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As the 2025 World Cup hosted in the United States heads into its highly anticipated final match at New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium, a simmering debate over the display of Palestinian flags has emerged as one of the tournament’s most contentious off-pitch stories, drawing new attention to inconsistent political policies within global football governance. What has become clear over the course of the competition is that the Palestinian flag has become both one of the most widely visible symbols of solidarity in stadium stands and one of the most frequently targeted by venue security personnel.

Multiple supporters who brought Palestinian flags to matches have told Middle East Eye that they were stopped by security officials during venue entry and ordered to remove the flags or face confiscation, a move that directly contradicts FIFA’s own public regulations that permit all national flags to be brought into World Cup stadiums. These confrontations have occurred amid a groundswell of grassroots solidarity from fans of Arab nations competing in the tournament, who have turned out in large numbers to display Palestinian flags throughout the stands, even though Palestine is not a participating team in this year’s competition.

For pro-Palestine activists and organizers, these repeated incidents are not isolated mistakes, but rather a reflection of what they frame as growing systemic scrutiny of Palestinian identity in public spaces across the U.S., even as popular global support for Palestinian statehood and an end to the war in Gaza has become increasingly visible. As the tournament prepares for its final showdown, two major questions remain unanswered: whether venue authorities will allow Palestinian flags to be displayed openly in the stands of MetLife Stadium, and whether Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – who faces widespread accusations of war crimes for his government’s military campaign in Gaza – will attend the final as previously rumored.

Maisa Morrar, a Palestinian-American community organizer based in Oakland, argues that FIFA itself bears ultimate responsibility for the clashes between security guards and flag-bearing fans. She explains that conflicting pre-tournament messaging from the global football governing body over whether Palestinian flags would be allowed created unnecessary confusion, which in turn emboldened security staff to confront supporters displaying the symbol. “We were seeing reports that FIFA was allowing the Palestine flag in stadiums, and my first thought was, why was that even a question?” Morrar said in an interview. “People bring their national flags to World Cup matches all the time; it was bizarre that there was ever any question over whether Palestinians could fly their flag.”

For many attendees, those unclear policies quickly turned into on-the-ground conflict. Omar Dreidi, a Palestinian-American from Southern California and an NBA player agent with past connections to FIFA through the FIFA Masters program, was confronted by security while attending a match at California’s Levi’s Stadium. He told Middle East Eye that security approached him directly and said he was not permitted to display his Palestinian flag.

Dreidi, who is familiar with FIFA’s official rules and maintains connections within the organization, refused to comply. A viral video he posted to the social platform X immediately after the confrontation shows him draped in the Palestinian flag, challenging security: “If you’re going to make me take down my Palestinian flag, then make that person take off their keffiyeh,” he says in the footage, pointing to another supporter who had stepped in to defend him. After an extended back-and-forth, the security guard radioed his supervisors before returning to inform Dreidi he could keep the flag. “When he told me I could keep it, he said ‘you can chill now’ – and I told him, you were the one who came and harassed me,” Dreidi recounted.

The incident drew immediate solidarity from nearby spectators, with two Algerian fans stepping in to support Dreidi, and another attendee beginning to record the interaction. “It shows acts of solidarity and pride and love, and I was really grateful for those two guys,” Dreidi said. After he shared his experience online, Dreidi received dozens of messages from other fans across the tournament reporting identical confrontations, many of whom had their Palestinian flags confiscated by security. “I felt bad because I wish they knew their rights under FIFA rules,” he said. He has since urged all Palestinian supporters attending matches to familiarize themselves with tournament regulations, document all interactions with security if possible, and says he has connected with FIFA’s legal team to offer support to fans facing similar harassment.

Middle East Eye reached out to FIFA for official comment on the incidents ahead of publication, but did not receive a response before the article went to press.

