Another submerged gas line and several telecoms cables were seriously damaged last year in the Baltic Sea.