NBA removes 'Palestine' wording after bowing to Israeli pressure

The National Basketball Association (NBA) has bowed to pressure from a far-right Israeli minister and removed wording from its website referring to Palestine as the occupied territories.

The NBA, the world's premier basketball league, had originally listed "occupied Palestine territories" on its online country listings but faced pressure from Israel, who asked for it to be removed.

Israeli sports minister Miri Regev had sent a letter to NBA Commissioner Adam Silver calling Palestine "an imaginary 'state'", and asking for the reference to be removed from the basketball league's website.

"We do not produce the country listings for NBA.com and as soon as we became aware of it, the site was updated," said Kathy Behrens, the NBA's president for social responsibility.

"We apologise for this oversight, and have corrected it."

The United Nations and the international community consider the West Bank and East Jerusalem as occupied Palestinian territory, according to international law.

Regev, a far-right minister from Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's Likud party, thanked Silver on Friday for removing the language.

"Israel's lands are not occupied; therefore what was written was false and should have been deleted," she said.

She added that the NBA listing was not in line with US President Donald Trump's recent recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

Regev once called African refugees in Israel a "cancer in our body" and cracked down on funding for Palestinian cultural initiatives in Israel as culture minister.