The disputes over Palestinian flags are unfolding against a backdrop of broader criticism of the current World Cup and FIFA’s leadership on multiple human rights fronts. While FIFA markets the tournament as a global celebration of football and cross-national unity, campaigners and activists have accused the governing body of failing to uphold those stated principles when confronted with ongoing war, human rights abuses and political expression.

Critics have repeatedly highlighted what they call FIFA’s deeply inconsistent approach to global conflicts. In 2022, Russia was fully suspended from international football within days of launching its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Yet repeated calls from the Palestinian Football Association and dozens of global human rights organizations to suspend Israel over its ongoing military campaign in Gaza, which has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians to date, the majority of them women and children, have not resulted in any similar action from FIFA.

FIFA has also faced new scrutiny over its increasingly close public alignment with former U.S. President Donald Trump, who has made multiple high-profile appearances at tournament events. Rights groups have raised alarm over FIFA’s willingness to align itself with a political leader accused of undermining international law and domestic civil liberties, particularly after FIFA awarded Trump its annual FIFA Presidential Award earlier in the tournament.

For many Palestinian supporters, these broader institutional controversies have framed the flag disputes as part of a larger pattern of institutional bias, rather than isolated errors by individual security staff.

For Dreidi, however, the tournament has also highlighted football’s unique power to unite diverse supporters across national and political divides. “We have many problems with FIFA – the peace prize for Trump, the way they allow Israel to play without any sanctions, we have a lot of problems – but put that aside for a second,” he said. “The World Cup is a really unique sporting event because it brings people together. I see the pride and the joy it brings in people.”

When asked what message he wants the global public to take from the widespread display of Palestinian flags at the tournament, Dreidi said it boils down to a simple demand for equality and inclusion. “I just want everybody to know that the Palestinian flag, like any other nation in the world, is allowed in stadiums,” he said. “We’re allowed to wear our jerseys, we’re allowed to fly our flag high, and be prideful. I knew that going in.”

For Morrar, attending the tournament was about far more than watching football. She said it felt critical to be present at a major U.S.-hosted global event at this historic moment, and to witness the widespread grassroots solidarity firsthand. “It felt really important for me to go and see the camaraderie and the solidarity, not just for the games but also for us as Palestinians,” she said. She added that fans from dozens of competing nations repeatedly approached her to express solidarity, ask to hold her Palestinian flag, and join chants in support of Palestinian liberation. “Everywhere we’ve gone, people have been so receptive to the flag, and I think a large part of that has to do with the genocide in Gaza,” Morrar said. “The message I’ve fully received and witnessed is that the people are really standing with Palestine, and that at the end of the day it’s always about people’s struggles and their liberation.”

A former top European Union diplomat has leveled explosive accusations that the United States and Israel are leveraging unproven sexual misconduct claims against International Criminal Court (ICC) Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan to advance a long-held goal: disabling the global court from the inside out. In a Friday opinion piece published by Project Syndicate, Josep Borrell, the former EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs, is calling on ICC member nations to defend fair legal procedure when they vote on Khan’s future next week.

“Some institutional failures do not stem from public scandal, but from deliberate procedural sabotage, where acts of undermining are disguised under the rhetoric of good-faith investigation and accountability,” Borrell wrote in the piece. “By the time the true nature of what is unfolding becomes clear, irreversible damage has already been done. I fear this is exactly what we are witnessing in the coordinated attacks against Karim Khan. Recent developments align perfectly with objectives Washington and Jerusalem have spent months advancing.”

The 125-member Assembly of States Parties (ASP) to the Rome Statute, the governing body of the ICC, is scheduled to cast its decisive vote on Khan’s tenure at United Nations Headquarters in New York on 24 July. The vote follows a June decision by the ASP’s 21-member executive bureau, which voted by a two-thirds majority last month to find Khan committed “serious misconduct” — a ruling that directly contradicts the findings of an independent judicial panel appointed by the bureau itself. That panel concluded evidence compiled from a United Nations investigation into the allegations was insufficient to confirm any form of misconduct. Khan has forcefully denied all accusations of wrongdoing and breach of professional duty.

