‘Trying to dominate’: In Cyprus, some fear Israel’s growing influence

Nicosia and Limassol, Cyprus – Heavily bearded and wearing a loose shirt collar, Christos Achniotis speaks about the history and demographics of Cyprus and runs off dates from memory.

He was 16 when Turkish troops landed in Cyprus in mid-1974. At one point, Limassol has long had a large Russian community, he said, but that revolved around property investments.

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Now, he believes there is pressure from Israel, which he says is “trying to dominate as much as possible, land-wise, company-wise”, as well as politically and militarily.

Israel’s reach in Cyprus now runs through the state’s most vital systems.

Mekorot, Israel’s state water company, helps supply the island’s water. Israel Aerospace Industries, a state-owned arms maker, is supplying its new air defences. And Israeli firms run a growing hospital network and hold a stake in the country’s largest gasfield.

Israel’s economy is about 15 times Cyprus’s, according to the World Bank, and Israel’s military spending is about 73 times that of Cyprus.

Cyprus’s government presents the ties as a security alliance against Turkiye, but several Cypriots interviewed by Al Jazeera said they feared their country is handing another state control of systems it cannot live without.

Israel is “a small area with big money and a big military”. Cyprus is strategically placed in the Mediterranean and, just a 35-minute flight away, is an attractive piece of land, said Achniotis.

‘Our resources’

Cyprus gets about 80 percent of its drinking water from the sea.

With its dams just 21 percent full in March, desalination plants supply most of what comes out of its taps, according to the Water Development Department.

Agriculture Minister Maria Panayiotou said in June that desalination would cover almost all domestic demand by next year.

Mekorot has joint ventures with Cypriot firm Netcom that run two of the island’s five permanent plants, at Larnaca and Episkopi, according to the Water Development Department. In August, Mekorot expanded its cooperation with Cyprus, signing a memorandum with the Nicosia District Water Board to help manage water and sewerage in the capital.

For Danae Laou, who works in hospitality in Limassol, the water deals crossed a line.

“It’s terrifying to see, but at the same time, we have no power,” she said.

Today’s occupation of Palestine is in part facilitated by control of vital resources. “I can see the same thing happening here”, she said.

Palestinians know Mekorot well.

In the occupied West Bank, the company is on the United Nations list of businesses linked to illegal Israeli settlements.

Najla Abdellatif Vallander, a Swedish-Palestinian environmental advocate who founded Zero Waste Palestine, has tracked Mekorot’s work in Palestine and abroad and told Al Jazeera that its operations in the West Bank are akin to “water theft”, diverting Palestinian sources to illegal Israeli settlements.

“Israeli settlers are able to enjoy almost unlimited amounts of water while Palestinians are not allowed to use their own water sources,” she said.

Palestinians “have to buy back their own water sources from Mekorot”, and are mostly barred from digging their own wells. “This is water apartheid,” she said.

At the time of publishing, Mekorot had not responded to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.

‘Leverage’

Israel’s economic footprint has grown fast.

Investors in Israel held 5.1 billion euros ($5.7bn) of investment in Cyprus at the end of 2024, more than six times what they held in 2017, according to the Central Bank of Cyprus.

The true figure may be higher as the data excludes Israelis living in Cyprus or elsewhere, and may miss money routed through companies whose owners are hard to trace.

The Tel Aviv Stock Exchange is also weighing a bid for the Cyprus Stock Exchange, which the government is privatising, Cyprus Mail and the Israeli business daily Globes reported this month.

The Cypriot exchange’s European Union licence would give Israel “greater access to the Eurozone market”, a source close to Cyprus’s Ministry of Finance told the Cyprus Mail.

Health is the newest.

Hadassah Medical Centre Limassol, the Israeli hospital group’s first centre in Europe, began seeing patients in July and was formally opened on Thursday.

Its opening was ratified in Israel by Hadassah’s governing bodies, including the Hadassah Women’s Zionist Organization of America.

Offshore, Israel’s NewMed Energy owns 30 percent of the Aphrodite gasfield, according to its filings to the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange.

The two governments are also negotiating over the field, which Israel says extends into its waters.

‘Create a problem’

Israel has also been flexing its military muscle.

Israeli special forces have trained in Cyprus’s Troodos mountains, whose terrain resembles southern Lebanon, according to Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies.

In 2022, the two armies held their largest joint exercise yet, simulating a war with Hezbollah, The Jerusalem Post reported.

Cyprus is replacing its Russian-made air defences with the Barak MX, built by Israel Aerospace Industries, with deliveries beginning in late 2024.

Israel presents itself as a guardian against Turkiye.

Following a coup in Cyprus backed by Greece’s military government in July 1974, Turkiye invaded the island and has occupied its northern part ever since. Only Turkiye and its Turkish Cypriot leadership recognise Northern Cyprus.

In late December 2025, Israeli and Cypriot military officials signed a 2026 cooperation plan covering joint exercises, training, and “strategic military dialogue”, the Israeli military said.

On Tuesday, a pro-Israel advocacy group, the Israel Allies Foundation (IAF), launched a caucus of six Cypriot lawmakers from three parties in Nicosia. Its president, Josh Reinstein, told reporters after the group’s meeting with the Cypriot president at the presidential palace on Wednesday that Turkiye is a “common adversary”, according to the Cyprus Mail.

The opposition party AKEL called it “extremely provocative”, asking what credibility Cyprus has in demanding pressure on Turkiye while backing “another occupying and settler state”, the Cyprus Mail reported.

Last month, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the United Nations General Assembly that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan “illegally occupies northern Cyprus, an EU member”.

Netanyahu “knows what he’s doing”, said Ioanna Lamprou, a writer in Limassol.

Cypriots who feel the world has forgotten the occupation, she said, will “become more sympathetic to Israel and to Netanyahu’s government because of this”, but they “don’t understand that what’s happening in the West Bank is illegal occupation as well”.

Laou understands the government’s reasoning; from its perspective, she said, “Cyprus can’t protect itself from anything.”

Ceylan Hassan, a Turkish Cypriot researcher and environmental social scientist, said the British had won over Cypriots the same way, by promising to keep them safe from a bigger threat.

Israel is doing “the whole colonial thing of let’s create a problem and then be the solution to it and never let it go”.

‘Athens or Crete’

In 1902, Theodore Herzl, the founder of political Zionism, presented a pamphlet to a British Parliamentary Committee with the idea of establishing a Jewish homeland in Cyprus. He offered a pamphlet with the title: The problem of Jewish immigration to England and the United States solved by furthering the Jewish Colonisation of Cyprus.

Britain’s colonial secretary refused, saying Greeks and Muslims lived there, according to Herzl’s diary.

Herzl mused, “The Greeks will gladly sell their lands at a good price and migrate to Athens or Crete.”

Achniotis has thought about that history more since the genocidal war on Gaza began.

Watching what is happening to Palestinians, he said, “I think it can happen to anyone.”

As the onslaught happened so easily, with the acceptance of the US and European governments, “you feel a kind of insecurity,” he said. “Why are they going to respect you?”