While rainbow colors and the “One Love” armband are strictly forbidden at the World Cup in Qatar, Palestinian flags can be waved – FIFA has no objections. This causes a stir in Germany.
It is completely normal for flags to be waved proudly and euphorically in football stadiums. If at club level it is the insignia of your own club, you can see the national flags at international matches. One of them is the flag in black, white and green with a red triangle – that of the Palestinian territories. She is shown in the stands and is also celebrated with her on the lawn. Their national team hasn’t even qualified for the World Cup. As 94th in the world rankings, the team is not competitive.
That Palestine appears in the world rankings at all is not a matter of course. After all, it is an area that is by no means accepted as a state by all nations worldwide. Of the 193 member states of the United Nations, only 138 have recognized Palestine as an independent state.
Solidarity with Palestine is widespread in the Arab world. The Moroccans, for example, even celebrated their victory on penalties against Spain and their place in the quarter-finals with the flag on the lawn of Education City Stadium. In Qatar, the Palestinian flag is everywhere, with at least 20 spectators at every game, no matter what the match, with or without Arab participation. A streaker stormed the lawn with a flag during the group game between Tunisia and France, well shielded from the TV world direction.
The flag of Palestine, solidarity with the values ??of the state, is a political message. Those who show solidarity want a state of Palestine on the West Bank and East Jerusalem conquered by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War. It is striking that FIFA allows this political statement to go through without any problems, when there were already serious disputes at this World Cup precisely because of political statements. They are banned by the world football association FIFA. After all, that was the reason why the argument about the “One Love” bandage boiled up so much and culminated in the mouth-to-mouth gesture of the German national team. This was the reason why fans with rainbow flags were prevented from entering the stadiums at the start of the tournament.
On the other hand, FIFA accepts statements for Palestine without complaint. FIFA has announced that the Moroccans will not be investigated. Palestine is officially recognised, a country like any other. The flag of a member country is therefore not an embassy. FIFA’s seemingly double standards are only seen as a source of excitement in western Europe. From this perspective, there is an apparent discrepancy between political messages that FIFA allows and those that FIFA opposes. It seems that FIFA will accept anything that pleases the World Cup hosts Qatar and want to ban anything that goes against the values ??of the Gulf state.
After all, the Palestinian community in Qatar is large, and the flag is also shown again and again on Qatari television. The country is an ally of the Islamist Hamas, which rules in the Gaza Strip. Qatar is providing aid, for example. The situation of the Palestinians unites the people in the Arab world, said Zaha Hassen from the US think tank Carnegie of the German Press Agency. “Palestine’s presence at the heart of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar confirms that it is the nation’s central theme and is present in the hearts of millions of our Arab nations and the free peoples of the world,” said a spokesman for the EU and the United States classified Hamas as a terrorist organization.
But at the same time that doesn’t mean that all problems have been solved by football. The enmity between Palestine and Israel continues, so any well-intentioned FIFA statement is of no use. And so Israel raises the accusation that Qatari aid money is also used for terrorist purposes. Before the World Cup, Qatar emphasized that the entry permit for Israelis during the tournament had nothing to do with normalization. This would only be granted temporarily. Israel’s Foreign Ministry recommended fans not to reveal their identities openly.
With the signing of the “Abraham Accords” in 2020, diplomatic relations were established between Israel and some Arab countries – such as Morocco. And so Israel’s Defense Minister Benny Gantz warmly congratulated the Moroccans on Twitter on Twitter: “Mabrouk (Arabic for congratulations, editor’s note) our Moroccan friends on their great victory!” he wrote and posted two Moroccan flags.
But at the same time, an Israeli TV team is mobbed during the World Cup – by fans of Saudi Arabia. In an interview with ntv.de, Moav Vardi said that he was also met with hatred on the street. Arab fans would sometimes react “very negatively” to him. Vardi and his colleague Yoav Borowitz are for the Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation “KAN” during the World Cup in Qatar. They left with different expectations: “I thought the World Cup was a cosmopolitan event that was about multiculturalism and football,” said Vardi. “Then I realized that for the Arab fans it’s an Arab World Cup. It’s their chance to be on the world stage. Even the Saudis told me it was like a home game for them. The anger and the resentment It’s because we’re taking over the show from them. That’s why you encounter more anger here as an Israeli than you encounter Arabs anywhere else.”
As usual, FIFA sees things differently. President Gianni Infantino said pathetically before the World Cup: “Football has the power to bring people together, it transcends all borders and promotes unity like nothing else.”