JERUSALEM — The Palestinians dropped their bid to suspend Israel from international soccer competition at the last minute Friday, and agreed to instead form a committee of the sport’s governing body, FIFA, to handle their complaints of racism and discrimination.  Jibril Rajoub, president of the Palestine Football Association, called for a vote at FIFA’s annual congress to ask the United Nations to determine whether five teams from settlements in the occupied West Bank should be allowed to continue to play in Israeli leagues. But FIFA’s president, Sepp Blatter, blocked that initiative, and said the new committee would also decide how to handle the contentious question of the settlement teams.  In an emotional speech, Mr. Rajoub said he had been persuaded to abandon the demand to suspend Israel by fellow delegates to the FIFA congress, particularly one from South Africa, who said the vote would be “painful” for the conclave scarred by scandal after Wednesday’s dawn arrest of top soccer executives. He accepted Mr. Blatter’s proposal for a “peace match” between Israeli and Palestinian teams, but also said it “does not mean I give up the resistance.”  “I think it’s time now to raise the red card for racism, humiliation and discrimination in Palestine and everywhere,” Mr. Rajoub said from the podium, pulling an actual red card from his coat pocket.  He said the Palestinian situation was “even worse than what was in South Africa,” which FIFA suspended from the 1960s until 1992. “There they wanted them to be slaves,” Mr. Rajoub said, referring to South Africa during the apartheid era, adding, “But here in Palestine, they don’t want us to be.”  The FIFA campaign, part of a mounting Palestinian effort to press the case against Israeli occupation in international forums, garnered global attention and incited deep concern in Israel’s soccer-obsessed society. Israel’s foreign ministry sent diplomats to Zurich to join sports officials in a blitz to block the proposal, winning the support of European federations that made it all but impossible for Mr. Rajoub to garner the required 75 percent majority.  Dear @FIFAcom delegates, the time is now to support equality and human rights #FIFACongress #RedCard2Apartheid  Mr. Blatter echoed Israelis in describing the proposal as a dangerous politicization of sport, and met repeatedly with Mr. Rajoub and his Israeli counterpart, Ofer Eini, to broker a compromise, including a meeting during Friday’s lunch break that ended two hours before the proposal came up for discussion. Mr. Eini said he was “delighted” that Mr. Rajoub had dropped the suspension, and publicly invited him for a handshake, which the two men eventually concluded to great applause.  “Let’s leave it to the politicians to deal with politics — you and I together, let’s join forces and do the best football we can on both sides,” Mr. Eini said, addressing Mr. Rajoub from the podium. “I hope that our cooperation will be the beginning of a process that, maybe, will lead to peace between our peoples, that maybe will bring our peoples together, and football is a uniting element, not a dividing element.”  Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, who said in a Facebook post earlier Friday that the Palestinian proposal “stems from the fact of opposition to our right to maintain our own state,” issued a statement after it was dropped, calling it a unilateral “provocation” that he said “will only push peace further away.”  PM Netanyahu: Our international effort has proven itself and led to the failure of the Palestinian Authority attempt to oust us from FIFA. >  The new FIFA committee is to monitor Israeli commitments to ease athletes’ travel through checkpoints and border crossings, remove tariffs on the import of sports equipment, and help build fields and facilities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Mr. Blatter said it would also “deal with the matter of the Palestinian or Israeli territories,” referring to the fate of teams from five Israeli settlements, though he also said FIFA’s executive committee had decided this week that it “cannot interfere” in such a dispute.  Yaakov Finkelstein, an Israeli diplomat sent to Zurich for the FIFA congress, said any action on the settlement teams would have been “a deal-breaker for us.”  The Palestinians contend the settlement teams violate FIFA rules by, essentially, having one member’s teams playing in another’s turf. The amended Palestinian proposal, which the congress passed overwhelmingly, calls on FIFA to ask the United Nations for official notification of its 2012 resolution upgrading Palestine to nonmember observer-state status “in order to prove the territorial issue.”  Mr. Rajoub has been pressing FIFA to take action against Israel for three years, and said previous committees formed by the organization yielded little. But this year’s campaign gained more traction, amid intensifying international criticism of the continuing occupation and a growing movement to boycott Israeli academic and cultural institutions, and companies that do business in settlements.  Zaid Shuaibi, a spokesman for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, expressed disappointment with FIFA as well as the Palestinian soccer organization. “FIFA and its membership have delayed the suspension of Israel,” he said in a statement, “but they cannot delay the growth of the international boycott of Israel or prevent the continued isolation of Israel because of its human rights abuses and war crimes against the Palestinian people.”  Pro-Palestinian protesters camped outside the congress, and two women burst into the hall Friday morning, shouting, “Red card to racism!” before being quickly removed by security guards.  By afternoon, a few dozen young Palestinian players gathered in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh, carrying soccer balls and the symbolic red cards. Along with international activists, they chanted, “One, two, three, four, occupation no more; five, six, seven, eight, Israel the fascist state,” and “FIFA, FIFA, we are pros, FIFA, FIFA, Israel goes,” then threw stones at Israeli soldiers, which drew tear-gas canisters in response.  The protesters, some wearing jerseys honoring Barcelona and its Argentine star, Lionel Messi, said the Palestinian push signaled progress regardless of the outcome in Zurich.  “It’s important for us as Palestinians to share our struggle for liberation with the entire world,” said Marah Tamimi, 14, whose family has led weekly demonstrations in the village for years. “I hope that one day this red card will be used to kick Israel out of our land.”  Salam Salah, 9, said he played soccer “in the streets of my neighborhood every day after school, even when it’s raining.”  “Soccer is my life,” he said. “One day I may become a player on Palestine’s national team, and I would like to be treated like any athlete from any country in the world. This is a message to the world through soccer that we need our freedom and the harsh occupation must stop.”  Rami Nazzal contributed reporting from Nabi Saleh, West Bank; Sam Borden from Zurich; and Rick Gladstone from New York.
If approved, the move would have barred Israel from international competitions. A dispute over teams from settlements in the West Bank remained unresolved.