The Palestine Football Association published a list of 29 players that will participate in a preparatory camp in Doha ahead of next month’s friendlies against Kenya and Kyrgyzstan in Bishkek.

The most notable absences in the list are Assad Al-Hamlawi, Wessam Abou Ali, and Ataa Jaber who all miss out due to injury. The former picked up a knock on the penultimate day of the Romanian league season that will require 20 days rest.

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Al-Rayan’s Amid Mahajneh has also not recovered from an injury picked up in March.

The only other player from the 2025 FIFA Arab Cup to miss out is Mahmoud Abu Warda. The soon to be 31 year old’s 44 caps is good enough for 15th all-time in national team history but he seems to have fallen victim to a youth movement.

There are also no calls for Mohammed Rashid (10th most capped player in national team history) and Islam Batran who had found form with Syria’s Al-Karameh.

There is a recall for Mohammed Balah who was in Gaza for the first eight months of the genocide and rebuilt his career in Egypt and Qatar. The 33 year old is the oldest member of the team and was last called up in August 2019.

The list also includes four new names Gianni Touma (Lokomtiv Plovdiv/BUL), Abdelhadi Rashid (Al-Ansar/LIB), Abada Baroud (Ohod Club/KSA), and Sultan Abu Daken (Hatta Club/UAE)

There are also recalls for Adam Kaied, Mohamad Hebous, and Agustín Manzur.

Several South American outlets have reported that Argentine born Caín Fara has been called up and is only missing the final approval from FIFA to make his debut. His call up has been in the works for more than a year and was first teased by Football Palestine back in July 2025:

The rest of the squad is as follows:

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Palestine’s plans for the June window seemed to be all set to go last week. The All India Football Federation announced to its clubs that they would be heading to Dushanbe to face Palestine on June 6th.

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Several sources had confirmed to Football Palestine that a friendly against Tajikistan on June 1st had been agreed upon and the addition of a second friendly in the same location seemed to make sense from a logistical perspective.

As is their nature, the Palestine Football Association did not announce either friendly. So it should come as no surprise that earlier this week another Football Association- this time Kenya- announced that they, and not India, would face Palestine on June 6th in Bishkek.

The Kyrgyz Football Union has now announced that a friendly against Palestine will take place on June 9th with kickoff set for 18:30 local time.

In a separate post, Kenyan Football has also confirmed their friendly with Palestine.

[Update May 20th] Ehab Abu Jazar had originally wanted to retain the friendly against Tajikistan on June 1st but the TFF wanted a commitment to play both friendlies. As a result, Palestine will not travel to Dushanbe and will instead play Kenya and Kyrgyz Republic in Bishkek following an extended training camp that will start on Saturday and conclude on June 2nd.

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Palestine will make their long awaited 2026 debut in Dushanbe, Tajikistan next month with a pair of friendlies.

Ehab Abu Jazar’s men were supposed to play a pair of March friendlies in Morocco against Benin and Mauritania but the Iran War rendered travel an impossibility.

The national team staff had cast a wide net and approached dozens of national teams in an attempt to schedule a friendly in the window but were ultimately rebuffed.

Qatar will play host to training camp that will involve the Qatar based players this week but more will join as the 2025/26 season draws to a close.

Palestine will play Tajikistan on June 1st and face India five days later. Palestine last faced Tajikistan in October 2018 while their last match against the Blue Tigers came back in 2014.

Palestine have never lost to either national team nor have they face either team in official competition.

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The draw for the 2027 AFC Asian Cup was conducted on Saturday evening in the historic At-Turaif district in the Saudi capital of Riyadh.

The 2027 edition will represent Palestine’s fourth participation at the finals having punched their ticket to every edition since Australia 2015.

Palestine’s group will include some familiar foes. The team’s last competitive match was a FIFA Arab Cup quarterfinal against Saudi Arabia back in December 2025. The two teams will lock horns again, this time in the opening match that will kick off the tournament at the King Fahd Sports City Stadium on January 7th, 2027.

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Palestine will travel to Al-Kobar five days later to face Kuwait before rounding up group play against Oman on January 17th at Al-Awwal Park.

In the post-draw reaction Oman manager Tarik Sekitoui described Group A as “being amongst the hardest and also the most competitive due to the presence of four Arab teams.”

