Palestine Football Association

The war in Gaza came to the fore at world football's biggest meeting on Friday as the Palestinian association called for Israel to be immediately suspended from FIFA.

FIFA president Gianni Infantino told the congress in Bangkok that the sport's global governing body will take independent legal advice to consider the Palestinian demand.

Turkey is set to build a 20,000-seat stadium to international standards in the Gaza Strip to support sports in Palestine, officials revealed on July 14.

A member of the Higher Council of Youth and Sports in the Gaza Strip, Abd al-Salam Haniyeh, said the Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency (T?KA) would build the stadium.

Israel's Equal Employment Opportunities Commission (EEOC) has demanded that the notorious Beitar Jerusalem, the bad boy of Israeli football, retract recent statements that it would maintain its policy of not hiring Palestinian players because of opposition by the team's militant fan base.

Legal and diplomatic battles in U.N. organizations and international sport associations involving charges of war crimes and efforts to suspend membership of one or the other are likely to shape future Israeli-Palestinian relations in the wake of last month's electoral victory by Benjamin Netanyahu.

A compromise formula this week saved Israel from being sanctioned by world football governing body FIFA and has bought the Jewish state time, but serves as a harbinger of growing diplomatic and public impatience with perceived Israeli intransigence in efforts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.