Calls for the Suspension of Israel from International Football and the Lessons of the Apartheid-Era Boycott in South Africa

By Razia Mohamed, School of Law, UNISA, Pretoria, South Africa

Summary

Following the United Nations Commission of Inquiry finding that Israel has committed acts amounting to genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, there have been intensifying calls for the country to be suspended from international football.

This Post examines these contemporary appeals from states, civil society organisations and legal scholars for FIFA and UEFA to suspend the Israeli Football Association (IFA) and to ban Israeli clubs from international football competitions. It situates these calls within the FIFA governance framework and the evolving jurisprudence and practice of sporting sanctions and compares the contemporary debate to the international sporting boycott of the apartheid-era in South Africa.

The South African precedent offers persuasive guidance but is not determinative. Whilst there are clear parallels in the moral rationale and political logic underpinning sporting exclusion, significant structural and legal distinctions warrant a cautious yet deliberate approach.

This Post, therefore, examines the available legal mechanisms, institutional limitations, and normative considerations that shape the intersection of sport, law, and morality in contemporary international governance.

1. Introduction

Sport is often represented by governing bodies as a domain of political neutrality. But international football, given its visibility, commercial power and institutional reach, has repeatedly been a site where politics and law collide. In 2025, renewed and highly public calls have emerged for FIFA and UEFA to suspend the Israeli Football Association (IFA), prompted by the large-scale violence in Gaza and by long-standing and undecided complaints from the Palestinian Football Association (PFA) regarding Israeli clubs based in settlements within the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

The debate strongly echoes the international campaign that successfully isolated apartheid South Africa from global sport in the latter half of the twentieth century. This Post asks what lessons that historical precedent can offer and whether the legal and institutional architecture of modern football makes a similar exclusion of Israel feasible or legitimate.

2. The contemporary canvas: calls for suspension and the FIFA/UEFA response

Between late 2024 and 2025, the PFA and international NGOs, most prominently Amnesty International, intensified formal complaints and public appeals for action, asserting that the IFA has violated FIFA statutes and international law by permitting clubs and competitions connected to settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. In early October 2025, a coalition of legal scholars urged UEFA to bar Israel and Israeli football clubs from European tournaments, whilst UN experts and human rights actors publicly called for decisive action by football’s governing bodies.

FIFA leadership has, so far, resisted immediate exclusion. At the FIFA Council meeting in Zurich on 2 October 2025, President Gianni Infantino emphasised the body's limited mandate to resolve geopolitical conflicts and urged restraint. The Council discussed the matter, but did not table a suspension vote, reiterating the FIFA emphasis on humanitarian concern and the need for consensus among confederations. Critics have pointed to the FIFA contrasting treatment of Russia, suspended after its 2022 invasion of Ukraine, arguing that consistency requires similar measures against Israel. FIFA, however, has highlighted procedural differences; the absence of a comparable intergovernmental sanctions regime; and the need for a clear legal basis for imposing such measures.

3. Legal and institutional rules: how a suspension might work

3.1 FIFA statutes, member obligations and grounds for suspension

The FIFA statutes define the bodies and procedures competent to impose disciplinary measures, including suspension and expulsion. Such sanctions are, generally, premised on serious breaches of the FIFA statutes, codes or objectives. Practically, suspension would cut Israeli national teams and clubs off from FIFA and UEFA competitions, revoke access to funding, and withdraw membership and voting rights.

However, the FIFA legal procedures are stringent. Complaints must be substantiated, formally investigated through the federation disciplinary channels, and decisions must be defendable under both FIFA internal statutes and the broader principles of sports and international law. Decisions of this gravity must rest on credible evidence and enjoy confederation support, particularly from UEFA, which oversees most Israeli football participation.

3.2 Precedents: Russia, South Africa and others

Sporting organisations have not hesitated to impose exclusions when warranted. Russia was suspended from international football after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. That suspension followed coordinated international sanctions and a broad consensus that its invasion of Ukraine violated international law. Likewise, apartheid South Africa expulsion from FIFA in 1976 reflected decades of international condemnation and activism against racial segregation.

Yet these precedents differ in their procedural and political underpinnings. Russian exclusion followed a clear act of interstate aggression, whilst South Africa’s exclusion resulted from long-term mobilisation and near-universal consensus regarding apartheid’s illegality. The Israeli case occupies a more complex legal and geopolitical terrain, lacking both a unified intergovernmental front and a universally accepted factual narrative.

4. The South African sporting boycott: causes, mechanisms, and outcomes

The international sporting boycott of apartheid South Africa remains the archetype of sport-based political pressure. Beginning in the 1960s and culminating in widespread suspensions and expulsions across the Olympic movement and many international federations. The boycott merged civil-society activism, government policy, and institutional reform.

