Platini: FIFA ‘won’t accept’ Palestinian bid to suspend Israel

UEFA president Michel Platini has said FIFA ‘won’t accept’ the Palestinian FA’s bid to suspend Israel.

Speaking at a press conference ahead of tomorrow’s FIFA Congress, which was dominated by the fallout of Wednesday’s arrests of several FIFA senior executives on corruption charges, Platini said football’s world governing body ‘wouldn’t accept’ the Palestinian FA’s bid to ban Israel from FIFA, should the motion be put to a vote tomorrow.

That vote is still likely to go ahead, although Jibril Rajoub, the head of the Palestinian FA who initially called for the motion has said it could be rescinded if Israel eases freedom of movement for Palestinian players. He said: “We remain open until the last moment, everything is possible and we are open to every scenario.”

While a host of European leaders, football Associations and UEFA have called for FIFA president Sepp Blatter to resign in the wake of the scandal, the Israel’s have remained tight-lipped, with a spokeswoman telling Jewish News that the IFA wouldn’t be commenting on the matter.

Meanwhile, it’s emerged how Jack Warner, one of the officials who was arrested on Wednesday on bribery charges, previously blamed “Zionism” for a bribery scandal which saw him forced out of the organisation in 2011.

Resigning after an ethics investigation was set up to look at the then vice president receiving cash “gifts” from former Asian Football Confederation chief Mohammed Bin Hammam ahead of the organisation’s elections for president – for which the latter received a life time ban, Warner said: “I will talk about the racism that is within FIFA. I will talk about the levels of religious discrimination which I sought to correct. I will talk about the Zionism, which probably is the most important reason why this acrid attack on Bin Hammam and me was mounted.”