Pro-Palestine campaigners plan to stage a protest from the stands of the Parc des Princes stadium when the Israel men’s football team play Mali in an opening tie in the Olympic Games in Paris.
Susanne Shields, from Europalestine, a French activist group which has been behind recent demonstrations, said there would be a peaceful protest inside the stadium against the “genocide” in Gaza.
Israel is the only nation that will have 24-hour protection from specialist French elite gendarme and police units at the Games, with a “search and intervention brigade” to patrol among fans before the match on Wednesday evening.
Thomas Bach, the International Olympic Committee president, said the Israel team had also brought their own security to games since the murder of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich.
Bach said: “The Israeli athletes since 1972 they always have taken their own additional security measures, and so they did also this time and they feel comfortable with this situation.”
A source at the French interior ministry said there was no specific threat to the Israel-Mali football match which will be attended by the interior minister, Gérald Darmanin.
There will be high police presence in case of protests in the area surrounding the stadium.
The Israeli president, Isaac Herzog, will also be in Paris for the opening ceremony, Agence France-Presse reported, and he will also take part in a commemorative ceremony to mark 52 years after the attack on Israeli athletes during the Munich games.
Olympic delegations are free to pull out athletes from appearing at the opening ceremony, where they will be transported along 6km of the Seine by boat, for security concerns or any other reason. But athletes from every country, including Israel, will take part in the parade along the river, an interior ministry source said. “All delegations have accepted our security system,” the source said.
French President Emmanuel Macron said in a TV interview with France 2 on Tuesday that he profoundly disagrees with Benjamin Netanyahu but that the Israeli prime minister would be welcome to attend the Olympic ceremony in Paris if he wanted to.
The Palestinian Olympic Committee had called on Monday for the IOC to exclude Israel from the games for breaching a UN resolution on maintaining a truce between from 19 July to 15 September.
The eight Palestinian athletes taking part in the Paris Olympic Games will arrive early on Wednesday morning at Charles de Gaulle airport.
Bach said the IOC would not allow calls for bans to politicise the Games. “We have two national organising committees. That’s the difference with the world of politics, in this respect, both have been living in peaceful coexistence.
“And the Olympic Games are a competition not between countries. There are competitions between athletes …
“The Palestinian national organising committee has greatly benefited, because Palestine is not a recognised member states of the United Nations, but the NOC of Palestine is a recognised National Olympic Committee enjoying the equal rights and opportunities alike with all the other national Olympic committees.”
