KUALA LUMPUR: An alleged search of the Palestinian Football Association headquarters in the West Bank by the Israeli military was denounced as intolerable and unacceptable by Asian Football Confederation president Sheikh Salman Bin Ibrahim Al Khalifa on Tuesday.

A day after the alleged incident, Sheik Salman accused the Israelis of “breaking into the PFA headquarters ... a dangerous precedent that requires the international sporting family to stand together and support the PFA,” he said in a statement on the AFC website.

The AFC would work with FIFA, he added, to “study ways and mechanisms to put an end to the suffering of Palestinian football, and send a tough message to the Israeli authorities to stop its attacks on various parts of the Palestinian footballing system”.

In Tel Aviv, the military said it hadn’t targeted the building and there was no raid there. It said a routine patrol in the area asked several Palestinians for their identification cards, and when they said the cards were inside the football association building, had followed them inside to check the cards.

The PFA has complained about Israeli travel restrictions on some of its players in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, a territory ruled by Hamas.

Published in Dawn, November 26th, 2014