Pakistan refused to play Israel in the opening round of the 2026 Chess Olympiad in Samarkand, handing Israel a 4-0 walkover. Pakistan\u2019s chess federation said the decision followed the government\u2019s policy of not recognising Israel and was also meant to show solidarity with Palestinians. Officials stressed the boycott was about state policy, not the players or sporting spirit.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Pakistan refused to play Israel in the opening round of the 2026 Chess Olympiad in Samarkand, handing Israel a 4-0 walkover. Pakistan\u2019s chess federation said the decision followed the government\u2019s policy of not recognising Israel and was also meant to show solidarity with Palestinians. Officials stressed the boycott was about state policy, not the players… Read More »‘Nothing against sportsman spirit’: Pakistan explain decision to boycott Israel<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":135206,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sitemap_exclude":false,"_sitemap_priority":"","_sitemap_frequency":"","neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","_themeisle_gutenberg_block_has_review":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsfortnite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135205"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsfortnite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsfortnite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsfortnite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135205"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsfortnite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135205\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsfortnite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/135206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsfortnite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsfortnite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsfortnite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}