Palestine’s latest bid to suspend Israel from international football was originally scheduled to be addressed in July.

Palestine’s bid to suspend Israel from international football over its atrocities in Gaza has been deferred again by football’s governing body FIFA.

The bid, tabled by the Palestine Football Association (PFA) over Israeli football’s compliance with the atrocities being committed in Gaza, will now be discussed in October.

FIFA said it had now received the independent legal assessment of PFA’s proposals, more than a month after deferring the address for the first time.

“This assessment will be sent to the FIFA Council to review in order that the subject can be discussed at its next meeting, which will take place in October,” it said via statement.

FIFA first received the motion in May at its annual congress in Bangkok and had promised to address it in an “extraordinary” council to be called in July.

The governing body then pushed the deadline to submit the assessment to August 31, citing “requests for extension from both parties” in a statement on July 20.

A timely decision of the independent legal assessment could have resulted in Israel’s team being thrown out of the men’s football tournament at the Olympics.

It was revealed at the time that more than one independent legal report had already been submitted to FIFA before the deadline.

PFA’s Vice President, Susan Shalabi, later told Football Palestine, an independent blog, that the request for an extension from their side was for just five days, contrary to FIFA’s postponement of more than a month.

“The issue has been moved from one year to the next, one committee to the next, and one task force to the next,” Shalabi added.

Israel has repeatedly denied all accusations and has called the new bid “cynical.”

The latest bid was also supported by the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) and was accompanied by a video to show the damage and deliberate targeting of sporting facilities and players.

“We are witnessing a live televised genocide happening in Gaza,” PFA president Jibril Rajoub said back in May, addressing the FIFA Congress.

Rajoub was recently detained and summoned for questioning by the Israeli Occupation Forces upon returning from the Paris Olympics, an act later “strongly denounced” by the AFC. FIFA and IOC did not comment on the incident.

Palestine has now spoken at a FIFA Congress more than five times since 2014 to draw the governing body’s attention towards Israel’s violation of FIFA’s statutes.

Palestine’s sports delegation and players have been subject to multiple human rights violations over the years including targeted charges and restrictions on movement for sports tournaments.

Calls to suspend Israel from the international arena began stirring up after Israel’s continuation of its war in Gaza, killing nearly 40,000 people while displacing 1.9 million people out of the 2.1 million population.

Israel has continued to deliberately target athletes and sporting infrastructures in the strip, killing 400 athletes including Palestine’s first Olympian Majed Abu Maraheel, according to the Olympic committee.

Palestine’s football association claims 245 of those killed were footballers, including 69 children.

FIFA and the IOC were quick to exclude Russia from all their sporting events over its invasion of Ukraine in 2022, yet have been seemingly unheeding towards Israel’s aggression in the Gaza Strip.

The Palestinian football team, meanwhile, will have to play its first home game of the final round of the World Cup qualifiers in Malaysia against Jordan on September 10.

Despite getting approval, Palestine will only be able to host its matches at Faisal Al-Husseini International Stadium in October at the earliest, due to logistical barriers posed due to the occupation.