Borrell points to a series of irregular procedural changes first exclusively reported by Middle East Eye that break the ICC’s own established rules. Originally, the removal process was structured as two separate votes: first, a vote to confirm whether serious misconduct occurred, followed by a second vote to decide on removal if misconduct was upheld. Under the Rome Statute’s Article 46, a finding of misconduct requires a two-thirds majority of states present and voting, while a final removal vote needs an absolute majority of 63 out of the 125 total ASP members. The ASP’s own March procedural guidance, seen by Middle East Eye, explicitly outlined this two-step process. Despite this, the bureau chose to merge the two votes into a single ballot that requires only an absolute majority to remove Khan immediately.

The contours of the misconduct allegation have also shifted dramatically, Borrell argues. In a confidential June 8 bureau decision obtained by Middle East Eye, the body claimed it had found “beyond reasonable doubt” that Khan engaged in a sexual relationship with the complainant, arguing that such a relationship was inherently inappropriate due to the power imbalance between the two. This reframing directly deviates from the original non-consensual sexual misconduct allegations that formed the core of the investigation and subsequent media leaks. Both Khan and the complainant have denied the existence of any consensual sexual relationship.

Borrell warns that this procedural manipulation lowers the bar for removal dramatically. “This is no trivial procedural change. Folding the second vote into the first — on an accusation that remains unproven — allows for removal based on an unsubstantiated claim, or even a completely new allegation no one ever raised, such as an abuse-of-authority consensual relationship,” he wrote.

Tracing the origins of the campaign against Khan to a direct threat from U.S. lawmakers earlier this year, Borrell notes that in April 2024, a bipartisan group of U.S. senators explicitly warned Khan that moving forward with an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would make him a target for retaliation. Despite the threat, Khan proceeded to file applications for arrest warrants against Netanyahu, former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and three senior Hamas officials. This was not the first time Khan has pursued warrants against high-profile leaders who had long been considered untouchable: under his tenure, the ICC has also secured warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin, former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, and senior Taliban leadership.

Borrell frames the attack on Khan as part of a broader, well-documented offensive to dismantle the ICC entirely. He points to a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who openly stated the current U.S. administration intends to dismantle the court “brick by brick.” Washington has already imposed harsh sanctions on 11 senior ICC officials, including Khan, two deputy prosecutors, and eight judges: the sanctions have frozen their personal bank accounts and restricted access to services provided by major global tech and finance platforms including Apple, Amazon, and PayPal.

Citing reporting from The Financial Times, Borrell also revealed that former U.S. President Donald Trump, during a May 2025 meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, proposed that China and Russia — neither of which are parties to the Rome Statute — join the U.S. campaign against the court. Borrell argues this move directly undermines the U.S.’s official justification for its anti-ICC campaign, which it frames as a defense of national sovereignty. “That America’s chosen partners in this crusade are precisely the two countries with the greatest reason to fear the court says more about the real purpose of the operation against Khan than any official communique about sovereignty,” he wrote.

“Both the Trump administration and Prime Minister Netanyahu want the same outcome: to ensure that no international court can hold soldiers, state officials, or their allies accountable, no matter how severe the allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity,” Borrell added. “Both see the so-called ‘Khan scandal’ as the perfect opportunity to defang the court permanently. They do not need to destroy it from the outside when they can convince its own member states to hollow it out from within, ignoring a formal judicial finding to stage a political vote against the man who issued the arrest warrants that most inconvenienced them.”

Closing his argument, Borrell praised Khan for his willingness to pursue high-profile suspects that would have been off-limits in the court’s earlier history. “At a time when international criminal justice and the global rule of law are facing a full-scale frontal assault, not least from indicted war criminals themselves, he deserves the full recognition and support of the international community,” he concluded.