Palestine manager Ehab Abu Jazar expressed his happiness at being drawn to play the opening match and stated plainly that “each team in the group has an equal chance.”

It was a theme reiterated by Kuwait boss Helio Sousa.

Gerogios Donis, who recently took the helm of Saudi Arabia, laid down the gauntlet for his team stating his desire to lift the trophy.

“Generally, the draw was very interesting. We respect all opponents and we have to be ready for the tournament. We have some priorities now which is to build the team with my philosophy. It will be normal to have a lot of focus on the team because we are the hosts but we have the experience to manage that. It’s nice to have Palestine as the first opponent, we know their troubles but we will be focused to start well.”

The rest of the groups are as follows:

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Palestine clinched their fourth successive Asian Cup finals appearance by virtue of their performance in World Cup qualification back in 2024. Now the draw is set to determine the six groups of four.

The draw will be broadcast on the AFC’s YouTube page and Football Palestine’s subscribers can participate in our live watchalong here.

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At least three officials from the Palestine Football Association (PFA) have been denied visas to enter Canada to attend this month’s FIFA Congress. The annual gathering of all 212 Member Associations is due to be held in Vancouver and is seen as the unofficial kickoff ahead of the 2026 FIFA World Cup held in Canada, Mexico, and the United States.

There was no official reason for the visa denial but the following statement was released by a spokesperson for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC):

“Applications are considered on a case-by-case basis based on the information presented by the applicant. All clients who submit an application to IRCC are subject to comply with eligibility and admissibility requirements, as part of the process, regardless of their nationality. All applicants receive thorough correspondence from IRCC regarding the decision on their application.”

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This is not the first time Jibril Rajoub- the President of the PFA has been denied the ability to travel on official football business. In June 2024, Rajoub was denied permission to enter Australia despite the fact that he had been in the country on two previous occasions including as PFA chief during the 2015 AFC Asian Cup.

In response to that decision Rajoub told ABC News that "There's someone, somewhere in the government of Australia who are behaving under the pressure or influence of the Israeli stupid and crazy government."

The Palestine Football Association has yet to respond to Football Palestine’s request for comment.

There is no shortage of speculation as to why this decision was taken with some claiming it is the result of statements made at a press conference last month following the light sanctions FIFA levied on Israel in the aftermath of the Gaza genocide.

That theory does not hold water as the PFA would need the cooperation of the executive to bring any motions to a vote. Gianni Infantino has previously stated that he thinks “the conflict is over.”

It is perhaps more likely that the Canadian government was lobbied to take this stance. The PFA has since asked for FIFA’s help to intervene— they too have yet to comment on the matter.

Inevitably a lot will be made of Jibril Rajoub’s history- which ignores the fact that the General Secretary and Chief Legal Officer have no history of armed resistance or outlandish statements.

It is worth noting that Jibril Rajoub has traveled to the United States- where it is far harder to procure a visa- before and was there as recently as 2017.

In spite of his arrest on terrorism charges as a teenager Jibril Rajoub has been a darling of Western liberals for three decades now. The gusto to which he cracked down on dissenters during the Oslo Accord era won him many friends. So much so that his name was even floated as a potential replacement to Yasser Arafat and more recently to current Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

In 2022, Jibril Rajoub met with Robin Wettlaufer, the Canadian representative to the Palestinian Authority, who described as “A great friend to Canada.” Canada has since upgraded its mission to an embassy following Canada’s recognition of Palestine last year.

Rajoub has served as PFA President since 2008 and has won all four of his elections by acclimation. His current term is up in 2028.

No other delegations have been denied visas according to Jake Landau who also reported on this story.

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The Asian Football Confederation (AFC) has announced that the draw for the 2027 AFC Asian Cup will take place on May 9th, 2026 in Riyadh. The historic At-Turaif District in ad-Dir'iyah, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, will host the draw.

The announcement follows the abrupt postponement of the draw- originally slated for April 11th- as a result of the US-Israel war on Iran.

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Since the decision was made to postpone the draw the field of finalists has become clearer. On the last match day of qualification in March, Tajikistan and Thailand punched their tickets getting the results they needed against Philippines and Turkmenistan, respectively.

Confirmation of the overturning of two wins registered by Malaysia as a result of fielding ineligible players rendered their match against Vietnam a dead rubber. As a result, the Vietnamese clinched passage to their third straight Asian Cup finals.

