Eurovision cuts public votes in half amid Israel participation row
Eurovision faces its biggest crisis as multiple countries threaten to boycott the 2026 contest unless Israel is banned from competing. See what organisers have decided.
The Eurovision Song Contest’s organisers said they were changing voting rules to strengthen “trust and transparency”, following controversy sparked in recent years over massive public support for Israeli candidates.
The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) announced that it was implementing a range of changes to the voting rules for the glitzy competition ahead of its next edition in Vienna next May, including halving the number of votes each member of the public can cast.
It said it would also set stronger limits on promotion to curb third-party influence, including government-backed campaigns, and boost efforts to “detect and block coordinated or fraudulent voting activity”.
The announcement came after several countries, including Spain, Ireland and the Netherlands, threatened to pull out of the 2026 contest if Israel is permitted to take part again.
Others also said they were considering a boycott over the situation in Gaza.
In justifying its decision, Dutch broadcaster AVROTROS highlighted a “serious violation of press freedom” by Israel in Gaza.
And it accused Israel of “proven interference... during the last edition of the Song Contest”, in which it came second, by lobbying the public overseas to vote for it.
“We’ve listened and we’ve acted,” the EBU’s Eurovision Song Contest director Martin Green said in a statement.
“We are taking clear and decisive steps to ensure the contest remains a celebration of music and unity. The Contest should remain a neutral space and must not be instrumentalised.”
Among the announced changes was the dramatic reduction in the number of votes each member of the public can lodge.
Acts competing in the Eurovision annual finals receive two sets of points with equal weight from each of the competing nations: one by a professional jury and one given by viewers voting via telephone, text message or online.
Up to 20 votes have until now been permitted from a single payment method, but going forward that number will be cut to 10, EBU said.
The move comes after the past two editions saw the Israeli acts receive little backing from professional juries but a surge of support from the public vote.
That catapulted Eden Golan from the depths of the jury rankings to fifth place in Malmo, Sweden in 2024, and Yuval Raphael all the way to second place in Basel, Switzerland, this year.
EBU said that “the full list of participating broadcasters in next year’s competition will then be revealed before Christmas”.
If Israel is excluded, it would not be the first time a broadcaster is barred. Russia was excluded following its invasion of Ukraine in 2022, while Belarus had been excluded a year earlier after the contested re-election of President Alexander Lukashenko.
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ISRAEL STRIKES LEBANON
Israel’s military on Friday said a strike on a Palestinian refugee camp in southern Lebanon earlier this week had killed “13 Hamas terrorists”.
Lebanese authorities said Tuesday’s strike on Ain al-Helweh camp killed at least 13 people, without giving their identities.
“Thirteen Hamas terrorists were eliminated in a precise IDF (military) strike targeting the organisation’s training compound in southern Lebanon,” the Israeli military said in a statement.
Those killed included “Jawad Sidawi, who was involved in training terrorists in order to carry out terror attacks from Lebanese territory” against Israel and its troops, the statement said.
The Israeli army did not immediately respond to an AFP request for the names of the 12 other people killed in the strike.
Israel’s military “is operating against Hamas’s establishment in Lebanon, and will continue to operate against Hamas terrorists wherever they operate”, it said.
In a statement released Thursday, accompanied by pictures of 13 young-looking men, Hamas described the strike as a “horrific massacre that caused the deaths of several innocent civilian martyrs”.
On Tuesday, the militant group denied it had military installations in Palestinian camps in Lebanon and called Israel’s claims “lies”.
The Israeli military released a video of a strike hitting a building, but Hamas said that “the targeted site was an open sports field frequented by the youth of the camp”, and that “those targeted were a group of young boys” on the field at the time.
The crowded Ain al-Helweh camp, located on the outskirts of the coastal city of Sidon, is the largest Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon.
Israel has kept up strikes on Lebanon despite a ceasefire agreed last November that sought to halt more than a year of hostilities with Hamas ally Hezbollah, including two months of full-blown war.
TWO TEENS KILLED IN WEST BANK CLASHES
The Palestinian health ministry said Friday that Israeli forces fatally shot two teenagers overnight in the town of Kufr Aqab in the occupied West Bank.
“The young man Amr Khaled Ahmed Al-Marbou (18) and the boy Sami Ibrahim Sami Mashayekh (16) were martyred by occupation forces gunfire in the town of Kufr Aqab near Ramallah,” the ministry said in a statement.
