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| Courtesy of Cyprus Mail |
Trying to make sense of press releases seeming to imply that humanitarian aid is about to leave Cyprus for Israel. Except, except….
We’ve been hearing since November that aid could be sent from Cyprus. Just that there were a few caveats. The article in Saturday’s Cyprus Mail - a publication never noted for clarity - is a masterpiece of obscurantism. Full of official statements like “There is optimism that over the weekend the operation will be activated…these works should be done as quickly as possible, but the aim is ‘not for the speed to affect efficiency, to have a balance’”.
It appears the Open Arms, “a vessel owned by a Spanish NGO and more accustomed to rescuing migrants at sea”, was expected to be deployed in the first mission. It was still at the port of Larnaca in Cyprus on Saturday afternoon, [and Sunday] and “authorities could not give a precise departure time”.
The photo of the valiant little ship does little to encourage one to think it will have a significant effect on mass starvation. And then there is the pier that the Americans are about to build to receive aid ships. Projected to be completed in May?
“Biden said in his State of the Union speech on Thursday that he was directing the military to set up a pier off Gaza’s Mediterranean coast to receive ships carrying food, water, medicine and temporary shelters as Gaza has no functioning port infrastructure. Construction of the pier and causeway connecting it to land will take as long as 60 days and require about 1,000 US troops, Pentagon Press Secretary Patrick Ryder said on Friday. The soldiers will remain offshore.” [Al Jazeera]
Would it be overwhelmingly cynical to suppose that if the pier is too late too prevent deaths by starvation it might still be convenient for exploiting Gaza’s offshore gas reserves?
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