Since apartheid South Africa

And that’s what the Palestinian Football Association is charging Israel with. They’re saying they are choking out their ability to develop soccer because of the way that they get in the way of free movement of players, free movement of coaches.

The most damning accusation towards the Israeli Football Association is that they have created and formed five or six, depending on reports, clubs in the Occupied Territories, in the settlements of the West Bank, so it’s Israeli Football Association using soccer as a way to take land that should rightfully be part of a possible Palestinian state. And they’re saying that the Israeli Football Association should be removed from FIFA unless they agree to cease these practices.

In fact, the Israelis are repossessing parts of the West Bank and Gaza Strip that they had pulled out of, occupying it again to “destroy terrorism.” What they're actually doing is destroying everything the Palestinians have painstaking built for the last ten years-their roads, their water system, their houses, their schools, their lands, their refugee camps, their police force, their government and all its services.

Ted Rudow III, MA