Thousands of police were deployed to provide security at the Stade de France in the northern suburbs of Paris and on public transport, while an elite anti-terrorist police unit guarded the visiting Israeli squad.
A reporter for the French news agency AFP witnessed stewards stepping in to stop fights in the stands between rival fans.
According to the Reuters news agency, about 100 Israeli fans ignored their government’s travel warnings and sat in a corner of the 80,000-capacity stadium, which was barely a fifth full.
Waving yellow balloons, they chanted “Free the hostages” in reference to Israelis being held in Gaza by Hamas militants, the agency reported.
Before the match, several hundred demonstrators gathered in a square outside the stadium to wave Palestinian, Lebanese and Algerian flags in protest against the war in Gaza.
“We do not play with genocide,” one of the banners read.
Israel has dismissed the accusations of genocide as baseless and grossly distorted.
He launched a campaign to destroy Hamas in response to the group’s unprecedented attack on southern Israel on October 7 last year, in which around 1,200 people were killed and 251 people were taken hostage.
More than 43,700 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.
Afterwards, politicians across Europe condemned the “return of anti-Semitism”. Israeli fans were chased through the streets of Amsterdam.
Maccabi fans themselves participated in the vandalism, tore down the Palestinian flag, attacked a taxi and chanted anti-Arab slogans, according to the city authorities. They were then targeted by “small groups of rioters … on foot, on scooters or in cars,” according to the city’s 12-page report.
