CAS 2017/A/5166 and 5405 Palestine Football Association v. Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), Award of 9 July 2018

This article deals with a case stemming originally from a complaint lodged in 2015 by the Palestine Football Association (“PFA”) with FIFA regarding six teams affiliated to the Israeli Football Association (“IFA”), which are physically located in Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (“OPT”). In particular, the PFA claimed that a group of IFA-affiliated clubs were violating FIFA rules by playing on the PFA’s territory. After a long and tortuous consultation process, which included the creation of a dedicated Monitoring Committee, the FIFA Council decided in October 2017 to maintain the status quo and declined to sanction the IFA or the clubs. Both this decision and a related motion adopted by the FIFA Congress were appealed by the PFA to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). This commentary reviews the ensuing CAS Award and concludes that it constituted a missed opportunity as it failed to tackle the main questions at the heart of the dispute.