FILE - Celtic fans lift a protest banner about Israel during the Champions League playoff first leg soccer match between Glasgow Celtic and Bayern Munich at the Celtic Park Stadium in Glasgow, Scotland, Wednesday, Feb. 12, 2025. Photo: AP
A majority of UEFA’s 20-member executive committee is expected to support any vote in favour of suspending Israeli teams from international play, two sources told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.
The move comes two weeks before the Israel men’s team is due to resume its 2026 World Cup qualifying campaign with away games against Norway and Italy.
It is unclear whether the world football body FIFA will support excluding Israel, given the close relations between FIFA’s leader, Gianni Infantino, and President Donald Trump.
The Trump administration’s support in securing the World Cup and processing visas for players, officials, and potentially hundreds of thousands of visiting fans is seen as key to FIFA delivering a successful tournament in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico next year.
FIFA’s ruling council is scheduled to meet in Zurich next week. The 37-member council includes eight from UEFA.
Calls to exclude Israel from football and other sports have increased in recent weeks amid an outcry over the humanitarian toll of its military campaign in Gaza.
Last week, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said Israel should be banned from international sports events just like Russia, which was sidelined after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
UEFA and its president Aleksander Ceferin signalled a tougher view on Israel last month when banners saying “Stop Killing Children. Stop Killing Civilians” were placed on the field in front of the Paris Saint-Germain and Tottenham teams ahead of the Super Cup game in Udine, Italy.
Israel’s sports and culture minister, Miki Zohar, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the head of Israel’s football federation, Moshe Zuares, have been working “intensively behind the scenes” to block efforts to oust Israel from UEFA, Zohar's office said Thursday.
“The right step now is to act responsibly with the professionals and not to make statements, and this is how all the parties involved in the efforts are acting. We will address this later.”
Opponents of Israel's war in Gaza have consistently pointed to Russia being suspended by FIFA and UEFA within days of the full military invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
UEFA reported moves against Israel come amid growing global calls in the sports community to boycott Israeli sports over Tel Aviv's genocidal war on Gaza since October 2023.
Many athletes have called on world sports bodies to boycott Israel in order to pressure Tel Aviv to end its Gaza war, as they did in the 1960s and 1970s to isolate the Apartheid government in South Africa.
In 1964, the International Olympic Committee banned South Africa from participating in the Olympic Games. In 1976, FIFA instituted a similar ban on Israeli football. The bans were lifted after the fall of Apartheid in 1994.
Hundreds of Palestinian athletes, including prominent footballers, have been killed by Israeli bombardment since the start of the war, triggering anger among Arab and international sports figures.
The Russia ban was also driven by a number of UEFA member federations refusing to play scheduled games against Russian opponents, including Poland, which was due to travel to Moscow for a 2022 World Cup qualifying playoff. FIFA and UEFA later argued that they could not risk chaos in their own competitions, including the World Cup, when appealing against the ban.
No national or club team in Europe has so far refused to play an Israeli opponent, though football leaders in Norway and Italy have publicly expressed their unease in recent weeks.
The Norwegian football federation also pledged to give its profits from ticket sales for the Oct. 11 game in Oslo to humanitarian work in Gaza by Doctors Without Borders.
Both Italy’s Gabriele Gravina and Lise Klaveness of Norway are elected members of the UEFA executive committee which could vote on suspending Israel. Zuares, the Israeli football federation president, is also on the panel.
Last week, Israel was accused of committing genocide in Gaza by an inquiry commission commissioned by the United Nations Human Rights Council.
In January 2024, the International Court of Justice deemed that the Israeli war in Gaza amounted to "acts of genocide".
In tandem, later in 2024, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant on charges of committing war crimes in the Gaza war.
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