“Dozens under the rubble” Palestinian official: Israel killed 256 athletes and technicians

The head of the Palestinian Football Association, Jibril Rajoub, revealed that Israel has killed 256 Palestinian players, administrators and technicians since last October 7, pointing to dozens of others under the rubble.

Rajoub added, in a meeting with media representatives, that “the Palestinian Football Association submitted a draft resolution to the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) that includes two points. The first is to provide all the reasons for the ability and positive conditions for the Palestinian Federation to work on developing sports and spreading them in all the Palestinian territories.”

The second point, according to Rajoub, who holds the position of Secretary of the Central Committee of the Palestinian National Liberation Movement (Fatah), is to subject the Israeli Federation to accountability and accountability according to the regulations and laws.

He stressed that "the Israeli Federation violated the FIFA regulations and laws in a group of issues, the first of which is organizing the league in the territories of the Palestinian state, and there are clubs participating in the Israeli league on Palestinian lands."

Regarding the human losses at the sports level, Rajoub said: “In the last aggression, Israel killed 256 athletes, technicians and administrators, including 11 in the West Bank,” noting that “dozens of athletes are under the rubble, and we are unable to count their number, in addition to the arrest of hundreds of athletes.” .

He explained that Israel, in its war on Gaza, "destroyed all sports institutions in Gaza, and after their destruction, turned them into places of detention and arrest similar to the Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib prisons."

The Israeli occupation army killed many sports stars during its war on Gaza, which entered its eighth month, including beach soccer star Muhammad Barakat, nicknamed “The Lion,” who was killed in a raid on Khan Yunis in the south of the Gaza Strip early last December.

The Israeli bombing also destroyed more than 55 sports facilities, including 45 football facilities, 38 in Gaza and 7 in the West Bank, in addition to arresting 11 athletes from the West Bank in the absence of final statistics from Gaza.

Israel's escalation against the Palestinian sports system comes as part of a devastating war that the army has been waging against Gaza for more than 7 months, leaving tens of thousands of Palestinians martyred and wounded, most of them children and women, and about 10,000 missing amid massive destruction and famine that claimed the lives of children and the elderly.

Israel continues the war despite the issuance of a resolution by the UN Security Council to stop the fighting immediately, and also despite the International Court of Justice demanding immediate measures to prevent acts of “genocide” and improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza.