Sport
Israel's war and US visa denials strand Palestinian sport
Graphic: Times of Palestine
Original Reporting
The head of the Palestinian Football Association spent the opening days of the 2026 World Cup on the wrong side of the border. Jibril Rajoub watched the Mexico–South Africa opener in Mexico City while waiting for permission to enter the United States, ESPN reported on 12 June, citing an Associated Press interview. He had been accredited for the tournament and had not been granted a visa.
"I don't believe that it's fair to use or to abuse and deny the right of all footballers all over the world to attend," Rajoub told the Associated Press. Palestine did not qualify, but FIFA routinely invites federation presidents to the finals.
ESPN reported that the US State Department had no immediate comment on the case, and that Washington last year imposed new restrictions on Palestinian passport holders, including anyone employed by the Palestinian Authority. The same report noted that a visa allowing President Mahmoud Abbas to attend the UN General Assembly was revoked last September.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, asked about accredited visitors turned away, said his department works closely with FIFA and had explained each refusal. "Anybody that was denied, we made the case for and showed them why they were denied," he said, in remarks carried by ESPN. JNS reported that other World Cup delegates refused entry included a referee from Somalia and a photographer travelling with Iraq's team.
The visa is the narrow end of the story. The Palestinian Olympic Committee told a press conference in Gaza City in February that 1,007 Palestinian athletes and sports workers had been killed since October 2023, among them 45 women, and that 265 sports facilities had been hit — 184 destroyed outright, 81 partially damaged. The figures were reported by the Palestine Chronicle, Turkey's Yeni Şafak and Iran's IQNA.
"This destruction has deprived thousands of young people and adolescents of their right to train and practise sports," the committee's vice-president, Asaad Al-Majdalawi, said at that briefing.
The Palestinian Football Association posted the same accounting in June, listing 265 damaged sports facilities in the Gaza Strip, of which it said 184 were completely destroyed.
What that means on the ground is documented site by site.
The Gaza Municipality said in January 2024 that Israeli forces bombed, shelled and bulldozed Yarmouk Stadium in Gaza City, wrecking the pitch, the stands, the running track, the lighting and the stores of sports equipment, and that the ground was used as a detention centre for civilians who had sheltered there.
The account was carried by Jordan News, citing Al-Ghad.
The New Arab reported in January 2025 that 45 sports clubs and seven major stadiums — Yarmouk, Beit Hanoun, Beit Lahia, Jabalia and Rafah among them — had been destroyed, and that some sites were used for mass burials. By November 2024 the Yarmouk pitch was covered in tents for displaced families.
Abdel Salam Haniyeh, secretary-general of the Supreme Council for Youth and Sports, told the outlet that the destruction of stadiums and parks was aimed at making life in Gaza impossible after the war.
Movement restrictions predate the war and shaped Palestinian competition long before the visa queue in Mexico City. Al Jazeera reported in September 2019 that the Palestine Cup final was cancelled after Israel denied the Gaza team travel permits; Arab News reported the same competition postponed because of Israeli travel restrictions, and in July that year described those restrictions as stifling the domestic game.
The Palestinian football authorities have pushed the movement question into sport's own institutions and lost the first round. FIFA in March declined to sanction Israel over clubs based in West Bank settlements playing in Israeli competitions, while fining the Israel Football Association over breaches, ESPN reported.
Haaretz reported that FIFA rejected the Palestinian suspension request on the reasoning that the status of the West Bank was not settled. The Israeli federation's chief responded publicly to the decision, Yahoo Sports reported.
The Palestinian Football Association appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport on 29 April, according to Al Jazeera and Middle East Eye. No ruling has been reported.
How Palestinian sport pays for reconstruction is not visible in the public record retrieved from either body. The Gaza Municipality's appeal in January 2024 was addressed to human rights groups, international organisations and regional and international sports federations, asking them to speed assistance for rebuilding.
The Olympic Committee's February accounting listed damage, disrupted development programmes and lost professional opportunities; it did not put a cost on repair, and no rebuilding figure has been published since.
A US-backed ceasefire has held since 10 October, halting a war that Gaza's health ministry says killed more than 72,000 Palestinians and wounded over 171,000. The ministry told Anadolu that 603 Palestinians have been killed and 1,618 injured in ceasefire violations since.
Football has restarted in improvised form — amputee players and club sides competing on flattened sand near rubble, images of which circulated internationally, the Palestine Chronicle reported. Whether the arbitration court hears the settlement-clubs appeal before the next qualifying cycle, and whether any of the 184 destroyed facilities are rebuilt, is not yet on any published timetable.
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