Ashish Prashar, campaign director at Game Over Israel, said: “Uefa is at the forefront of funding and normalising the apartheid and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian territories by continuing to provide a subsidy and allowing the Israeli Football Association to be a member.”

Uefa could lose its tax-exempt status in Switzerland unless it expels Israel.

Swiss MPs in the canton of Vaud, where the European football governing body is headquartered, will vote on a resolution on Tuesday 17 March to decide whether the association should have the privilege taken away.

The resolution’s supporters note that the Israeli Football Association (IFA), a Uefa member, fields games on illegally occupied Palestinian land in the West Bank. They argue that IFA’s membership of Uefa makes Swiss taxpayers “complicit” in Israel’s breaches of international law.

If the resolution is accepted, the Vaud government would be called upon to set a deadline to Uefa to justify whether maintaining IFA as a member, and failing to take any sanctions against IFA, is compatible with the goals of promoting peace and fighting racism and discrimination, the condition of Uefa’s tax exempt status.

​“Tax exoneration means that instead of receiving that money, Swiss citizens, specifically in Vaud, are funding the illegal activities of the Israeli football Association,” the campaign group Game Over Israel said in a statement.

​The Swiss resolution reads: “As an international federation, [Uefa] has long benefited, despite its significant commercial activity, from a tax exemption granted specifically because international sports federations play an important role in promoting peace and combating racism and discrimination.”

In September last year, a panel of UN experts called for Israel to be suspended from international football as punishment for its genocide in Gaza, which has killed over 72,000 people at a conservative estimate. Both Fifa and Uefa suspended Russia’s participation in international matches soon after its invasion of Ukraine.

Ashish Prashar, campaign director at Game Over Israel, said: “Uefa is at the forefront of funding and normalising the apartheid and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian territories by continuing to provide a subsidy and allowing the Israeli Football Association to be a member.”

Vaud MP Théophile Schenker said that by failing to expel Israel, Uefa is sending a signal that it condones the expansion of settlements. “Football deserves better than that,”  he said.

Joshua Carroll is a writer and journalist.

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