The Amalthea plan, Cyprus’ humanitarian aid corridor to Gaza, will be reactivated soon, Foreign Minister Constantinos Kombos said on Friday night.
Addressing an event in Limassol, he said the transfer of humanitarian aid from Cyprus to Gaza would recommence soon, with ships full of aid set to be setting sail from the island for the Israeli port of Ashdod.
From Ashdod, the aid will then be taken over land into northern Gaza.
Kombos was keen to stress that the Amalthea plan has thus far been a success, noting that aid was transferred to Gaza from Cyprus “despite the huge storm of difficulties, doubt, sometimes ridicule, which came first and foremost internally”.
“Through methodical and coordinated work between many different arms of the state, which was not always easy, it became a reality, and we managed to create an international coalition which was added to help the development of the idea,” he said.
“We managed to create a flow of aid which faced all those practical problems, and all the potential problems that other solutions, including sending aid through Egypt or Jordan, face,” he added.
“In the aftermath of the terrorist attack on Israel in October 2023, the government did not choose the easy solution of the past, wherein the Republic of Cyprus was simply an observer. We chose to create the conditions which could highlight the role the Republic of Cyprus could play.”
Ashdod has been the landing point of aid sent from Cyprus at various points since humanitarian aid began to be shipped from Cyprus in the direction of Gaza, with the port being frequently used as a backup destination during the summer when the US-built temporary jetty placed off the coast of Gaza was out of action.
Foreign ministry spokesman Theodoros Gotsis told the Cyprus Mail in July that Ashdod had been used alongside the jetty throughout the jetty’s two-month lifespan, having previously been used as a port of reception for aid before the jetty had been constructed.
Aid arriving at Ashdod travels into northern Gaza by land, crossing from Israel into the strip via the Erez crossing point.
The jetty had faced a litany of problems throughout the summer, though Gotsis had stressed that despite those troubles, it had not been a pointless endeavour. He said 15,000 pallets of humanitarian aid entered Gaza via the jetty, carrying more than 8,600 tonnes of humanitarian aid.
The jetty was permanently removed from Gaza in July, having only been operable for a total of 12 days after it was first installed on May 17.
It had been frequently rendered unusable by weather conditions, with British newspaper The Guardian having reported earlier in the year that it is only usable when waves are smaller than 1.25 metres in height.
It had broken apart in May during high winds, with four US army vessels which were holding it in place being washed up on a beach near Ashkelon, an Israeli town located between the Ashdod and Gaza.
It was taken to Ashdod for repairs before being reattached in early June, but was then removed on two further occasions as officials feared that conditions would lead to it breaking apart again.
In addition to its structural difficulties, the jetty was also impacted by problems regarding delivery after the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) in June suspended its operations related to the jetty following an Israeli military operation in the area which reportedly killed over 200 Palestinians.
