On Wednesday in Bilbao, hundreds of pro-Palestine protesters disrupted Stage 11 of the Vuelta a Espana – one of the three biggest cycling events of the year – and forced organisers to prematurely end the stage in the final 20km, without declaring an official stage winner.
The main target of the protests was the Israel-Premier Tech team, which is participating in the Vuelta. The Israeli team riders had previously been stopped by activists holding Palestinian flags during Stage 5’s time-trial last week.
There have been reports that riders in the peloton want Israel-Premier Tech to withdraw from the event over safety concerns – although none of them have gone on the record – while the Vuelta’s technical director Kiko Garcia suggested the team’s withdrawal seemed like the only possible solution.
The race organisers’ hands are tied, though, since the UCI, cycling’s international governing body, has not placed any sanctions on Israeli teams in the same manner it did on Gazprom and other Russian and Belarusian teams in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
“We are bound by regulations,” Garcia told reporters at the finish in Bilbao, according to domestiquecycling.com.
Asked if he was calling for Israel-Premier Tech to withdraw from the race, Garcia said: “Can you give me another possible solution? I want to prioritise everyone’s safety today. But that would be it. But we’re going round in circles, we know it. We can’t make a decision, so we don’t know if it’s going to happen.”
A worldwide movement
As the global outcry over the situation in Gaza increases, it’s becoming harder for sport to remain neutral, with pressure mounting on world sport’s governing bodies to place sanctions on Israel.
In football, after its calls for an Israel ban fell on deaf ears, the Norwegian Football Association announced it would be donating all proceeds from the upcoming World Cup 2026 qualifier against Israel – taking place in Oslo on October 11 – to humanitarian aid in Gaza.
Lise Klaveness, the president of the Norwegian FA said: “Neither we nor other organisations can have an indifferent attitude to the humanitarian suffering and the disproportionate attacks that the civilian population in Gaza has been subjected to for a long time.
“Israel is part of Fifa's and Uefa's competitions and we must deal with that. But we want to give the profits to a humanitarian organisation that saves lives in Gaza every day and that contributes with active emergency aid on the ground.”
Italy, who are in the same World Cup qualifying group, are set to play Israel on neutral turf in Debrecen, Hungary, on September 8, before hosting the return match in Udine on October 4.
Ahead of those qualifiers, the Italian Football Coaches' Association (AIAC) sent a formal letter to the Italian Football Federation, pushing for Israel to be suspended from international competition.
The letter states: “The AIAC Board of Directors unanimously believes that, given the daily massacres, which have also resulted in hundreds of deaths among managers, coaches and athletes...it is legitimate, necessary, indeed a duty, to place at the centre of federation talks the request, to be submitted to Uefa and Fifa, for the temporary exclusion of Israel from sporting competitions. Because the pain of the past cannot cloud anyone's conscience and humanity."
In Canada, more than 780 organisations, academics, activists, athletes and writers have signed an open letter calling for the cancellation of next week’s tennis Davis Cup tie between Canada and Israel, scheduled for September 12 and 13 in Halifax.
“This is an important moment for Sport Canada and Tennis Canada to promote social justice and stand on the right side of history,” reads the letter. “Allowing this competition is unconscionable.”
Em Bailey, founding member of Palestine Solidarity Halifax said: “In no reality should we be welcoming Israeli athletes for a tennis match, while Israel continues to bomb Gaza with impunity, killing Palestinians and obstructing the provision of lifesaving aid.”
A few days ago, Australian cricketer Usman Khawaja said that global sporting bodies should consider banning Israel from international competitions, accusing it of breaching international law in the killing and starvation of Palestinians in Gaza.
A spokesperson of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) dismissed the notion, telling SBS News the teams of Israel and the Palestinian territories are recognised and "have equal rights".
“Teams from both participated in the Olympic Games Paris 2024 and their athletes were living peacefully together under one roof in the Olympic Village,” added the spokesperson.
IOC inaction
There were many calls for Israel to be banned from competing at last year’s Paris Olympics, but former IOC president Thomas Bach brushed those calls aside, saying: “We are not in the political business; we are there to accomplish our mission to get the athletes together.”
That statement bore little meaning given the IOC’s swift decision to sanction Russia just days after it invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
“In order to protect the integrity of global sports competitions and for the safety of all the participants, the IOC EB [Executive Board] recommends that International Sports Federations and sports event organisers not invite or allow the participation of Russian and Belarusian athletes and officials in international competitions,” the IOC said at the time.
At the Paris Olympics, some Russian and Belarusian athletes were allowed to compete under neutral flags, but both nations are banned from participating in team competitions, with all sports federations following the lead of the IOC.
It is why a sport like tennis has justified stripping Russian and Belarusian players of their flags in individual competitions, and banning them from team events, while still allowing Israelis to participate freely, with no sanctions.
A statement sent to The National from the International Tennis Federation (ITF) ahead of the Canada-Israel tie, said: “Israel has not been excluded from any international sporting events and has not been suspended by the International Olympic Committee.
“Across tennis, careful consideration is given to the participation of teams and players representing every nation, and the safety of all players, tournament staff and supporters is always paramount at every event.”
Without action from the IOC, no Olympic sport will make any move against Israeli participation, irrespective of the escalating situation in Gaza.
Fifa’s stalling tactics
Meanwhile, Fifa has been employing every possible stalling tactic to avoid putting the issue of suspending Israel to a vote among its council members.
