MUMBAI: The International Paralympic Committee (IPC) will be holding a meeting in London next week to discuss Malaysia’s ban on Israeli athletes participating in all sporting events hosted in the South East Asian country, which also includes the 2019 World Para Swimming Championships in Kuching in mid-2019.
The championships is one of the key qualifying events for the 2020 Paralympic Games in Tokyo, which is the main reason that the decision has attracted the ire of the IPC, which is at present in dialogue with the Local Organising Committee and the National Paralympic Committee.
“We will not allow them (to enter). If they come, then it is an offense,” Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad told local reporters on Thursday in Kuala Lumpur.
“If they (IPC) want to withdraw the championship hosting rights from Malaysia, then they can try to do so.”
Since years, the Islam-dominated Malaysia has had a strong anti-Israel statement in general towards its occupation of Palestine, another country with a Muslim majority. Malaysia considers its support as a ‘humanitarian cause’. No Israeli is granted any form of visa to visit the country due to cold diplomatic relations between the countries.
Thousands in Malaysia and neighboring Indonesia took to the streets last December to protest US President Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital rather than Palestine’s.
Muslim Imran, the Palestinian Cultural Organization Malaysia President and a Kuala Lumpur-based Palestinian, told Arab News that he sees the sporting ban as a reaction to charges that Israel undermined Malaysia’s national security through its national intelligence agency, Mossad’s involvement in the murder of Fadi Mohammad al-Batsh, a Palestinian academic and member of Hamas who was killed in the Malaysian capital last year.
The 2019 World Para Swimming Championships is set to be held between 29 July and 4 August this year.