Syria and Singapore join the field and the identity of the last team will be known on June 4th. The match between Lebanon and Yemen was also postponed but no matter the result, the team that qualifies will be placed in Pot 4. The rest of the Pots are as follows:

Palestine are in Pot 3 and just as their participation in 2015, 2019, and 2023 they are guaranteed to face at least one Arab opponent. There is a distinct possibility that Palestine’s group opponents could mirror their WCQ Round 3 Group should they draw South Korea and Kuwait alongside Iraq, Jordan, or Oman from Pot 2.

Further details in regards to the exact time of the draw will be released closer to the date.

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Up until 2015, the Palestine Football Association (PFA) and its national team had been an afterthought both on and off the pitch.

Palestine was officially recognised by FIFA in 1998, but after some promising early success, the team went into a tailspin.

Jibril Rajoub took over the PFA in 2008, and despite increased funding, success proved hard to come by.

Those in charge seemed genuinely disinterested and outright hostile to the footballing apparatus.

Then, on 30 May 2014, Palestine qualified for its first-ever Asian Cup, and a media frenzy ensued.

Read the Full Article, here.

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The discourse around many national teams is how rare it is to find a pure striker in the modern game. In response to market demands, academies have created footballers that are over trained and lack that intangible element of sniffing out goals.

In the case of Palestine, they have lucked into a generation of strikers born between 1998 and 2000 who know how to find the back of the net. They are the products of distinct environments.

In an interview with Football Palestine last year Oday Dabbagh recounted how indifferent he was when it came to watching football matches. He just wanted to play with his friends and have fun.

Wessam Abou Ali was a top rated prospect and Danish youth international before declaring for Palestine.

Assad Al-Hamlawi grew up in Helsingborg but was far removed from the elite of Swedish football. He made his professional debut in the fourth division before his hometown club snatched him up and gave him an Allsvenskan debut. In spite of his goal scoring promise he had to go to Poland to make an impact in the top flight.

Now all three are teammates with the national team who could ride their goals glory in 2027 and beyond.

Easter Weekend showed just how good all three strikers are. Wessam Abou Ali got the party started on Saturday night with a brace that delivered Columbus Crew their first win of the season. He was voted into the Team of the Week for his efforts.

Then Oday Dabbagh responded scoring a goal that brought Zamalek level with Al-Masry en route to a 4-1 win. The striker now has double digit goals on the season and is one off the golden boot pace in the Premier League.

On Pasquetta, Assad Al-Hamlawi joined the party finishing off a sweeping move to give Craiova a 2-0 lead in the 61st minute against CFR Cluj. The 25 year old now has 13 goals and 4 assists in 25 starts across all competitions.

All three players are their team’s respective top scorers and while it is too early to tell whether Abou Ali’s Columbus will challenge for silverware both Oday Dabbagh and Assad Al-Hamlawi could win league titles in Egypt and Romania, respectively.

Not only did the weekend feature goals for Palestinians in Europe, Africa, and the Americas but there was a goal on the Asian continent as well with Alaa Aldeen Hassan marking his recent transfer from Al-Arabi to Al-Gharafa by scoring in a 3-2 loss to Duhail.

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I’ve just released a 6-part podcast series called “Scoreless at the Break: How Football Explains Palestine’s Political Rivalry”—and I think it might be up your alley.

The hook: It’s the story of the Palestinian national team from 2005-2011, and it’s wild.

A few scenes:

• A coach who forgot his own name after a brain cancer diagnosis—then showed up two months later, mid-chemo, to lead Palestine from the touchline in a World Cup qualifier

• A national team that got stranded abroad after a civil war broke out back home

• A World Cup qualification campaign that lasted exactly 90 minutes—because the team couldn’t get exit permits for the second leg

• A 19-year-old footballer who was declared dead after an Israeli airstrike, placed in a morgue refrigerator, and woke up five hours later

Beyond the football, it’s a deep dive into what happened after Hamas won the 2006 election—the sanctions, the US-backed coup attempt, the civil war. Told through the lens of the national team to give insight into what Palestine was like after the end of the second Intifada.

The podcast is only available for premium subscribers but you can avail of a 40% discount

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You can listen to all six episodes below: