Palestine’s football chief Jibril Rajoub was briefly detained and summoned as Israel continues to target Palestinian sports.

Asian football’s governing body, AFC, has said that it strongly denounces Israel’s brief detention of Palestine’s football chief Jibril Rajoub, calling it a violation of fundamental rights.

The head of Palestine’s Olympic committee, Rajoub was detained by Israeli forces at the Karama/ King Hussein Bridge border crossing with Jordan, alongside the delegation’s medical officer upon their return from the Olympic Games Paris 2024.

The AFC said it is alarmed by the violation of a sports leader’s freedom of movement and called on international bodies to uphold the basic rights of individuals.

“This situation poses significant challenges for the Palestinian national team as they prepare for the AFC Asian Qualifiers [third round]. The AFC expresses its full support for the Palestinian team and their right to compete without external pressures,” it said in a statement released on Wednesday.

Although Rajoub was released and had his confiscated passport returned, the 71-year-old was ordered to appear at the Ofer Camp, Israel’s site of incarceration and intelligence interrogation since 1968, on Thursday for further questioning.

Rajoub said that he would not comply with the order to return for further questioning.

“This is something expected from an occupying power that wipes out our people and seeks to displace them, without differentiating between a woman, a child, or an elderly,” he told Palestinian News Agency WAFA on Thursday.

Rajoub was threatened with imprisonment by Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz on May 2, calling him a “terrorist in a suit” over his calls to exclude Israel’s athletes from international events. Rajoub was previously arrested for throwing a grenade at an Israeli army bus near Hebron in 1970.

Palestine Football Association also called on football’s global governing body, FIFA and the International Olympic Committee to take immediate action to end the “violations, attacks, and crimes against Palestinian sports, the FIFA Statutes, and the Olympic Charter.”

Both FIFA and the IOC are yet to comment on the incident.

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.

Rajoub’s detention came at a critical time as Palestine Football Association’s bid to suspend Israel from international football over its atrocities in Gaza and the occupied West Bank remains under consideration at FIFA.

FIFA deferred Palestine’s proposal on July 18, saying it had received extension requests from both Israeli and Palestinian authorities.

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

Palestine’s motion is grounded on Israel’s violation of human rights as it continues its war on 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.

“This latest Israeli aggression against the head of the PFA should serve as a reminder of the well-documented crimes and attacks that the Israeli occupation, with the complicity of the Israeli Football Association, have committed against Palestinian sports, resulting in the killing of hundreds, injuries, exile, destruction of infrastructure and banning of sports activity,” its statement said on Wednesday.

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 Palestine’s motion and Israel’s genocidal campaign.

The Palestinian national team, meanwhile, will play its first home game of the third round against Jordan in Malaysia on September 10.