The governing body of world football received a request from the Palestinian Football Association (PFA) in March 2024, ahead of the Fifa Congress to discuss adopting sanctions against Israel due to “1) International law violations committed by the Israeli occupation in Palestine, particularly in Gaza, 2) The Israel Football Association’s (IFA) violation of the Fifa Statutes manifest in its continued inclusion of football teams located on the territory of another association (Palestine) in its national league, and 3) The failure of the IFA in taking decisive action against discrimination and racism, in the areas under its jurisdiction.”
During the 74th Fifa Congress in May 2024, president Gianni Infantino ignored requests from the Palestinian and Jordanian football associations for the matter to be put to a vote and said an independent legal expert panel will assess all three requests before any decision will be made.
This delay allowed Israel to compete in the football competition at the Paris 2024 Olympics.
In August, Fifa said it has received the legal assessment and will send it to the Fifa Council for review.
In October, the Fifa Council announced in a meeting in Zurich that two separate committees will launch an investigation into the PFA’s claims.
In March this year, the PFA submitted a proposal urging the committees to conclude the investigations so that the matter can be put to a vote at the 75th Fifa Congress in Paraguay in May.
A vote never materialised in Paraguay, as Fifa secretary general Matthias Grafström said the committees needed more time to complete their investigation.
In a moving nine-minute address to the Fifa Congress, PFA vice president Susan Shalabi said that, “our issue, sadly, again, is stuck in a highly politicised, bureaucratic holding pattern, not unlike the suffering of our people. Visible, undeniable, but sadly ignored.
“Let’s not keep rewriting the minutes of meetings and passing the bucket from one committee to the other, while football in Palestine is being erased. We need to act now.”
This lengthy saga is a stark contrast to Fifa and Uefa’s swift action in banning Russia from all international competitions within days of its invasion of Ukraine.
Sports and politics DO mix
Many argue that sports and politics should never mix, but that is a rather naïve and unrealistic ideal, often reiterated by people who benefit from such a separation or people who were never desperate enough for the world’s attention to their own suffering.
Sport is a reflection of society and has long provided a platform for athletes to make political statements, or been used as a tool to raise global awareness of serious political and social injustices.
It has the ability to garner immediate attention across the globe.
A quick look at the history of the Olympics brings up many incidents of protest or activism.
At the 1906 Greece Games, Ireland’s Peter O’Connor won a silver medal in the long jump event. During the medal ceremony, he scaled a flagpole and raised an Irish flag to protest being forced to represent Britain.
There was the image of Jesse Owens on the podium at the 1936 Games in Berlin surrounded by Nazi salutes, and the raised black-gloved fists of Tommie Smith and John Carlos in the 1968 Games in Mexico City.
Nelson Mandela famously once said that “sport has the power to change the world. It has the power to inspire. It has the power to unite people in a way that little else does.”
But Mandela was also a strong proponent of the sporting boycott of South Africa when he was imprisoned during the Apartheid era, which saw the nation shunned from global sports for nearly three decades due to its racial segregation policies.
Organisations like South African Council on Sport (Sacos) and South African Non-Racial Olympic Committee (Sanroc) worked with the anti-Apartheid movement to lobby the IOC into banning South Africa from participating in the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games. The country would not return to the Games until Barcelona 1992 when the Apartheid regime was dismantled.
There was global support for a sporting boycott, and when New Zealand sent its All Blacks rugby team for a tour in South Africa, more than 20 African countries – including Egypt – boycotted the 1976 Olympics because the IOC refused to suspend New Zealand over its relations with South Africa.
Russia and South Africa are not the only countries to receive collective sanctions from the global sports world.
The IOC, Fifa, ITF and many other sporting organisations banned Yugoslavia from participating in global events in the early 1990s when the Serb-dominated Yugoslav government embarked on an aggressive war in the Balkans region and was sanctioned by the United Nations.
It is clear that historical precedent is not enough for such organisations to feel compelled to take action against Israel, despite the ample evidence of the atrocities unfolding in Gaza.
The PFA said last month that over 600 Palestinian athletes and sporting officials have been killed by Israeli forces, while 288 sports facilities have been damaged or reduced to rubble across Gaza and the West Bank, from stadiums and training grounds to gyms and clubhouses.
All the football infrastructure in Gaza has been either destroyed or seriously damaged, including the historic Yarmouk Stadium, which was turned by Israeli forces into a detention camp and a site for some horrific scenes that appeared in footage circulating all over the internet.
In the face of indifference from organisations like Fifa and the IOC, it is the public that is applying the most pressure and bringing to light the grave suffering of the Palestinian people.
Celtics Green Brigade ultras group has mobilised fan groups in over 30 countries – including Italy, Spain, Belgium, Malaysia, Tunisia, Brazil and Chile – to take part in ‘Show Israel the Red Card’ protests in stadiums across the globe to increase the pressure on Fifa. The campaign started on February 12 ahead of the start of Israel’s World Cup qualifying campaign.
Egypt and Liverpool star Mohamed Salah recently called out Uefa for mentioning the death of former footballer ‘Palestinian Pele’, Suleiman Al-Obeid, who was recently killed by an Israeli strike while waiting for aid to be distributed in Gaza, without giving any context to his murder.
"Can you tell us how he died, where, and why?" wrote Salah on social media.
That question, too, has fallen on deaf ears.
In a world of double standards, it will not be surprising if Israel is on the pitch at next year’s 2026 Fifa World Cup – should they qualify – while the war still rages on in Gaza.