The army and the Israeli police, which has authority in the area, did not immediately respond to an AFP request for comment.
The Palestinian Red Crescent reported transporting two people from Kufr Aqab to a hospital during the night, one with a “very serious live bullet injury” and the second with a “live bullet injury to the chest”.
Oday al-Shurfa, a friend of Marbou who said he witnessed the incident, told AFP the pair were out on the street during clashes between Israeli forces and local Palestinians, and were shot by the Israeli forces.
Shurfa said Marbou was hit “in the chest, in the heart. He collapsed and was martyred on the spot,” he said, insisting that he had not been throwing stones or taking part in the clashes.
ISRAEL HAILS TRUMP’S GAZA PEACE PLAN
Israel has hailed Donald Trump’s Gaza peace plan after its endorsement by the UN Security Council, as Hamas rejected the resolution which calls for the deployment of an international force in the Palestinian territory.
The United Nations Security Council voted in favour of a US-drafted resolution bolstering President Trump’s plan for the Gaza Strip – which has allowed a fragile ceasefire to hold between Israel and Hamas since October 10.
The peace plan notably authorises the creation of an international force that would work with Israel and Egypt and newly-trained Palestinian police to help secure border areas and demilitarise Gaza.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office hailed Mr Trump’s plan, saying it would lead to “peace and prosperity because it insists upon full demilitarisation, disarmament and the deradicalisation of Gaza”.
On X, Mr Netanyahu’s office said the plan would also “lead to further integration of Israel and its neighbours as well as expansion of Abraham Accords,” under which a few Arab countries have normalised ties with Israel.
There were 13 votes in favour of the text and none against, with Russia and China both abstaining but not deploying their veto as permanent members.
Palestinians living in Gaza embraced a chance for life to improve, but had little faith that Israel would comply.
“The important thing is that the war ends,” said 39-year-old Saeb Al-Hassanat, who lives in a school sheltering displaced people in central Gaza.
“It doesn’t matter who rules us. We welcome international administration of Gaza,” he told AFP, but added that “without strong pressure from the US, Israel will not comply with any decision, and the Security Council resolution will remain worthless.”
Rawia Abbas, who lives in a partially destroyed house in Gaza City’s Zeitun neighbourhood, said that conditions in the territory remained dire despite the ceasefire.
“We still have no food, no water and no homes. Winter has begun and people’s conditions are catastrophic. My young children stand in line for hours to get a gallon of water and a coupon for some food,” the 40-year-old told AFP.
“Now we are in God’s hands.”
Hamas, which is excluded by the resolution from any governance role in Gaza, said it did not meet Palestinians’ “political and humanitarian demands and rights”.
In a statement, the Islamist militant group decried the establishment of an international force and said the resolution imposes “an international trusteeship on the Gaza Strip, which our people, its forces, and its constituent groups reject”.
The peace plan authorises the creation of an International Stabilisation Force that is mandated to work on the “permanent decommissioning of weapons from non-state armed groups”, protecting civilians and securing humanitarian aid corridors.
The Palestinian foreign ministry, based in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, said the Security Council vote affirmed the Palestinian people’s “right to self-determination and the establishment of their independent state” and the unimpeded flow of aid into Gaza.
In a statement on X, it “stressed the urgent need to immediately implement this resolution on the ground”.
TRUMP THRILLED OVER UN VOTE
Donald Trump has celebrated the UN Security Council voting in favour of a US resolution bolstering his Gaza peace plan.
In a gleeful message on Truth Social, the president announced the outcome of the vote, in which were 13 votes in favour of endorsing his peace plan, with Russia and China abstaining and no vetoes.
President Trump’s post reads: “Congratulations to the World on the incredible Vote of the United Nations Security Council, just moments ago, acknowledging and endorsing the BOARD OF PEACE, which will be chaired by me, and include the most powerful and respected Leaders throughout the World.
“This will go down as one of the biggest approvals in the History of the United Nations, will lead to further Peace all over the World, and is a moment of true Historic proportion!”
The president went on to thank the UN Security Council and 14 countries that were involved in the vote as well as eight nations that weren’t on the committee.
The peace plan authorises the creation of an International Stabilisation Force (ISF) and authorises the formation of a “Board of Peace,” a transitional governing body for Gaza
Establishing a temporary international stabilisation framework was point 15 in President Trump’s peace plan and Washington heralded the vote “historic and constructive.”
- with AFP
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Originally published as Eurovision cuts public votes in half amid Israel participation row
