The opening ceremony in Paris doesn't take place until Friday night, but already the Olympics have become mired in a political quagmire, exposing tensions over Israel's war in Gaza and Russia's war in Ukraine.
The Paris Olympics are “the most geopolitically charged Olympics in decades,” said Jules Boykoff, an American political scientist and former professional football player.
“The risk is Patrick Clastres, a cultural historian at the University of Lausanne, said we were entering a historical phase where “the Olympic planet could collapse.”
French President Emmanuel Macron has been promoting a “political truce” globally and within France during the Olympics, but it is unclear how many countries and individuals have heeded the call.
French left-wing lawmaker Thomas Portes caused a particular stir when he said at a pro-Palestinian rally on Saturday that Israel's athletic and political delegation was “not welcome at the Paris Olympics.” He joined activists in calling for an “end to double standards” and said the Israeli flag and anthem should be banned during the Olympics “just like in Russia's case.”
The Russian and Belarusian teams were barred from the Olympics, but 15 Russian athletes and 16 Belarusian athletes were allowed to compete as neutrals, as long as they did not support the war in Ukraine.
Macron argued that the Russian and Israeli situations are “fundamentally different” because “Israel responded to a terrorist attack,” and while France has condemned some of Israel's actions in Gaza since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, he said “this is not a war of aggression.”
The French president added: “Israeli athletes are welcome in our country. They must be able to compete under their flag. That is what the Olympic Movement has decided. France has the responsibility to welcome them in complete safety.”
According to Israeli media, at least 15 of the 88-member team Members recently received emails warning of a repeat of the 1972 Munich attacks, in which 11 Israeli players and coaches were killed by members of a Palestinian militant group.
Since the Munich Games, Israel's Olympic team has had its own security escorts. Security was stepped up for this year's Paris Games, but it's unlikely to be anything like what happened at Sweden's Eurovision Song Contest in May. At the time, contestant Eden Golan, 20, was kept in seclusion in a police-guarded hotel except during rehearsals and performances. The Israeli athletes He is expected to stay in the athletes' village, dine with other athletes and take part in the opening ceremony, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing the sensitive plans.
“It's not just one singer taking part in the competition,” the source said. “It's a competition with a whole host of athletes taking part.”
The anxiety was so great that when Israeli President Isaac Herzog arrived in Paris on Wednesday, he and his delegation were unable to get off the plane for 40 minutes after airport staff mistakenly reported that they were not wearing required safety vests.
France has deployed 1,000 police officers to Wednesday's soccer matches and plans for tight security throughout the tournament, with the interior ministry expressing concern the Olympics could be a target for activities ranging from drone attacks to cyberwarfare.
French police on Tuesday charged a Russian national with plotting “destabilization during the Olympic Games,” the prosecutor's office said.
Vincent Stroubel, head of France's cybersecurity agency, said in an interview that Russia's aggression in Ukraine had made French authorities sensitive to the growing risk of “the disruption, destruction or destruction of critical infrastructure through cyber attacks.” The agency is working with 500 high-risk entities involved in the Olympics to strengthen protection mechanisms.
Interior Minister Gérard Darmanin reported that France had rejected “a large number” of Russians who had applied for media accreditation during the Olympics, but who may have been doing so with the intent of “gathering intelligence” or “accessing computer networks to carry out cyber attacks.”
“The threats of espionage and cyber attacks raised by the French authorities are completely unreasonable and baseless allegations,” Russian human rights commissioner Tatyana Moskalkova said.
French authorities overseeing security checks and other aspects of Olympic preparations are the same as they were before the July 7 parliamentary elections, which sparked political turmoil with no side offering a clear path to forming a government. Macron said Tuesday that his caretaker government would remain in power at least until after the Olympics.
“We cannot change the situation until mid-August because it would create chaos,” he said in an interview with France 2 television (which would also amount to rejecting for the time being the candidate for prime minister put forward an hour earlier by the left-wing coalition that won the most seats in the National Assembly).
The French government, Paris 2024 organisers and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) are all keen to avoid protests that could mar the success of the Games, with dancers performing in the opening ceremony possibly making good on their threat to strike on Friday.
But opinions about Israel's war in Gaza are particularly fierce.
Athletes could also join the protests: “We live in a time where athletes have power in many ways, and with that comes the confidence to speak out,” Boykoff said.
Athletes are prohibited from expressing political views during competitions or official ceremonies, but some may test the limits by, for example, refusing to shake hands.
“The organizing committee and the IOC are preparing to take a political stance in the coming weeks,” said Pim Verschueren, a researcher at the University of Rennes 2. “Their response to the protests will depend on the nature and scale of the protests.”
These are also the first Olympics since the pandemic began, when spectators will be allowed back in the stands. Only flags of the countries or regions competing will be allowed in the competition venues. Signs with political messages are banned.
Pro-Palestinian protesters gathered in Paris on Tuesday night and are expected to hold further demonstrations on Wednesday to pressure the IOC to exclude Israel from the Olympics.
“This whole thing is totally hypocritical,” protester Susan Shields said at Tuesday's demonstration. “Clearly they're not doing anything.”
The IOC imposed sanctions on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, which coincided with the 2022 Winter Olympics and Paralympics. The IOC said Russia had violated the Olympic Truce, an ancient Greek tradition revived in recent decades that calls for countries to suspend hostilities from seven days before the Olympics to seven days after the Paralympics.
Russia's Olympic Committee was completely suspended last year after integrating regional sports associations in the occupied territories of Ukraine.
In a letter to IOC President Thomas Bach on Monday, The Palestinian Olympic Committee has accused Israel of violating the Olympic ceasefire by continuing to bomb Gaza.
Some point to the example of South Africa, which was barred from taking part in the 1964 Tokyo Olympics because of its racially discriminatory apartheid system and was subsequently expelled from the IOC in 1970.
Clastres said there was no chance Israel would be excluded from the tournament. “The international political and legal situation is too complicated and the IOC does not want to take any risks,” he said.
IOC President Thomas Bach made no mention of possible sanctions against Israel at a press conference on Tuesday. “The Olympic Games are not a competition between nations, but between athletes,” he said.
Eight athletes, most of whom are members of the Palestinian diaspora living outside the Palestinian territories, will represent Palestine in taekwondo, boxing, judo, shooting, swimming and athletics at the Paris Games.
Valerie Tarazi, a Palestinian-American swimmer at Auburn University, said she met some Gaza beach volleyball players at the Asian Games in China, just days before the Hamas-led attacks in Israel on October 7, and learned a week later that one of those players had been killed in an Israeli bombing.
“It seems like every week I hear about another athlete, friend or family member who has passed away,” she said.
“It's not a very pleasant experience to go to training after hearing that,” Tarazi said, “but that's why I come to training every day. It's my way of fighting for my country peacefully through sport.”
Steve Hendricks in Jerusalem and Souad Mekenet, Les Carpenter and Candace Buckner in Paris contributed to this report.
