Jibril Rajoub’s office appears to be two large rooms, imperfectly knocked together to leave half as a living room and the other a work space, where the large desk is flanked by a Palestinian flag and the flag of the Palestinian Football Association.

The room is modest, with just a few touches of low-end glitz, such as the lamp shades and a shiny plastic coffee pot. The walls are decorated with photographs, mostly photographs of Rajoub. He stands to greet me cordially but coolly, lifting a hand to point to his sofa. Palestinians are the warmest of hosts but Rajoub, the president of the Palestinian Football Association, is not at all warm. He is a square- shouldered man, neatly balding, slow-speaking. He introduces himself by his military rank, General Jibril Rajoub. As an ice-breaker I ask if he grew up playing football. Of course, he tells me, and points to a framed picture on the wall.

“I’m playing there.”

FC Cincinnati's Nazmi Albadawi on stepping up to MLS and playing for Palestine Read more

The picture is a press stunt: Rajoub is dressed in a football strip, looking out of place and out of breath as he attempts to control a ball. He has the kind of wit I associate with tough guys: he dares you to contradict. When I laugh, he simply shrugs. It is notable that his team is happy around him, though. Susan Shalabi, international director of the Palestinian Football Association, jokes easily, while he stands slightly apart. His demeanour is so relaxed that it hovers just above sleepiness.

Rajoub has been head of football for a decade. He notes that before his tenure, no season had actually ended. It is a colourful rather than accurate precis, but he doesn’t expect to be taken 100% literally. Rumours that the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, is having an operation prompt me to ask Rajoub if he would ever stand for Abbas’s job. He leaves such a long pause before answering that I can hear the whirr of the air conditioning.

“No, I will stay at the Football Association for ever,” he says, at last, in a tone so low and so laconic you feel there must be a hint of a smile.

Fifa’s recognition of Palestine was a major diplomatic achievement, fiercely opposed by Israel

The great issue, on that day in March 2018, was not Abbas’s health: it was the coach of the national squad. Three months earlier Rajoub had sacked the long-term coach Abdel Nasser Barakat and replaced him with a Bolivian named Julio César Baldivieso. It was an immensely unpopular move. Palestinian sports fans were so angry that there was a growing campaign on social media with the hashtag #GoAwayJulio. Thanks to Barakat, Palestine were on the verge of qualifying to reach the AFC Asian Cup. In the process Barakat’s team had overhauled Israel in Fifa’s international rankings.

Barakat was the most successful coach in Palestine’s history but he represented much more than that: a humble man who had made real sacrifices to follow his passion for football. Barakat had worked in construction, taking on two jobs and passing up the chance of other careers because they would take him away from football. At heart Rajoub’s decision to remove Barakat just seemed unfair. Why not stick with Barakat through to the Asian Cup finals in Qatar in January 2019, when he had done the hard work of getting the team to the edge of the qualifiers?

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Former Fifa president Sepp Blatter kicks off a match in Ramallah, West Bank, in 2015 as Jibril Rajoub, president of the Palestinian FA, looks on. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Baldivieso asked for time to work with the team before three friendlies and the final Asian Cup qualifying match. Rajoub agreed and brought forward the national break by 30 days so players could meet the coach at a special training camp. This was why the contractors were tearing up the artificial turf of the Al-Ram stadium: there was suddenly time to do essential work that had been waiting until the end of the season. The contractors were alone in being happy.

The West Bank Premier League was winning fans and building confidence after years in the doldrums, and the decision to shut it down for a month damaged the sense of goodwill and killed the competition’s momentum. Worse, it did not even make sense. So many members in the national squad now played football outside Palestine – in Sweden, Chile, Egypt and the US – that they were not going to be at Baldivieso’s training camp anyway. The camp was not even in Palestine, but Saudi Arabia. This was because Baldivieso’s appointment was a gift of Saudi Arabia’s most powerful football administrator, Turki Al-Sheikh, the chairman of its General Sports Authority, and president of the Islamic Solidarity Sports Federation.

Al-Sheikh was not only paying Baldivieso’s wages, he was topping up the gesture with a gift of $1m. When I spoke to Rajoub about the appointment, he stated only that he had every confidence in Baldivieso. But I doubted it. There were already rumours that Rajoub would not give Baldivieso much time to prove his worth – maybe just a couple of matches.

This proved true. Baldivieso was preparing for the three friendlies, against Bahrain, Kuwait and Iraq, interrupted by the final qualifying match for the Asian Cup against Oman, one of the weaker teams in the tournament. Palestine drew 0-0 against Bahrain on 22 March 2018. The game was screened on YouTube with a single fixed camera at a distance that made the ball invisible on my screen. As I watched, I was never sure if the vague and disjointed performance I was seeing was a kind of optical illusion. Could Palestine really be as bad as all that?

