The Palestinian Football Association announced Thursday that at least 265 Palestinian athletes have been killed in Israeli attacks since October last year.
“The victims include players, administrators and technical staff, including 11 people from the West Bank,” association president Djibril Rajoub told reporters. Ta.
“Dozens of players remain under the rubble and it is impossible to count them,” he said. “Many athletes are also in Israeli prisons.”
Rajoub said the association had submitted a resolution to soccer governing body FIFA to hold Israel accountable.
“The Israeli Football Association has violated FIFA regulations on several issues,” he said, citing Israel’s refusal to host soccer matches in the Palestinian territories.
“We cannot even organize a league or hold World Cup qualifiers on our land,” he added. “Israel has destroyed all sports facilities in the Gaza Strip and turned them into detention facilities similar to Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.”
According to Palestinian statistics, more than 55 sports facilities were destroyed in Israeli attacks, 38 of which were in the Gaza Strip.
Israel shelled the Gaza Strip in retaliation for a Hamas attack on October 7 last year that killed 1,200 people. Since then, more than 34,900 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, the majority of them women and children, and more than 78,500 others have been injured, according to the Palestinian Health Authority.
More than seven months into Israel’s war, vast swathes of Gaza are in ruins, with 85% of the enclave’s population internally displaced amid a devastating blockade of food, clean water and medicine, according to the United Nations. I’m being pushed into a corner.
Israel has been charged with genocide at the International Court of Justice. A preliminary ruling in January said it was “plausible” that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza and ordered Tel Aviv to take steps to stop such acts and guarantee humanitarian aid to civilians in Gaza. I ordered him to take lessons.