Key features that enabled the South African boycott success included:

• Legal clarity of the wrongdoing. Apartheid was an official, codified system of racial discrimination and segregation enacted by statute. This legal clarity provided moral and juridical grounds for exclusion.
• International consensus. Over time, a broad cross-regional coalition of states and sporting bodies recognised that South African domestic laws were incompatible with the principles of non-discrimination enshrined in sports federations constitutions.
• Duration and mobilisation. The boycott evolved through sustained activism and governmental commitment, reflecting long-term moral conviction rather than sudden reaction.
• Symbolic leverage. Sporting isolation undermined South Africa’s international legitimacy, increased domestic pressure, and amplified the effects of economic and diplomatic sanctions.

These characteristics make the South African experience a valuable analogue but also highlight the unique historical conditions that made it successful.

5. Parallels and critical differences

5.1 Parallels

• Moral framing. Both campaigns (against apartheid South Africa and Israel’s alleged human rights violations) invoke universal moral imperatives and seek non-violent accountability.
• Civil society leadership. NGOs, transnational movements, and national associations, such as the PFA, have driven both movements, shaping the discourse and mobilising public sentiment.
• Instrumentality of sport. In each instance, international sport serves as a barometer of global legitimacy: exclusion signifies moral censure; whilst participation confers acceptance.

5.2 Critical differences

• Legal distinctiveness and factual contestation. Apartheid was a formally legislated system of racial domination. By contrast, Israeli policies in the occupied territories involve disputed legal interpretations of occupation and humanitarian law, making consensus harder to achieve.
• Institutional evolution and procedural constraints. FIFA in 2025 is more commercialised and legally complex than in the 1970s. The procedural thresholds and the commercial implications of suspension are, therefore, more salient (sponsors, broadcasters, World Cup-related commitments).
• Geopolitical fragmentation. Global political alignments differ. Several important states and confederations are unlikely to support exclusion of Israel, complicating the possibility of a cross-regional consensus akin to that which isolated apartheid South Africa.

6. Normative and Legal Arguments for and against Suspension

6.1 Arguments in Favour of Suspension

• Alignment with FIFA anti-discrimination and human-rights principles. If the IFA is shown to support or tolerate violations of international law, such as by recognising clubs in illegal settlements, FIFA’s own statutes compel sanction.
• Effectiveness of non-violent pressure. Sporting exclusion serves as a peaceful yet powerful tool to hold states accountable, inflicting reputational damage and stimulating political reassessment.
• Moral consistency and institutional credibility. Having acted against Russia, FIFA risks charges of selective enforcement if it fails to address comparable or graver breaches of international law.

6.2 Arguments Against Suspension

• Preservation of political neutrality. Critics argue that sport should not substitute for political or judicial institutions in resolving geopolitical conflicts.
• Procedural fairness and legal risk. A suspension perceived as arbitrary could invite challenges before the Court of Arbitration for Sport and erode FIFA institutional legitimacy.
• Collateral impact on athletes and civilians. Blanket sanctions may harm players and fans rather than policymakers, weakening public support for reform.

7. Practical pathways, likely outcomes and institutional constraints

From a governance perspective there are several pathways open:

1. Full suspension or expulsion. Procedurally feasible but practically difficult without broad confederation support and a compelling evidentiary record.
2. Targeted measures. Sanctions against specific clubs, relocation of matches, or exclusion of settlement-based teams could be implemented under existing regulations, balancing principle with pragmatism. Amnesty International’s recent letter, for instance, urged exclusion of clubs based in settlements.
3. Procedural investigations and conditional remediation. FIFA could initiate disciplinary proceedings, compel corrective action from the IFA, and monitor compliance. An approach that preserves procedural legitimacy whilst maintaining due process.

Each pathway carries political ramifications. Whilst a full suspension would be the most potent moral statement, targeted sanctions may offer a pragmatic via media that reduces litigation risk whilst advancing rights-based goals.

8. Lessons from South Africa: How much can we generalise?

The South African boycott demonstrates that sport can be a powerful lever of international pressure, but it also teaches humility. The success of that campaign depended on unequivocal legal clarity, durable international consensus, and sustained mobilisation. The Israeli context, although morally urgent, lacks the same consensus and involves contested legal questions and significant geopolitical divergence. Nevertheless, the South African precedent affirms that sporting isolation, when grounded in evidence and procedural fairness, can accelerate broader accountability and reshape state behaviour.

9. Conclusion: sport between law and morality

The debate over calls for suspending Israel from international football epitomises the enduring tension between sport’s claim to neutrality and its role as a moral theatre. Should sport be an instrument of moral sanction when political and legal institutions struggle to produce accountability? The South African precedent demonstrates that sporting exclusion can contribute to systemic change, driving social and political transformation. Yet it also demonstrates that sporting governance must rest on principled, transparent, and legally sound processes.

If FIFA and UEFA are to remain credible guardians of integrity and human rights in sport, they cannot invoke neutrality to avoid accountability. When state conduct violates the values embedded in their own statutes, silence becomes complicity. The moral and legal imperative, therefore, points towards decisive action, grounded in due process but uncompromising in principle, to uphold the universal ideals that sport professes to represent.

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