After nearly three years, Palestinian Football will resume club competitions in September. The Palestinian Football Association announced "the resumption of sports activities and the football association's league beginning September 4", which were all halted after the war began on October 2023, and football will resume with a competition called the "Thousand Martyrs Cup", with the PFA President Jibril Rajoub saying it is a step forward for "the beginning of restoring life to the Palestinian sports body and giving our people a space of hope and joy in the homeland and the diaspora".
The name of the competition pays tribute to the 1,014 Palestinian members of the football community (players, coaches, referees, officials) that have been killed in the last three years. 226 clubs will participate: 146 from the Israeli-occupied West Bank, 44 from Gaza, and 36 from Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, with matches in all three locations.
The announcement comes a little over a year after Suleiman Obeid, known as 'Palestinian Pelé', was murdered in a Gaza.
Last week, the Palestine Football Association, in the middle of the debate around the lack of transparency in FIFA following the failed proposal of the FIFA Forward Enterprise, released a statement criticising FIFA's inaction in the multiple violations that Palestinian football has suffered in the last three years and even before the genocidal war, mentioning the growing number of clubs that Israel has established on occupied Palestinian territory, with FIFA looking the other way. "Silence, when a genocide is being committed live, amounts to complicity".
