| Abstract: | This analysis highlights the role of sport—particularly football—in nation-building. Using netnographic techniques, it focuses on the Palestinian struggle for self-determination and nationhood through the efforts of the Palestinian Football Association PFA] to challenge Israeli hegemony and function independently of Israeli surveillance in a sovereign Palestinian nation-state. It explains how the PFA has attempted to harness its status, manifested in its Fédération Internationale de Football Association FIFA] membership, to threaten Israel’s own FIFA membership and its international image. The value of this analysis stems from the way it embeds the empirical narrative within a broader international relations analytical/theoretical framework that problematises the central concept of “soft power” that has predominated the current “sports and international relations” literature. |
