Cyprus may be complicit in the genocide of the Palestinians by the state of Israel, an investigation by the Price of Oil Research Network reveals. According to the investigation published on 20 August in the British Guardian, Cyprus offers transshipment services to tankers carrying fuel for military use in Israel.
This investigation confirms what activist groups, including the afoa community and AKEL, have been saying for a month, namely that the Republic of Cyprus is complicit tothe ethnic cleansing perpetrated by the State of Israel against the Palestinians, both in the Gaza Strip and in the West Bank.
Because no matter what the Presidency says, the facts are booming. The very records from the Cyprus Ports Authority website confirm that the Overseas Santorini ship, which sails from the US to Askelon, Israel, carrying jet fuel for the Israeli forces’ fighter jets, was in Limassol on August 1. It had also docked in Limassol in January and April.
We don’t question that the government is also trying – in an attempt to be ‘useful’ to the international community and to wash its sins away – to send humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip through the Amalthea maritime corridor. The effectiveness of this operation has been judged long ago, hence the dismantling of the American pier off Gaza.
As for the situation on the ground, it cannot be described in words. No matter how much humanitarian aid Cyprus and all the other states that want to ignore the genocide send, the reality is that the flow to the enclaved Palestinians is minimal. In addition to relentless aerial bombardment and ground attacks by the Israeli army, the Netanyahu government imposes such restrictions on the passage of aid, including customs and border controls, that it is almost impossible for anything to get through to the Gaza Strip.
The desperation of the stranded Palestinians also leads to a phenomenon of looting of any aid that eventually manages to get into Gaza, with all that this entails for those who are most vulnerable. The United Nations says that even if a ceasefire is reached, the distribution of humanitarian aid will be impossible without the cooperation of the State of Israel, which prevents thousands of trucks from entering the Palestinian enclave and disputes the international organisation’s statistics, even though they are confirmed by humanitarian organisations and journalists (those not murdered by the Israeli war machine).
In this context, any reference to a humanitarian aid mission can only be seen as a smokescreen. We call on the Christodoulides government to prevent, from now on, the docking and provision of any service to ships carrying fuel to Israel for military use. Otherwise, they will be an accomplice to war crimes. And it is not only us who say this, but lawyers specialising in International Law and International Humanitarian Law.
Περισσότερα στην ιστοσελίδα μας – Read more: https://afoa.cy/cyprus-complicit-palestinian-genocide/
