Israel said scrambling to prevent Tuesday vote on expelling country from European soccer

The body governing soccer in Europe is under intense pressure to hold a vote this coming week on expelling Israel from all its events, with Israeli officials scrambling to prevent this, Hebrew media reports said over the weekend, though Israel’s soccer federation cast doubts on the reports.

Israel Hayom and Channel 12 reported that Qatar, one of the biggest donors to the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA), was pushing for such a vote to be held, with the motion seen as certain to pass if it is brought to a vote since only two or three of the 20 voting countries are steadfastly opposed to Israel’s ouster.

The Israel Football Association (IFA) was working around the clock and recruiting allies and friends of Israel in the sports and diplomatic worlds to work to prevent the vote, the Israel Hayom daily reported, citing an unnamed senior IFA official as saying: “We are working on it on all fronts.”

The report added that officials in Jerusalem believe friendly countries such as Germany and Hungary will fight for the vote not to be held.

The outlet said the Qatari pressure campaign began following the Israeli strike on Hamas leaders in Doha earlier this month, which appears to have failed to kill the terror chiefs, while halting Qatar-mediated talks on a ceasefire in Gaza.

However, a spokesman for the IFA did not confirm the reports and indicated to The Times of Israel on Monday that they were inaccurate.

Furthermore, according to UEFA’s website, the next meeting of its Executive Council is set for December 3, not this week. The IFA spokesperson would not say whether a meeting was scheduled for Tuesday.

Israel’s national team is currently competing in a UEFA-organized qualifying tournament for next year’s FIFA World Cup. And Israeli team Maccabi Tel Aviv is set to compete in this season’s UEFA Europa League, with the first match set for  Wednesday against Greece’s PAOK FC.

Soccer is the most popular sport in Israel, and an exclusion from European events would deal “almost a deathblow to Israeli soccer” and be followed by similar decisions in other sports, according to Shlomi Barzel, head of communication for the IFA.

“I’m surprised we’re still part of international tournaments. In many aspects, this is a miracle,” Barzel told the Globes outlet in an interview published Friday, adding that “historically, countries have been suspended for much less.”

“My estimation is that we will finish the current national teams event, but one more troublesome incident in Gaza, and everything can end in an instant,” he said, acknowledging that had a “free vote” been held to date at UEFA or FIFA, soccer’s global governing body, “we wouldn’t have survived it.”

The global backlash against Israel over the humanitarian toll of the war in Gaza has spread into the arenas of sports and culture. Critics of Israel say it should be sidelined from international events just like Russia has been since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, though that move was unprovoked, while the Gaza war was sparked by Hamas’s October 2023 massacre in Israel.

Such calls have made it into international soccer, with some groups and teams publicly protesting against having to face Israeli opponents, and UEFA displaying a giant banner reading “Stop killing children — stop killing civilians” at the start of last month’s Super Cup final, flouting its own rules which prohibit political, ideological and religious messages to be displayed in stadiums before, during or after matches.

Zev Stub, AP and Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.