In the early days of the national team Palestine’s games could be relentlessly dour. The team had gained finesse over 20 years, yet the defensive resilience remained, led by a series of extraordinary goalkeepers. The journalist Bassil Mikdadi claims the goalkeeper is the archetypal Palestinian footballer: the last-ditch defender. The goalkeeper has often been the captain, the best player, and the first player to be bought by a foreign team. This is the spirit that has given Palestine’s national team the nickname Fida’i: Arabic for “commandoes”, but also the term for a daring, self-sacrificing fighter. Mikdadi said “even when Palestine is overmatched, they will fight for every inch of the pitch”. This just wasn’t happening in the Bahrain match.

Word came that Rajoub had warned Baldivieso he had better win the qualifier against Oman on 27 March. Perhaps Baldivieso was rattled, because Palestine lost 2-0. Sure enough, Baldivieso was sacked. He had overseen just two games. Rajoub, however, chose not to reinstate Barakat. Perhaps his pride forbade it. Instead he promoted Barakat’s ex-assistant, an Algerian named Noureddine Ould Ali.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Fans in Gaza watch an Asian Cup match between Syria and Palestine on a big screen. Photograph: SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

In 1998 Fifa’s recognition of Palestine was regarded as a considerable diplomatic achievement. It was fiercely opposed by Israel. The historian John Sugden was in the room when the news came through; he was researching a book on the outgoing Fifa president, João Havelange. Havelange beat the incumbent, the Englishman Stanley Rous, after Rous had alienated members from the developing world by his support of the apartheid-era South Africa. This was an era when protesters were regularly told it was important to resist boycotts and “keep politics out of sport”. In Sugden’s view Havelange’s progressive attitude towards racism and apartheid was born out of his political calculations rather than ideals. He needed votes. Throughout his tenure he continued to bring in nations from the developing world, and secured their loyalty with deals that brought money into their football associations. Looking back on his quarter-century in charge of Fifa, Havelange stated that his greatest achievement was taking an organisation with $25 in the kitty, and leaving it with $25m. On Sugden’s account Rajoub picked an opportune moment to press Palestine’s candidacy.

Fifa parades under a banner of international friendship between nations, a post-colonial version of the old Victorian ideal that every sportsman is a friendship ambassador. This is an idea that Palestinians can buy into. They want to compete, as proclaimed in the terrace chant, because “Football is more noble than war”. But membership of Fifa is also about agreeing to set rules, under international law. Susan Shalabi is responsible for ensuring Palestinian clubs follow the law on international signings, for instance, whether from Chile and other Latin American countries, or from Israel. In 2014 the Israeli FA handed a 99-year ban to Attaf Abu Bilal, a Bedouin Arab, who was discovered to be playing for teams in both Israel and Palestine without clearing the paperwork (the ban has since been lifted). Both Palestine and Israel must comply with Fifa’s rulebook, which has allowed Palestine to open a new political front, because so much of Israel’s behaviour is illegal under international laws adopted by Fifa.

The Fiver: sign up and get our daily football email.

Rajoub threw his energies into campaigning against clubs based in Jewish settlements, such as Ironi Ariel, the team of the vast Ariel settlement. Fifa forbids member states from giving room to teams based outside their national borders. The UN has ruled the Jewish settlements breach the Geneva Convention. Fifa’s bylaws insist that member states abide by UN rulings and go even further by insisting that members should actively promote international law.

Rajoub has consistently raised the stakes against Israel. When Fifa under Sepp Blatter refused to rule on the Ariel issue, Rajoub sought a vote of the entire Fifa membership. The vote could have seen the Israeli FA suspended from Fifa. The prospect of one state forcing out another so alarmed Blatter, he adopted delaying tactics to prevent the issue being debated. After Blatter was ousted and replaced by Gianni Infantino, this ruse was regarded as too subtle. Infantino personally declared that Fifa was never going to rule on Israel’s settlements. Israel appeared to have won an indefinite stay of execution, by presidential fiat.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Nicholas Blincoe and Jibril Rajoub. Photograph: Susan Shalabi

I asked if I could have my picture taken with Rajoub. We stood between the two flags by his desk. Susan took the picture. Looking at it, I am surprised that Rajoub is shorter than me: he seems larger in the flesh. The banner of the football association incorporates a black and white football, its design reflecting the pattern of the Palestinian keffiyeh – so familiar as the headdress worn by Yasser Arafat – which also features in the design. As Susan says later, the idea that sport and politics do not mix is ridiculous. “It’s like a child repeating, I am not afraid, I am not afraid, I am not afraid. If you keep repeating something, it’s not because you believe it but because you want to convince yourself it is true.” Fifa resists any attempt to politicise football, while insisting that football is a medium for spreading international understanding and peace. It is as though peace and understanding are not political goals: they are the best political goals.

More Noble Than War: The Story of Football in Israel and Palestine by Nicholas Blincoe (Little, Brown, £20). Order at guardianbookshop.com or by calling 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £15, online orders only.