PARIS: President Emmanuel Macron said on Monday that France was ready to host the Paris Olympics as he visited the Athletes’ Village four days before the Games begin.

“We are ready and we will be ready throughout the Games,” Macron said. “We have been working on these Games for years now and we are at the start of a decisive week which on Friday will see the opening ceremony and then the Olympiad which will be held in Paris, 100 years since the last one.”

He added: “This is the fruit of an immense amount of work which has profoundly changed the country, in particular the area” of Seine-Saint-Denis, where the Athletes’ Village is situated.

International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach also visited the Village to the north of the French capital, where thousands of athletes and officials are arriving, with up to 14,500 expected there at the peak of the Games.

Comprising 40 different low-rise housing blocks, the complex has been built by employing innovative construction techniques using low-carbon concrete, water recycling and reclaimed building materials.

It was also intended to be free of air-conditioning with a natural cooling system, but some Olympic delegations are unconvinced and have ordered around 2,500 portable cooling units for their athletes.

Seine-Saint-Denis, where the main athletics stadium for the Olympics is also situated, is the poorest area in France and is hoping to reap benefits from the sports extravaganza.

Macron promised the area would not be forgotten after the Olympics. “I will come back after the Games to see the legacy with you and to see how life has changed,” he said.

Meanwhile, France’s foreign minister said Israeli athletes were welcome at the Paris Games after a hard-left member of the French parliament sparked outrage by urging them to stay away because of the conflict in Gaza.

“The Israeli delegation is welcome in France,” Stephane Sejourne said in Brussels ahead of talks with his Israeli counterpart, adding that the call by France Unbowed (LFI) lawmaker Thomas Portes for the country’s exclusion had been “irresponsible and dangerous”.

“We will ensure the security of the delegation,” Sejourne added.

The Games begin on Friday amid pronounced security concerns at a time of heightened geopolitical tensions over the wars in Ukraine and Gaza.

Israel’s war against Hamas that has devastated Gaza has become a lightning rod among France’s far left, with some critics accusing pro-Palestinian members of antisemitism.

French Interior Minister Grald Darmanin said in a TV interview Israeli athletes would be protected around the clock during the Games, 52 years after the Munich Olympics massacre in which 11 Israelis were killed by Palestinian militants.

At a pro-Gaza rally on Saturday, Portes was filmed saying Israel’s Olympic athletes were not welcome in France, and that there should be protests against their taking part in the Games.

“We are a few days away from an international event which will be held in Paris, which is the Olympic Games. And I am here to say that no, the Israeli delegation is not welcome in Paris. Israeli athletes are not welcome at the Olympic Games in Paris,” he said to applause, according to images posted on social media.

Some LFI lawmakers offered a partial defence of Portes’ comments. Manuel Bompard, a senior party official and lawmaker, wrote on X that he supported Portes “in the face of the wave of hatred he is experiencing.

“Faced with repeated violations of international law by the Israeli government, it is legitimate to ask that its athletes compete under a neutral banner in the Olympic Games,” he wrote.

Portes drew an angry response from French Jewish groups and both political opponents and allies.

Yonathan Arfi, head of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France (Crif), said the comments were “putting a target on the backs of Israeli athletes”.

In a sign of the complex security issues surrounding the Israeli delegation, a memorial ceremony for the Israeli athletes killed in the 1972 Munich attack has been moved from outside Paris’ City Hall to the Israeli embassy.

“The request from the French authorities to move the ceremony to the embassy from City Hall was received due to the fact that it was destined to be held in the restricted security area [‘grey area’] prior to the Olympic Games,” the embassy said in a statement.

Israel’s Olympic delegation departed for Paris on Monday with the team of 88 athletes.

“Our first victory is that we are here and going (to the Olympics), and that we didn’t give up and have been competing in hundreds of competitions since October 7,” Israel Olympic Committee president Yael Arad told journalists at Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv, referring to the date of the Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel that launched the war.

Meanwhile, French security forces were continuing preparations for the unprecedented opening ceremony on Friday, the first time a Summer Olympics has opened outside the main stadium.

Between 6,000 and 7,000 athletes are to sail down the river on 85 barges and boats, with a backdrop of world-famous monuments including Notre-Dame cathedral, currently being renovated after a devastating fire in 2019.

The athletes will disembark for the culmination of a ceremony at the Trocadero opposite the Eiffel Tower that organisers promise will be spectacular.

Up to 300,000 ticketed spectators will watch from stands and on the river banks and another 200,000 are expected to watch from the overlooking apartments.

Published in Dawn, July 23rd, 2024