A three-member Israeli esports team is going to play in the FIFA World Cup game tournament in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, under the Israeli flag.
The team, along with their coach and manager on Israeli passports, are being allowed in the tournament. During the opening ceremony, they will be permitted to display the Israeli flag with Hatikvah, the country's national anthem, playing, The Jerusalem Post reported.
The Saudi government wrote a letter saying all participants would be allowed, as the FIFAe rules required.
The team will not show their Israeli roots in public, according to Team manager Zvika Kosman. Their security will be managed by private security and the local government and not Israeli officials.
FIFA negotiated the permissions with Saudi government for all participants and not the Israeli government, according to the report.
The Trump administration's Abraham Accords sought to bring the Israeli and Arab countries closer and President Joe Biden's Secretary of State Antony Blinken admits seeing Israel and Saudi Arabia normalize relations is "incredibly challenging, hard, not something that can happen overnight."
The U.S. Embassy in Israel hosted the first Abraham Accords Esports Peace Games with competitors from Israel, the U.S., United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Morocco, according to the Post.
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.