The rapid escalation of direct military conflict between the United States and Iran has inflicted mounting damage on critical civilian infrastructure across the Persian Gulf region, triggering widespread disruption of basic services and raising alarms over the risk of a full-scale regional war. In the most recent civilian casualty of the escalating hostilities, Iranian officials confirmed that overnight US airstrikes destroyed a key coastal desalination plant that supplied drinking water to roughly 10,000 residents across 20 rural communities.

Hamzeh Pour, chief executive of Hormozgan Province’s Water and Wastewater Company, told Iran’s state-run Tasnim News Agency that the strikes targeted desalination pumps and core electrical infrastructure in Bunji village, located in the coastal Jask district. “The supply of drinking water to 20 villages with a combined population of approximately 10,000 people has been completely disrupted,” Pour said. He labeled the attack on the civilian water facility “a series of crimes and terrorist acts,” noting that the facility’s seawater pumping station and main power transformer were “completely destroyed” and that the affected communities are now grappling with a severe drinking water shortage.

The strike on the desalination plant came as part of the United States Central Command (Centcom)’s seventh consecutive round of overnight airstrikes targeting Iranian positions across the region. Centcom confirmed in a public statement that the latest wave of attacks focused on Iranian surveillance outposts, military logistics hubs, underground weapons storage facilities and maritime military assets. The operation drew on a full spectrum of US military capabilities, including fighter aircraft, attack drones, and naval warships, and unfolded as more than 50,000 US service members remain deployed across the Middle East to support ongoing operations against Iran.

As hostilities spread across the Gulf, neighboring Kuwait reported its own critical infrastructure damage following Iranian retaliatory strikes. Kuwait’s Ministry of Electricity, Water and Renewable Energy announced that a fire broke out at a key component of one of the country’s integrated power generation and desalination plants after an Iranian attack. In response, authorities implemented precautionary safety measures, taking several power generating units offline to protect plant staff and preserve the stability of the national electrical grid. The ministry confirmed that emergency response plans have been activated to maintain uninterrupted power and water services, while technical teams continue round-the-clock monitoring of the situation. Kuwait also temporarily closed its airspace, suspended operations at Kuwait International Airport, and rescheduled nearly all commercial flights amid the wave of incoming missile and drone attacks.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has issued a stark warning to all nations hosting US military forces in the region, urging them to prepare for imminent retaliatory action. In an official statement, the IRGC called on host countries to “activate their civil defence units to protect their citizens and move them away from potential military targets,” accusing these states of allowing their territory to be used as “launchpads for aggression against Iran.” The IRGC confirmed it launched missile and drone strikes against multiple US-aligned military sites, including Camp Arifjan and Ali Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait, US naval facilities at Kuwait’s Mina al-Ahmadi port, and key military installations in Bahrain. Bahraini authorities activated air raid sirens across the country multiple times during the attacks, while Kuwaiti military forces confirmed they intercepted a number of incoming missiles and drones before impact.

Iranian state media also reported new damage to two key bridges along the busy Bandar Abbas-Rudan highway, while provincial officials confirmed that at least eight civilians were killed in US strikes carried out in Hormozgan Province on Friday. Against this backdrop, a senior Iranian military official has announced a major shift in Tehran’s military posture, warning that Iran will abandon its long-held policy of restraint if US attacks continue. “Iran will no longer limit itself to retaliatory, like-for-like responses… and no political border will be safe,” Major-General Mohsen Rezaee told Iran’s state-run IRIB news agency. “Until now, we have not focused on expanding the war, nor on launching an invasion. Until now, the goal was deterrence, to put an end to the conflict,” he said, adding that “the policy of negotiating during war is over.”

Beyond the immediate human and infrastructure damage, the latest round of cross-border attacks has disrupted one of the world’s most critical energy chokepoints. Data from ship-tracking platform MarineTraffic shows commercial vessel traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has fallen to its lowest level in three years, with only eight vessels transiting the strategic waterway on Thursday, down from 15 the previous day. Roughly 20% of the world’s daily oil supply passes through the strait, so any extended disruption to shipping there risks roiling global energy markets and driving up fuel prices worldwide.