No red card for Israel

There was one big winner at Friday's 65th FIFA Congress, and it wasn't Palestinian Football Association head Jibril Rajoub or Israel Football Association chief Ofer Eini. The big winner is named Sepp Blatter. Despite the biggest corruption scandal in the history of the international soccer federation, and over European objection, the Swiss president managed to secure a fifth term. Even soccer has its pope.

But we, naturally, were more focused on the Palestinians' call to suspend Israel from FIFA. Since only apartheid-era South Africa has ever been suspended from FIFA, there is no need to explain what the ramifications would be if such a gambit were to succeed: Even the "happy" fact that we would no longer be disappointed once every four years by our failure to make it into the World Cup would be no consolation.

An important entity would have branded Israel an apartheid state. If the move had been successful, it would have given the Palestinians motivation for other initiatives with other international bodies. It's a serious matter. And that was exactly what Jibril Rajoub was looking for.

At the last minute, Rajoub withdrew the demand, because he realized it wouldn't get the necessary approval of 75% of the federation's 209 representatives. Rajoub hadn't come to Zurich to give us any boons. He came as part of our Ramallah neighbors' idea to censure Israel in every possible international forum. Incidentally, about a week ago an Egyptian initiative to clear the entire Middle East of nuclear arms was shelved, another gain for Israel that proves that the diplomatic tsunami hasn't yet swallowed up our shores.

Even if the discourse at times looked more like a bazaar, it was good that the whole matter ended with Eini and Rajoub shaking hands and compromising. The conclusion for the Palestinians is that negotiation can yield much more than conflict.

Rajoub had pulled out a symbolic red card over racism (so did we) and brought us into the game (and here our paths diverged). Eini was right when he refrained from entering a political argument and didn't start explaining that hey, what can you do -- terrorism exists in Gaza as well as in the PA territories. If only all this were behind us and we could finally play soccer against the Palestinians, even if we might not win.

Yesterday I was surfing different websites to see how the world was covering the subject of Israel's non-ban from FIFA. The world was much more focused on the story of Blatter's survival as president, the war between FIFA and UEFA (the Union of European Football Associations), and the great diplomatic battle between Russia (which is hosting the 2018 World Cup) and the Americans, who exposed the corruption scandal. Our story? It was an English-language site that claimed that "FIFA gave Israel a yellow card" -- an English-language Israeli news site, of course.

The non-suspension has returned to proportions. Israel wasn't given a red card, or a yellow one. Rajoub understood that a Palestinian state wouldn't be born in Zurich. We should hope that he also realized that the "us-or-them" approach (the demand to suspend us, in this case) has finally got out of style. Until next time.

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