Monday, Aug 08, 2016

Dubai: The action by the Lebanese Olympic team, who refused to ride on a bus with Israeli athletes travelling to the Olympic Games’ opening ceremony

in Rio, was not the first time sports and politics have collided. It will not be the last either.

The incident happened last Friday as the Lebanon team sat on the bus waiting to set off for the Maracana stadium, when the Israeli team arrived and attempted to board the vehicle. The Lebanese athletes demanded the Israeli athletes must not board.

“The Israeli athletes insisted on getting on board,” Salim Al Haj Nicolas, the head of the Lebanese team, said later. He said that he himself demanded that the door be closed on the Israeli team, but they “insisted on getting on”.

Eventually, the two teams were eventually taken to the opening ceremony in different buses. “We insisted on boarding the bus. if the Lebanese refused to stay with us, they could take another bus,” Udi Gal, a member of Israel’s Olympic sailing team said on his Facebook.

Gal said the decision to travel separately was eventually taken to avoid an “international and physical incident”.

“How could they let this happen on the eve of the Olympic Games? Isn’t this the opposite of what the Olympics represents?” he added.

Lebanon and Israel are officially at war and have no diplomatic relations since the 1948 Israeli occupation of Palestine. Lebanon was under a 33-day war by Israel in 2006 during in which thousands of Lebanese were killed and injured.

The incident caused a huge uproad in the social media. Several Arabs have welcomed the Lebanese team and praised them for preventing Israeli athletes from getting on the bus.

Among those tweeting about the incident was Assad Abu Khalil, a Lebanese-American Professor at California State University, who said two Olympic medals for Arabs: a diamond one for the Lebanese team for expelling the Israel team from the bus, and another diamond medal for Saudi female player who withdrew from a Judo competition against an Israeli female athlete.”

By Khitam Al Amir Senior Translator

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