With the preparations for the start of football competitions at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games, whose activities begin before the opening ceremony, as has been customary recently, a possible confrontation in the competition will be the talk of public opinion in all Arab countries.
The Arab football flag at the Paris Olympics is carried by Egypt and Iraq, the two teams that achieved the best results for the Arabs in this competition, when they reached fourth place.
While Iraq achieved this advanced position at the 2004 Athens Games, Egypt achieved the same feat on two occasions. The first was in Amsterdam in 1928, and the second was named after the United Arab Republic in 1964 in the capital of Japan, Tokyo.
Returning to Paris, the Egyptian team is in the third house, which includes next to it the teams of Spain, the Dominican Republic and Uzbekistan.
The first and second ranked teams from each of the four groups qualify, with the first team in the third house playing the second team in the fourth house, and the second team in the third house meeting the winner in the fourth house.
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Egypt and Israel.. How is this possible?
This method of play reveals the possibility of the Egyptian Olympic team for a historic confrontation, starting from the round of 16 with its Israeli counterpart, who is in Group 4 alongside the teams of Paraguay, Mali and Japan.
There are two initial possibilities for such a confrontation: the Egyptian team stands at the head of its house and Israel obtains the runner-up position in its house. Theoretically, it is also possible to meet in an advanced round later, if the two teams continue their successful path, either in the semi-finals or in the final.
The possibility of Iraq facing Israel in the semi-finals remains, although it is an almost unrealistic possibility.
Egypt was the first Arab country to normalize diplomatic relations with Israel after signing a peace agreement in 1979, which many believe remains strong at the official level, even if it did not receive widespread popular approval in Egypt.
As a result, Egyptian athletes are reluctant to face their Israeli counterparts in various games for fear of reactions from the masses rejecting such games, especially after the advent of social networks.
In 2022, the player of the Egyptian national team, Ahmed El-Sayed, was severely criticized after he had a duel with an Israeli competitor.
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Despite his victory over his rival Yonatan Cohen in the World Championship qualifiers in Cairo, the Egyptian fencer was heavily criticized for agreeing to play against the Israeli.
In football, Egypt has never faced Israel, despite the history of its national team, which dates back over a century.
However, Egyptian athletes faced Israelis in confrontations in various games, including a famous match in the preliminary rounds preceding the World Handball Championship (Category B – which was later cancelled).
In that match, held in Salzburg, Austria in 1992, Israel and Egypt tied with a score of 17 goals for both teams, but this match was not without controversial incidents.
agency An Israeli said at the time that the game was “contaminated with deliberate insults towards Israel on the part of the Egyptian players, who apparently saw the game as an extension of the wars waged by Egypt against the Jewish state.”
This game was the first actual sports confrontation in a team game between an Arab country and Israel in an international competition.
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The Jewish Agency says that “when the orchestra played the anthems of the two countries before the start of the game, some members of the Egyptian team refused to stand for the song of hope”, referring to the Israeli anthem.
According to the same source, one of the Egyptian players deliberately stood on the Israeli flag inside the stadium.
The report quoted Faisal Awad, one of the Egyptian actors, while speaking to the Egyptian media, who said that this was “revenge for all the Arab victims who fell in the wars against Israel.”
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A history of controversy
In the Netherlands in 1995, the two teams met again in a violent match that resulted in the injury of 5 Israeli players, according to the newspaper Ashrak al-Awast .
According to website Radio Sawa the two countries met in a water polo competition in 1996 and the match ended with the victory of the Egyptian team.
Individual matches were played at international events, either official or friendly matches, and in some the Egyptian player retired, and in others the Egyptians refused to shake hands with their opponents, while some matches ended without incident.
In 2011 Rowan Ali, the Egyptian taekwondo champion, refused to fight Israeli actress, Sion Fenster, in the quarter-finals of the Croatian Open Championship in the weight category up to 47 kg.
At the Airsoft World Championship hosted by Italy in 2011, the Egyptian team managed to defeat its Israeli counterpart in the competition and refused to shake hands with it after the game, according to the Al- Allium messages .
Egypt will be represented in this game by Tarek Fuad, Sharif Farag and Alaa El-Sayed.
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In judo, the Egyptian, Ramadan Darwish, refused to shake hands with his Israeli opponent, Arik Zaevi, on 3 occasions, the first of which was in 2011 after the Egyptian lost to his Israeli counterpart.
The second time was a year later when Darvish defeated the same Israeli player in the quarterfinals of the 100 kg Grand Prix Judo Championship in Germany, while the third time was in 2015 in the consolation round of the Grand Prix Judo Championship held in Azerbaijan, reported Al-Masri Alyum newspaper.
At the Summer Youth Olympic Games held in the city of Nanjing, China in 2014, the Egyptian table tennis player, Alaa Saad, defeated her Israeli competitor, Nicole Trossman, with a score of 3 games to 2 in a game that did not witness any unusual event.
The ethics committee of the International Olympic Committee decided to condemn the Egyptian judoka, Islam Elshahabi, after he did not shake hands with his Israeli opponent, Or Sasson, after he lost to him in the first round in the over 100 kg category at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics in 2016, according to an agency The French news.
The two countries also faced each other in the three-on-three world championship in under-18 basketball in 2021 in Hungary, where the game ended with the victory of the pharaohs and this time the Egyptians also refused to shake hands with their Israeli counterparts.
During the same year, the Egyptian wrestling champion, Emad Ashraf, won in the 77 kg weight category, 5-0, over his Israeli opponent, David Zhitomirsky, in the round of 16 of the World Youth Championship organized by Russia, according to Al newspaper Mujaz . This confrontation was calm and passed without the controversy that affects the games between the Egyptians and the Israelis.
If by chance the Egyptian Olympic team meets its Israeli counterpart in Paris this summer, the possibility of refusing to play is completely unlikely for fear of sanctions that may fall on Cairo, given that the Olympic constitution forbids it.
But certainly such a potential game, which could be the talk of the day in public opinion, will remain the focus of attention of all sports fans in Arab countries if it does happen.
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